by ISSA SIKITI DA SILVA
Malian children in the Abala refugee camp in Niger. CREDIT/William Lloyd-George/IPS
BAMAKO , Mar 22 2013 (IPS) – One of Amina Diallo’s sons, 14-year-old Salif, has been missing since August last year. She thinks Islamists kidnapped him while he was on his way to the market in their hometown of Gao, in northern Mali, and recruited him as a child soldier.
“Wherever he is, he must know that I still pray for him to come back alive and well,” she tells IPS.
While a French intervention allowed the Malian army to reclaim the north of the country in January – it had been held for more than a year by Islamist militants composed of Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb, Ansar Dine and the Movement of Unity and Jihad in West Africa – this West African nation still remains in turmoil with hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people, missing and abducted children and food shortages.
Diallo and her four other children now live at a relative’s home in Bamako after they left Gao last October. But despite Diallo’s hopes that Salif might return, chances are unlikely.
She tried to search for her missing son, only to be told by local authorities that they were sorry for her loss, and that the Malian army was doing its best to find out where the children were taken.
Media relations director of Christian relief agency World Vision, Laura Blank, tells IPS that children in Mali still remain at risk.
“Unsupervised children are also vulnerable to sexual harassment and violence, including the potential to be recruited as child soldiers by armed groups. This continues to be a concern for World Vision.”
A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report published in February found that children as young as 11 were placed on the Islamist rebel frontline. Shocked residents told HRW researchers that they saw bodies of child soldiers lying in pools of blood after the fighting. The United Nations Children’s Fund reported at least 175 children were used as soldiers in the conflict last year.
Blank says that her organisation is working with volunteers to share valuable child-protection messages with local communities, which will hopefully empower parents to keep their children safe.
Inter Press Service for more
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