Talking with a former child soldier in CAR

This winter, staff from across World Vision came together to support Action/2015, a movement committed to raising awareness about the Sustainable Development Goals, the successor to the Millennium Development Goals. Opinion pieces and blogs have been published, child sponsors have met with MPs, and our external relations team talked to policy makers about the importance of keeping children at the heart of the new goals. This September, world leaders will meet to agree the goals at the United Nations. Ahead of the UN General Assembly, we’re blogging about the different issues that have touched us, and explaining why we’ve been working so hard towards this moment.

By Sarah Klassen, Public Affairs and Government Relations Officer

14-year-old Francis never looked me in the eye when we spoke. Instead, he stared into his hands - palms open, resting in his lap.

I stared at his hands too. How could such little hands inflict so much horror?

It was late afternoon and we sat under a tree in front of Francis’ house to avoid the hot sun of the Central African Republic (CAR). He spoke calmly and evenly, never showing me any emotion. “I didn’t want the death of my brother to go unpunished,” he told me.

And so at the age of 13, like many other young boys in his community, Francis joined a local armed group. By the time he reached his 14th birthday, he had killed five people - four children and an adult. “I used a knife,” he explains.

Francis told me that he killed the four children because they were ‘Fulani’- Muslim.

In the latest crisis in CAR, triggered in 2013, leaders on all sides of the conflict have used religion as a means to divide people. Violence spread throughout the country. Both Christians and Muslims have been targeted by different armed groups.

There were hardly any Muslims left in Francis’s community, which I was visiting in June 2015 - except for about 50 families who had found temporary safety in an enclave protected by armed UN soldiers. The families’ lives had been negotiated a year and a half ago, when a local Pastor and Imam came together in the midst of the religious violence and convinced their divided community that enough blood had been shed.

The conflict in CAR has been marked by widespread human rights violations, with women and girls subjected to extremely high levels of sexual and gender-based violence. The political impasse remains unresolved, with little prospect of resolution despite elections planned for December 2015. Children like Francis are living in a forgotten crisis. A staggering 64% of humanitarian needs are currently unmet.

After three months of fighting, Francis told me that he escaped the armed group, and returned to his hometown. “They showed me many things,” his voice trailed off into silence....”I don’t want to fight again.”

Francis’s mother lives and works in a mining town a few hours away, but Francis doesn’t want to go with her. “If I go there, I will have to work instead of going to school. It is very important for me to finish school,” he said – still looking at his hands.

It was good to hear that Francis was back in school and that he knew the importance of his education. But as I sat across from him, it was hard to feel hopeful.

Francis has not received any form of psycho-social support to help him deal with his experiences in the armed group. Most aid programmes in CAR are funded only for short periods at a time. Psycho-social support and re-integration programmes for former child soldiers like Francis are especially under-funded, often because they are not short-term programmes. They would take at least two to three years to be run effectively, so they’re not run at all.

And so Francis, like many other children in CAR, continue to carry deep scars from the conflict alone.

Creating change for children like Francis

2015 is the year that countries will shape and adopt a new set of global goals that will build on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These new goals- the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), will chart a road map to tackle some of the world’s most pressing problems over the next 15 years - and children and youth are increasingly part of the conversation. They need to know what the goals are and why they are important – they are the ones who will live with their legacy.

Over the summer, as conversations around the SDGs moved from “What should the goals be?” to “How do we best implement and measure their progress?”- I couldn’t stop thinking about Francis. The most vulnerable children in the world are those in fragile and conflict-affected communities. The MDGs didn’t reach these children. This is not only because of a lack of resources, but also because the MDGs did not address the causes of poverty, like poor or absent governments, injustice, corruption, displacement and violence.

These factors need to be addressed if we’re going to achieve sustainable change and the SDGs are to be successful. Conflict and fragility make development a lot more difficult, but the importance of protecting children living in countries affected by conflict has to be taken seriously.

I was asked recently, “How are we going to know if the next set of goals have been successful?” My mind wandered back to CAR and I thought about that conversation with Francis outside his home...I had my answer.

When a child like Francis, living in a fragile context, is protected and can access the basic services that bring hope for a better future, that’s when we will know that the goals have succeeded.

*Francis’ name has been changed to keep him safe and protect his identity.