A peace-building think-tank will tackle the long-term effects of war on children and communities

by Kathleen Martin

I am tired of the rotten things that happen in the world—a seeming infinity of unsolvable problems. This is why I am so excited about work at Dalhousie University's Centre for Foreign Policy Studies. There, they are peeling through the hardened layers of "wish we could" that compromise efforts for change. And they are finding concrete, practical ways to help.

Let me tell you a story: Imagine a room close and dim, the thatched ceiling swaying downward. Sallay Mansaray sits on her bed. In a low voice, she talks about what happened to the babies in her small town during the Sierra Leone rebel war.

I cannot scream loudly enough to reflect the horror of what I heard in that room in the tiny town of Kamakwie, where I met Sallay last year. What matters as much, perhaps, is what happened when she finished talking. Sallay stood up. Followed by the extended family that had gathered as she spoke, she walked out into the bright African sunshine. Her son said something, and Sallay threw back her head and laughed loud and long.

Because despite the worst that humans do to one another, life continues. And for those, like Sallay, who insist on writing their own endings, so does hope. Sometimes laughing is a triumph.

Building a country after a decade-long civil war is complicated. The United Nations has established a Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) to do just that, and Canada has recently been elected chair of the section on Sierra Leone. But, says Shelly Whitman, the deputy director of the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, there is a problem. The Canadian team is seriously lacking the information it needs to do its job.

"We can talk for days about the failure of the peacekeeping missions," says Whitman. "We can talk about how we don't have the money and the capacity and the will. Those things are failing. So let's stop standing behind them. Let's find other ways of coping."

Whitman and her colleagues are pooling their experience both in the field and in academia to tackle issues in a new way. This September at Dalhousie they are launching the Peace Praxis Institute as a peacebuilding think-tank. The institute will focus on three main areas: children affected by armed conflict; peacebuilding and the peacebuilding commission of the U.N.; and maritime security issues.

The war in Sierra Leone was infamous for its use of child soldiers. Whitman and her colleagues at the institute want to help the Canadians on the PBC address the long-term effects of the conflict on the young people and their communities.

"We can't keep thinking of this purely from our western-centric point of view," says Whitman. "We're trying to come up with solutions to help children in conflict, but we aren't asking those who have been children in conflict for their input. That's not good enough."

Together with the Child Soldiers Initiative, the Dalhousie team decided to host a groundbreaking meeting. They turned to the Network of Young People Affected by War for help. The Network is composed of people who have been child soldiers or who have had their childhoods curtailed by conflict. The most famous of its founders is Ishmael Beah, the author of the international best-seller A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.

A child soldier grown up and rehabilitated is among the most astonishing of human achievements. Some became soldiers as young as six years old. They were stolen, raped, drugged, maimed, and forced to commit crimes beyond imagination. Yet some manage to come to grips with the world that abandoned them—and that continues to abandon the hundreds of thousands of children who are soldiers still.

"If you were to meet any one of those young people, just meet them on the street and have a conversation with them, you would have no clue what they have been through," says Whitman. "They are incredible. How did they survive? How can we learn from them? How can we harness their intelligence and strength and resilience to help them become leaders in their countries in ways that are responsible and appropriate?"

In a nondescript Dalhousie meeting room at the end of August, Whitman planned to gather a group of them—young adults who have experienced the worst of human life—to try and develop solutions to one of the planet's most shameful practices.

Beah and two other former child soldiers, Grace Akallo and John Kon Kelei, were scheduled to speak publicly in Halifax in the hopes that their words and experience would inspire those who listened to act—and to bring more intelligence and creativity to bear on this serious issue.

Sallay Mansaray is a leader in Kamakwie. She reminds me that we in the West are writing our own ending too. Building the best Canada—a just Canada—has to include helping people like Sallay and Beah and Whitman in any way we can.

Kathleen Martin is a freelance journalist based in Halifax. She can be reached at masthead@ns.sympatico.ca.