NYC. October 12, 2010, Children of War, Bryan Single’s award-winning documentary on the rehabilitation of Northern Ugandan former child soldiers was unveiled in its World Premiere at the United Nations General Assembly Hall.
For the past twenty years, in Northern Uganda and Sudan, the quasi-religious guerilla militia known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) led by the self-proclaimed prophet and war criminal Joseph Kony not only terrorized civilians but systematically abducted children to enroll them by force in its armed battalions or to offer them as “wives” to its commanders. Four years in the making, in the bosom of the Ugandan Rachele Rehabilitation Center, Children of War followed the slow healing and re-humanizing process by which, through trauma therapy, the rescued children are reoriented towards a return to a peaceful life. not only terrorized civilians but systematically abducted children to enroll them by force in its armed battalions or to offer them as “wives” to its commanders. Four years in the making, in the bosom of the Ugandan
Hosted by The United Nations’ Deputy Secretary General Dr. Asha Rose Migiro and Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict – the campaign to achieve universal ratification of the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict can be supported by visiting www.zerounder18.com – and moderated by Amy Goodman of Democracy now, the screening was a cornerstone in the film’s sensitization journey.
(It is interesting, to say the least, to note that the federal government of the United States has yet to sign the Protocol as some if its clauses seem to contradict some of the States’ local legislature. What active 2010 state law is contradicted by the refusal of the involvement of minors in armed warfare, we wonder?)
