\u201cYou cannot recapture a lost childhood for the innocence has gone,\u201d says Dr Rachel Calam, who is Professor of Child and Family Psychology at the University of Manchester. \u201cBut you can offer a stable and secure background in which these children can experience kindness as the normal adult behaviour rather than violence and aggression.\u201d<\/p>\n
Professor Calam, a specialist in parenting and behavioural problems in children,\u00a0 first came into contact with the psychological problems of child soldiers a decade ago in Uganda when she ran a workshop on post traumatic stress at Makere University in Kampala for Ugandan psychologists who had been working with rescued child combatants.<\/p>\n
\u201cChildhood is a process whereby the individual gradually becomes more independent, and learns how to cope with life and form long-lasting relationships,\u201d she says. \u201cFor these children all their experience of these educational, social and intimate relationships have been distorted. They have undergone initiations to dehumanise them, being made to kill other children or their own parents. Those who can\u2019t keep up on forced marches are killed. It is done so that they know they will never be able to return to their home villages, to make them feel dependent on the militia and to terrorize them into compliance.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it\u2019s really important for children after they are rescued to be put in a context where they feel safe and secure. Where they can have the conversations that these drawings prompt.\u201d<\/p>\n
What the drawings \u2013 gathered by UNICEF, World Vision, Red Barnet, GUSCO and AVSI and the International Rescue Committee \u2013 show is ex-child soldiers trying to come to terms with the horrifying events and actions they have experienced, witnessed or perpetrated.<\/p>\n
\u201cDrawing can serving a lot of functions,\u201d says Dr Calam, who makes comments on the individual drawings in the captions below. \u201cIt helps the child to process what has happened to them. There\u2019ll be disconnects because of the strategies they have developed for coping; they may be very mature in some ways and immature in others. Aggression will be very common.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pictures show that in a jumbled mix of power and powerlessness, cruelty and helplessness, anger and pleading, guilt and terror. \u201cThese children will carry this with them into adulthood,\u201d says Dr Calam. \u201cBy drawing it they attempt to gain control over it\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Images-courtesy-of-the-International-Rescue-Committee-2-Drawings-made-by-former-child-soldiers-in-Uganda-2004-1024x711.jpg\" "\\"Images")
<\/a>**In this picture the soldiers are the larger figures which represents their power. Their victim is smaller even though he is in some ways the central character. The soldier in the centre, in particular, is powerful, menacing and sinister.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Images-courtesy-of-the-International-Rescue-Committee-1-Drawings-made-by-former-child-soldiers-in-Uganda-2004-1024x680.jpg\" "\\"Images")
<\/a>**The detail here is horrific. Body parts are being boiled and eaten. What is striking is the contrast between the everyday activities \u2013 sitting, eating, the man who seems in charge sitting in an armchair that has been moved outdoors \u2013 and the brutality of the killing. The pleading of the victim is graphic but the others ignore him as they eat their gruesome meal. The man in the red shirt is eating a human head. Whether or not the child who drew this actually saw this, or was just told about it to frighten him, it is a vivid illustration of the terrifying mindset created in these children.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/WIMH_James-1024x748.jpg\" "\\"WIMH_James\\"")
<\/a>This child has gone to an enormous amount of trouble to provide this amount of detail. Notice the faint outlines of bodies in brown crayon between the bolder ones in black ink and the bloodied heads of the two teachers in the orange dresses. The child here wants to convey the full extent of the brutality of a village being pillaged. Note the axe in the girls\u2019 head beneath the tree.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/WIMH_Francis13-1024x748.jpg\" "\\"WIMH_Francis13\\"")
<\/a>Children draw like this when they are distressed. Look at the way the grass, and the flames from the roof of the school, have been done in such harsh vertical lines. They have been scored in quite a violent action. It\u2019s almost certainly a representation of their distress. And yet look, by contrast, at the childish depiction of the sun between the trees. Note that, as the captives are roped and led away, even the dog has been taken.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/WIMH_Francis13_2-1024x732.jpg\" "\\"WIMH_Francis13_2\\"")
<\/a>This is the most chilling drawing in a way \u2013 not merely because of the violence of the central scene but because of what surrounds it: the order of the village, the carefully tended path to the far hut, the neat thatches of the roofs, the man sitting by a cooking fire. It is an ordered world which has all been most carefully drawn. Then in the middle is a brutal machete murder. But what is worst of all is the way the three children in the foreground are sitting still, just watching, like children who have been told to pay attention in class. Presumably they have been ordered to watch the murder of their parent. It is like a perversion of the right ordering of life.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/WIMH_Solomon-1024x748.jpg\" "\\"WIMH_Solomon\\"")
<\/a>What is striking here is the pattern of the bodies round the tree, making an order out of chaos. Again the soldiers are far bigger than their victims. The detail of the feet of the dead is exact, two feet for every head. It is as if the child who has drawn it is trying to regain control of the chaos.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/WIMH_William-1024x745.jpg\" "\\"WIMH_William\\"")
<\/a>This is a brutal dismemberment. One person has already been chopped up. The main victim is passive, helpless, expressionless. But the artist\u2019s preoccupation is with the aggressor. Look at the attention to detail in the frightening face, elaborate hair and ears, and the angry square mouth. See the care that has been taken over the camouflage pattern on the uniform. The child is helpless and small alongside the terrifying aggressor. See how at the killer\u2019s foot a chicken is pecking at a severed limb. It is deeply disturbing.<\/p>\n