Reviewed by Never Again International – Canada Chapter Coordinator in Florida, Ruth Gonzalez
Never Again International - Canada's board member Jimmie Briggs and author of Innocents Lost is pictured with Florida Chapter Coordinator Ruth Gonzalez
For decades, children have been
employed to fight the wars that rogue warlords start. Fighting for land, ousting governments, or forced
to extract diamonds, child soldiers have been known not to show mercy as they
set out to destroy lives. In most cases,
these children have no choice but to fight if they want to survive. In other words, kill or be killed.
Jimmie
Briggs, an American journalist and human rights campaigner based in New York,
went to Rwanda in 1997 and was haunted by the horrors he encountered after the
genocide. That set in motion the idea
for Innocents Lost, a culmination of
many years of research on the phenomenon of child soldiers.
The
most poignant and moving aspects of this book are the personal stories of
children bearing witness and/or participating in some of the worst conflicts in
history. We meet Francois, a
sixteen-year-old living in Rwanda in 1994.
His father was Hutu while his mother was Tutsi. With the aid of drugs, a hoe, and an
ultimatum, he killed his Tutsi nephews.
Eugenie, also sixteen, was abducted by Hutu extremists and repeatedly
raped for days. This points out the
devastating reality of girls being used as both sex slaves and soldiers.
Rwanda
is only the beginning, as Briggs explores, in great detail, how child soldiers
are used in several conflicts including, Colombia, Sri Lanka, Uganda and
Afghanistan. Despite receiving worldwide
attention with Graça Machel’s report, “Impact
of Armed Conflict on Children” in 1996, this issue is, in some ways, on the
backburner.
However
emotionally difficult this book is to read, it is well worth it. The power behind Innocents Lost is how Briggs puts human faces to each of the
conflicts and does not just offer statistics.
As a result, Jimmie Briggs does justice to the hundreds of thousands of
children still fighting in wars or trying to escape them. Innocents
Lost is a necessary read in learning and understanding more about child
soldiers.
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