Human Rights Education
Introducing the Innocents Lost curriculum guide
(In PDF)
From Jimmie
The motivation for this book came out of my experience reporting on juvenile violence here in the United States. As a staff reporter for LIFE magazine and freelance writer, I spent several years looking at the lives of young people who were both perpetrating and victims of violence, usually gang and/or drug-related in places like Bed-Stuy, Baltimore, Chicago and East. St. Louis. In the spring of 1997, LIFE magazine sent myself and a colleague to the Democratic Republic of Congo, then known as Zaire. It was there that I first encountered so-called "child soldiers," children fighting on the front lines of the civil war then erupting between the government of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, and a guerilla movement led by Laurent Kabila. Boys and girls in uniform were serving not only as grunt soldiers, but also cooks, porters and scouts.
The process of doing this book was a six-year journey which not only challenged my notion of what childhood should be, but also the true impact of conflict. There's a line from a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay where she wrote about childhood being "the kingdom where nobody dies." Yet, for millions of children throughout the world death and loss are the consuming themes of youth.
There were two levels of risks involved in doing my book. The first was physical. Of course, there were more than a few situations were my life was in physical danger. More than I care to think about, I saw people killed or severely wounded. Some were children and many were the victims of children perpetrating violence against others. Those images and feelings stay with you, always. The second level of involved risk is the more difficult, though. That is the level of emotional trauma.
During one of my early trips to Northern Uganda to document the war there spurred by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a Ugandan man told me that "if a dying man tells you his story and you don't pass it on, you'll be haunted." For a time, I was, as I didn't know how to process and release the stories I was reporting and in many cases experiencing firsthand. Doing a project like this teaches one that the most violent things capable of being done my mankind are by its smallest members, children.
Of course, there are dramatic differences in terms of scope and severity between juvenile violence here in the United States and the wars faced by children overseas. Still, there are parallels between the two in terms of the traumas endured as well as recruitment processes. Unquestionably, there are lessons to be taken and shared in both situations.
I set about writing my book with the hope that if concerned people could figure out a way to protect children from participation in conflict, then maybe there was a chance to stop adults. In the months since publication of "Innocents Lost," I often find myself questioning if the goals were unrealistic to begin with. At best, I hope it plants seeds of peace and tolerance among youth destined to be leaders in the future. Whenever the opportunity arises, I commit myself to talking with children and youth from college-age to middle school about the issues addressed in this book, and faced by their counterparts throughout the world. If a nine-year-old in East New York can see herself or himself in the lives of kids depicted in "Innocents Lost," a major step has been taken. Through public advocacy, I'm striving to highlight those connections even for youth whose life experience might outwardly seem too distant from those in places such as Uganda, Colombia, Sri Lanka and other war-wracked nations.
