Tag Archives: Sierra Leone

Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in the United States


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Myself . By T.V. Antony Raj

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Great Seal of the United States

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Today, Ebola virus disease (EVD) represents a major public health issue, not only in sub-Saharan Africa, where it originated, but also to the whole world.

Researchers believe that the index case of the current EVD epidemic was the death of a 2-year-old boy in the village of Meliandou, Guéckédou Prefecture, in the West African nation of Guinea.

Guinea’s local health officials reported the first cases of fever in February 2014. They diagnosed the early cases as other diseases more common to the area and not as Ebola.

On March 19, 2014, Reuters reported an outbreak of an undetermined haemorrhagic fever in Guinea.

On March 22, 2014, Guinea confirmed that the viral hemorrhagic fever that killed more than 50 people is Ebola. On the same day, Liberia reported two EVD cases.

On March 30, 2014, Sierra Leone reported suspected cases.

On April 4, 2014, a mob attacked the Ebola treatment center in Guinea. In Sierra Leone and Liberia healthcare workers faced hostility from fearful, suspicious people.

On June 17, 2014, Liberia’s capital Monrovia reported the first case of Ebola.

On July 27, 2014, Liberia closed its borders with neighbouring countries. Three days later, Liberia shut down all schools. It quarantined worse-affected communities using troops.

On August 2, 2014, a U.S. missionary physician infected with Ebola in Liberia was flown to Atlanta in the United States for treatment.

On August 5, 2014, a second U.S. missionary infected with Ebola was flown from Liberia to Atlanta for treatment.

On August 8, 2014, World Health Organization (WHO) declared Ebola as “international public health emergency.”

On August 15, 2014, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) or Doctors Without Borders said it would take about six months to control the epidemic.

On August 19, 2014, one of the two U.S. missionaries treated in Atlanta declared free of the virus was released from the hospital.

On August 21, 2014, the second U.S. missionary treated in Atlanta declared free of the virus was released from the hospital.

By September the epidemic accelerated in sub-Saharan Africa.

On September 3, 2014, a third U.S. missionary doctor infected with Ebola was flown from Liberia for treatment in Omaha, Nebraska.

On September 7, 2014, President Barack Obama said the United States needs to do more to help prevent Ebola from becoming a global crisis.

On September 8, 2014, a fourth Ebola patient was flown to Atlanta.

On September 9, 2014, WHO said at least 2,296 died out of 4,293 cases recorded in five countries.

On September 13, 2014, Liberia appealed to Obama for help fight Ebola.

On September 16, 2014, President Obama promised to send 3,000 military engineers and medical personnel to West Africa to build clinics and train healthcare workers.

Thomas Eric Duncan (Source: abcnews.go.com)
Thomas Eric Duncan (Source: abcnews.go.com)

On September 20, 2014, Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian, flew to the United States after trying to help a woman with Ebola in his home county. He flew from Liberia to Dallas in the United States via Brussels and Washington.

On September 25, 2014, Duncan went to the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas with fever and abdominal pain. Despite telling a nurse that he travelled from West Africa, the hospital sent him back to the apartment where he was staying with antibiotics.

On September 28, 2014, Duncan returned to Dallas hospital by ambulance.

On September 30, 2014, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed Duncan afflicted with Ebola. This was the first case diagnosed in the United States.

On October 2, 2014, NBC News said that Ashoka Mukpo, the American freelance cameraman in its employ, afflicted with Ebola will be flown to the United States for treatment.

On October 8, 2014, Duncan, the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, died in Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas.

The United States government ordered five major airports to screen passengers from West Africa for fever.

On October 9, 2014, WHO said there is no evidence of the epidemic being brought under control in West Africa. Some lawmakers in the United States called for the ban of travelers from the West African countries hit hardest by Ebola.

On October 10, 2014, WHO raised the death toll to 4,033 out of 8,399 cases in seven countries. Most fatalities were in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

On October 11, 2014, Medical teams at New York’s John F. Kennedy International airport began screening travelers for Ebola symptoms from three West African countries.

Ebola survivor Nina Pham appears at a press conference after she was discharged from the hospital on ct. 24, 2014. (Source: abcnews.go.com)
Ebola survivor Nina Pham appears at a press conference after she was discharged from the hospital on October 24, 2014. (Source: abcnews.go.com)

On October 12, 2014, Nina Pham the nurse who took care of Liberian, Thomas Eric Duncan, at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas tested positive for Ebola. She became the first person to contract the virus in the United States. U.S. National Institutes of Health said nurse Pham will be moved from Dallas to a National Institutes of Health (NIH) isolation unit in Bethesda, Maryland.

Nurse Amber Vinson (Source: nbcnews.com)
Nurse Amber Vinson (Source: nbcnews.com)

On October 15, 2014, officials said that Amber Vinson, a second Texas nurse who treated Duncan had contracted Ebola. She was treated at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. Authorities said Vinson took a flight from Cleveland to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport while running a slight fever.

On October 16, 2014, a U.S. congressional subcommittee sharply questioned health officials about the response to Ebola in the United States.

Dr. Craig Spencer (Source - nbcnews.com)
Dr. Craig Spencer (Source – nbcnews.com)

On October 17, 2014, The 33-year-old Dr. Craig Spencer, a New York doctor returned from Ebola-hit Guinea. Spencer, treated Ebola patients while working for MSF. After completing his work on October 12, 2014, he left Guinea two days later via Brussels, Belgium. He arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, on October 17, 2014. On his arrival, he did not exhibit any symptoms of the virus. The physician, who worked at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, was checking his temperature twice a day. He had not seen any patients since his return.

On October 20, 2014, Emory University Hospital in Atlanta released an unidentified American who had contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone.

In Texas, 43 people were taken off Ebola watch lists. About 260 people were still being monitored in Texas and Ohio. United States issued stricter guidelines for health workers treating Ebola victims. Not to expose skin or hair.

On Tuesday, October 21, 2014, Dr. Spencer started feeling fatigued and sluggish though without a fever. That day, he visited a coffee stand and a meatball restaurant in Manhattan. The next day, he ran for three miles in his neighborhood, and took the subway to a bowling alley in Brooklyn. He was not symptomatic then.

On October 23, 2014, Spencer developed a fever, nausea, pain and fatigue in the morning. His fever spiked to 100.3 degrees Fahrenheit (about 38 Celsius). He tested positive for Ebola. He is the first case of the deadly virus in New York City and the fourth diagnosed in the United States.

Health officials cleared both the coffee stand and the bowling alley after assessing them. After closing the bowling alley on Thursday, they had the bar cleaned and sanitized as a precaution.

Spencer’s Manhattan apartment has been isolated and locked.

Spencer was in contact with a few people after he started exhibiting symptoms. Ebola is not contagious until someone has symptoms. Health officials said that three people – his fiancée and two friends – are on quarantine and monitored,

“They are all well at this time; none of them is sick,” said Dr. Mary Travis Bassett, New York City’s health commissioner.

Spencer also travelled on three subway lines. “At the time that the doctor was on the subway, he did not have fever… He was not symptomatic,” Bassett said. The chances of anyone contracting the virus from contact him are “close to nil,” she said.

Ebola spreads by direct contact with the body fluids of an infected person. The time between exposure to the virus and the development of symptoms of the disease is usually two to 21 days. Estimates based on mathematical models predict around 5% of cases might take greater than 21 days to develop the symptoms.

Dr. Craig Spencer is now lodged at New York’s Bellevue Hospital Center. He has been in isolation since emergency personnel took him there. It is one of the eight hospitals statewide designated by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo as part of an Ebola preparedness plan.

“We are as ready as one could be,” Cuomo said. New York state will be different from Texas he said.

“We had the advantage of learning from the Dallas experience,” he said, recalling the death of Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan on October 8, 2014, diagnosed with Ebola.

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RELATED ARTICLES

Dr. Cyril Broderick and the Ebola Virus


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Myself
By T.V. Antony Raj

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Scientists allege deadly diseases such as Ebola and AIDS are bio weapons being tested on Africans. Other reports have linked the Ebola virus outbreak to an attempt to reduce Africa’s population. Liberia happens to be the continent’s fastest growing population.

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Ebola virus (Source: liberianobvserver.com)
Ebola virus (Source: liberianobvserver.com)

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The Liberian Daily Observer, a newspaper based in Monrovia, published an article on September 9, 2014, titled “Ebola, AIDS Manufactured By Western Pharmaceuticals, US DoD?

This controversial article was authored by Dr Cyril E. Broderick, a Liberian-born former professor of Plant Pathology at the University of Liberia’s College of Agriculture plant pathology and Forestry. He was also the former Observer Farmer in the 1980s. In the late 1980s, Firestone spotted him and offered him the position of Director of Research. Dr Cyril Broderick was for many years an Associate Professor at the College of Agriculture and Related Sciences of the University of Delaware.

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Dr. Cyril E. Broderick (Source - desu.edu)
Dr. Cyril E. Broderick (Source – desu.edu)

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Dr Cyril E. Broderick points an accusing finger at the United States for the outbreak of Ebola. The sprawling haemorrhagic virus has killed close to 3,000 and infected close to 6,000 in West Africa since March this year. The countries seriously affected are Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Nigeria, DR Congo and Senegal.

He says Ebola, a genetically modified organism (GMO), is a biological weapon of mass destruction, just like AIDS. Ebola, he says, was created in collaboration with Western transnational pharmaceutical firms, secret military bio-warfare bases of the US Department of Defence (DoD), as well as some Universities. He accuses the United States of testing the virus using Africans as guinea pigs for secret human trials.

He also imputed that the UN and the WHO have been tacitly complicit in the testing of Ebola and other viruses on human guinea pigs in Africa.

Professor Broderick said that he decided to publish the article in response to various Internet reports that implied that the African people are gullible and ignorant.

Here is Broderick’s full unedited article.

Ebola, AIDS Manufactured By Western Pharmaceuticals, US DoD?

By Dr Cyril Broderick, Professor of Plant Pathology

Dear World Citizens:

I have read a number of articles from your Internet outreach as well as articles from other sources about the casualties in Liberia and other West African countries about the human devastation caused by the Ebola virus. About a week ago, I read an article published in the Internet news summary publication of the Friends of Liberia that said that there was an agreement that the initiation of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was due to the contact of a two-year-old child with bats that had flown in from the Congo. That report made me disconcerted with the reporting about Ebola, and it stimulated a response to the “Friends of Liberia,” saying that African people are not ignorant and gullible, as is being implicated. A response from Dr Verlon Stone said that the article was not theirs, and that “Friends of Liberia” was simply providing a service. He then asked if he could publish my letter in their Internet forum. I gave my permission, but I have not seen it published. Because of the widespread loss of life, fear, physiological trauma, and despair among Liberians and other West African citizens, it is incumbent that I make a contribution to the resolution of this devastating situation, which may continue to recur if it is not properly and adequately confronted. I will address the situation in five (5) points:

1. EBOLA IS A GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISM (GMO)

Horowitz (1998) was deliberate and unambiguous when he explained the threat of new diseases in his text, Emerging Viruses: AIDS and Ebola – Nature, Accident or Intentional. In his interview with Dr Robert Strecker in Chapter 7, the discussion, in the early 1970s, made it obvious that the war was between countries that hosted the KGB and the CIA, and the ‘manufacture’ of ‘AIDS-Like Viruses’ was clearly directed at the other. In passing during the Interview, mention was made of Fort Detrick, “the Ebola Building,” and ‘a lot of problems with strange illnesses’ in “Frederick [Maryland].” By Chapter 12 in his text, he had confirmed the existence of an American Military-Medical-Industry that conducts biological weapons tests under the guise of administering vaccinations to control diseases and improve the health of “black Africans overseas.” The book is an excellent text, and all leaders plus anyone who has an interest in science, health, people, and intrigue should study it. I am amazed that African leaders are making no acknowledgements or reference to these documents.

2. EBOLA HAS A TERRIBLE HISTORY, AND TESTING HAS BEEN SECRETLY TAKING PLACE IN AFRICA

I am now reading The Hot Zone, a novel, by Richard Preston (copyrighted 1989 and 1994); it is heart-rending. The prolific and prominent writer, Steven King, is quoted as saying that the book is “One of the most horrifying things I have ever read. What a remarkable piece of work.” As a New York Times bestseller, The Hot Zone is presented as “A terrifying true story.” Terrifying, yes, because the pathological description of what was found in animals killed by the Ebola virus is what the virus has been doing to citizens of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia in its most recent outbreak: Ebola virus destroys peoples’ internal organs and the body deteriorates rapidly after death. It softens and the tissues turn into jelly, even if it is refrigerated to keep it cold. Spontaneous liquefaction is what happens to the body of people killed by the Ebola virus! The author noted in Point 1, Dr Horowitz, chides The Hot Zone for writing to be politically correct; I understand because his book makes every effort to be very factual. The 1976 Ebola incident in Zaire, during President Mobutu Sese Seko, was the introduction of the GMO Ebola to Africa.

3. SITES AROUND AFRICA, AND IN WEST AFRICA, HAVE OVER THE YEARS BEEN SET UP FOR TESTING EMERGING DISEASES, ESPECIALLY EBOLA

The World Health Organization (WHO) and several other UN Agencies have been implicated in selecting and enticing African countries to participate in the testing events, promoting vaccinations, but pursuing various testing regiments. The August 2, 2014 article, West Africa: What are US Biological Warfare Researchers Doing in the Ebola Zone? by Jon Rappoport of Global Research pinpoints the problem that is facing African governments.

Obvious in this and other reports are, among others:

(a) The US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), a well-known centre for bio-war research, located at Fort Detrick, Maryland;

(b) Tulane University, in New Orleans, USA, winner of research grants, including a grant of more than $7 million the National Institute of Health (NIH) to fund research with the Lassa viral hemorrhagic fever;

(c) the US Center for Disease Control (CDC);

(d) Doctors Without Borders (also known by its French name, Medicins Sans Frontiers);

(e) Tekmira, a Canadian pharmaceutical company;

(f) The UK’s GlaxoSmithKline; and

(g) the Kenema Government Hospital in Kenema, Sierra Leone.

Reports narrate stories of the US Department of Defense (DoD) funding Ebola trials on humans, trials which started just weeks before the Ebola outbreak in Guinea and Sierra Leone. The reports continue and state that the DoD gave a contract worth $140 million dollars to Tekmira, a Canadian pharmaceutical company, to conduct Ebola research. This research work involved injecting and infusing healthy humans with the deadly Ebola virus. Hence, the DoD is listed as a collaborator in a “First in Human” Ebola clinical trial (NCT02041715, which started in January 2014 shortly before an Ebola epidemic was declared in West Africa in March. Disturbingly, many reports also conclude that the US government has a viral fever bioterrorism research laboratory in Kenema, a town at the epicentre of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The only relevant positive and ethical olive-branch seen in all of my reading is that Theguardian.com reported, “The US government funding of Ebola trials on healthy humans comes amid warnings by top scientists in Harvard and Yale that such virus experiments risk triggering a worldwide pandemic.” That threat still persists.

4. THE NEED FOR LEGAL ACTION TO OBTAIN REDRESS FOR DAMAGES INCURRED DUE TO THE PERPETUATION OF INJUSTICE IN THE DEATH, INJURY AND TRAUMA IMPOSED ON LIBERIANS AND OTHER AFRICANS BY THE EBOLA AND OTHER DISEASE AGENTS.

The U. S., Canada, France, and the U. K. are all implicated in the detestable and devilish deeds that these Ebola tests are. There is the need to pursue criminal and civil redress for damages, and African countries and people should secure legal representation to seek damages from these countries, some corporations, and the United Nations. Evidence seems abundant against Tulane University, and suits should start there. Yoichi Shimatsu’s article, The Ebola Breakout Coincided with UN Vaccine Campaigns, as published on August 18, 2014, in the Liberty Beacon.

5. AFRICAN LEADERS AND AFRICAN COUNTRIES NEED TO TAKE THE LEAD IN DEFENDING BABIES, CHILDREN, AFRICAN WOMEN, AFRICAN MEN, AND THE ELDERLY. THESE CITIZENS DO NOT DESERVE TO BE USED AS GUINEA PIGS!

Africa must not relegate the Continent to become the locality for disposal and the deposition of hazardous chemicals, dangerous drugs, and chemical or biological agents of emerging diseases. There is urgent need for affirmative action in protecting the less affluent of poorer countries, especially African citizens, whose countries are not as scientifically and industrially endowed as the United States and most Western countries, sources of most viral or bacterial GMOs that are strategically designed as biological weapons. It is most disturbing that the U. S. Government has been operating a viral hemorrhagic fever bioterrorism research laboratory in Sierra Leone. Are there others? Wherever they exist, it is time to terminate them. If any other sites exist, it is advisable to follow the delayed but essential step: Sierra Leone closed the US bioweapons lab and stopped Tulane University for further testing.

The world must be alarmed. All Africans, Americans, Europeans, Middle Easterners, Asians, and people from every conclave on Earth should be astonished. African people, notably citizens more particularly of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone are victimized and are dying every day. Listen to the people who distrust the hospitals, who cannot shake hands, hug their relatives and friends. Innocent people are dying, and they need our help. The countries are poor and cannot afford the whole lot of personal protection equipment (PPE) that the situation requires. The threat is real, and it is larger than a few African countries. The challenge is global, and we request assistance from everywhere, including China, Japan, Australia, India, Germany, Italy, and even kind-hearted people in the U.S., France, the U.K., Russia, Korea, Saudi Arabia, and anywhere else whose desire is to help. The situation is bleaker than we on the outside can imagine, and we must provide assistance however we can. To ensure a future that has less of this kind of drama, it is important that we now demand that our leaders and governments be honest, transparent, fair, and productively engaged. They must answer to the people. Please stand up to stop Ebola testing and the spread of this dastardly disease.

Thank you very much.

Sincerely,

Dr Cyril E. Broderick, Sr.

Source: liberianobserver.com

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Impact of Armed Conflict on Children


Children at both ends of the gun

Child soldiers are “more obedient, do not question orders and are easier to manipulate than adult soldiers.”

War games in the divided city of Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Photo: War games in the divided city of Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina). The psychosocial effects of armed conflict on children can be devastating and may haunt them through life, says the Machel report, particularly when children are attacked by those they have considered neighbours and friends, as happened in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia. ©

The exploitation of children in the ranks of the world’s armies must end, says a new United Nations report. “One of the most alarming trends in armed conflict is the participation of children as soldiers,” declares the report, by Graça Machel, the Secretary-General’s Expert on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children.

The report says the use of child soldiers is a problem created by adults, to be eradicated by adults. It calls for a global campaign to demobilize all child soldiers and to “eradicate the use of children under the age of 18 years in the armed forces.” The report further calls upon governments to renounce the practice of forced recruitment, which has put increasing numbers of children under arms against their will.

“Children are dropping out of childhood,” commented Devaki Jain of India, one of Ms. Machel’s Eminent Persons’ Group of advisers. “We must envision a society free of conflict where children can grow up as children, not weapons of war.”

The use of child soldiers is hardly new. “Children serve armies in supporting roles as cooks, porters, messengers and spies,” the report notes. “Increasingly, however, adults are conscripting children as soldiers deliberately.” Children under 15 years of age are known to be serving in government or opposition forces in at least 25 conflict zones and it is estimated that some 200,000 child soldiers under 16 years of age saw armed combat in 1988. Generally, however, child soldiers are statistically invisible as governments and armed opposition groups deny or downplay their role.

The 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child defines childhood as below the age of 18 years, although it currently recognizes 15 as the minimum age for voluntary or compulsory recruitment into the armed forces. However, momentum is building for an Optional Protocol to the Convention that would raise the minimum age to 18.

With new weapons that are lightweight and easy to fire, children are more easily armed, with less training than ever before. Moreover, as was stated in one background paper prepared for the Machel report, child soldiers are “more obedient, do not question orders and are easier to manipulate than adult soldiers.” And they usually don’t demand pay.

A series of 24 case-studies on child soldiers, covering conflicts over the past 30 years, makes it clear that tens of thousands of children — many under the age of 10 — have been recruited into armies around the world. In Liberia, children as young as seven have been found in combat, while in Cambodia, a survey of wounded soldiers found that 20 per cent of them were between the ages of 10 and 14 when recruited. In Sri Lanka, of 180 Tamil Tiger guerrillas killed in one government attack, more than half were still in their teens, and 128 were girls. Solid statistics are hard to come by, however, as most armies and militia do not want to admit to their use of child soldiers.

According to the report, children are often press-ganged from their own neighbourhoods where local militia or village leaders may be obliged to meet recruitment quotas. In the Sudan, children as young as 12 have been rounded up from buses and cars. In Guatemala, youngsters have been grabbed from streets, homes, parties, and even violently removed from churches. In the 1980s, the Ethiopian military practised a ‘vacuum cleaner’ approach, recruiting boys, sometimes at gunpoint, from football fields, markets, religious festivals or on the way to school.

The report deplores the fact that children are often deliberately brutalized in order to harden them into more ruthless soldiers. In some conflicts, children have been forced to commit atrocities against their own families. In Sierra Leone, for example, the Revolutionary United Front forced captured children to take part in the torture and execution of their own relatives, after which they were led to neighbouring villages to repeat the slaughter. Elsewhere, before battle young soldiers have been given amphetamines, tranquillizers and other drugs to “increase their courage” and to dull their sensitivity to pain.

Some children become soldiers simply to survive. In war-ravaged lands where schools have been closed, fields destroyed, and relatives arrested or killed, a gun is a meal ticket and a more attractive alternative to sitting home alone and afraid. Sometimes a minor soldier’s pay is given directly to the family.

For girls, recruitment may lead to sex slavery. The report notes that in Uganda, for instance, young girls abducted by rebel forces were commonly divided up and allocated to soldiers to serve as their ‘wives’. A case-study from Honduras, prepared for the Machel report, illustrates one child’s experience of joining armed groups:

“At the age of 13, I joined the student movement. I had a dream to contribute to make things change, so that children would not be hungry … later I joined the armed struggle. I had all the inexperience and fears of a little girl. I found out that girls were obliged to have sexual relations ‘to alleviate the sadness of the combatants. And who alleviated our sadness after going with someone we hardly knew? At my young age I experienced abortion … In spite of my commitment, they abused me, they trampled my human dignity. And above all, they did not understand that I was a child and that I had rights.”

It is difficult to reintegrate demobilized children after a peace settlement is reached. Many have been physically or sexually abused by the very forces for which they have been fighting, and have seen their parents killed, sometimes in the most brutal manner, in front of their eyes. Most have also been led into participating in murder, rape and other atrocities. These children have no skills for life in peacetime and they are accustomed to getting their way through violence.

The report urges that all future peace agreements include specific measures pertaining to the demobilization and reintegration of child soldiers, ranging from job creation and the rebuilding of schools, to the training of teachers who are sensitive to the special needs of child victims of war.

The report calls on governments to regularize recruitment procedures for their armed forces and to prosecute violators to ensure that under-age recruitment does not occur. The Machel report also illustrates how the recruitment of children can at least be minimized when parents and communities are better informed about existing national and international law.

While much remains to be done, there have been some successes. In Peru, for example, forced recruitment drives reportedly declined in areas where they were denounced by parish churches. And in Myanmar, protests from aid agencies led to the release of boys forcibly recruited from a refugee camp. In the Sudan, humanitarian organizations have negotiated agreements with opposition groups to prevent the recruitment of children.

Source: UNICEF

UNICEF campaign for the disarmament of (female) child soldiers in Sri Lanka
A billboard campaign in Sri Lanka highlighting the plight of girl child soldiers. (Photo: Rebecca Murray/IRIN)

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