**8.2 Ravaged lives in a ravaged region**

174 Post Traumatic Stress Disorders in a Global Context

In some countries, according to Ayissi & Maia (2004), women fighters are also used as suicide bombers and in delicate tasks like the security guards of warlords or in spy missions and infiltrations of enemy troops because of their efficiency and fidelity to "their" men. The same authors argue that, even if boys are not saved from these troubles, it is girls and teenagers who pay a heavy cost in rape and sexual abuse. Those abuses are followed by serious physical injuries, sometimes painful and disabling, as a result of unplanned pregnancies followed by high-risk abortions. This corroborates the data on the sexual

Be they victims of the barbarism of fate, those young girls and all the children in general, remain profoundly traumatized both physically and psychologically through the hardships

Most children that we saw were aged between 5 and 15 years (58.2%). In countries like Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone or Liberia, child soldiers were enrolled between 7 to 18 years of age?(Baingana&Bannon, 2004). Though Huyghebaert( 2009), citing an ILO publication (2006) concerning the child soldiers' enrollment age, places the age of teenagers at15 or more at the time of their enrolment, the young boy enrolment at

The children that were the object of our study found themselves in a situation of war at an age when education was an important element of life, at a period of great psychological vulnerability when a human being is growing, where the child is socializing and where he develops psychologically. In that part of the country, sending children to school is difficult on the one hand because of lack of classrooms, and on the other hand because of the general poverty levels of the populations. The conflict has played a role in this context, leading thus to mass removals from schools (60.50%). One of the NGO addressed this problem by introducing literacy classes and a strategy of school resumption by providing school equipment and by helping families in sending back children to school, either in the village or in the nearby town. Children who returned to school had good results. That situation in *Guiglo* is different from what is seen in general as underlined by Tomkiewiez (1997) who

cites extreme difficulties in having the Ugandan civil war children back to school.

Some of those children from *Ké-bouébo* were recruited, or enrolled forcibly. Only 17.68% handled or manipulated weapons. The use of non-combatant children mirrors our case like in many other countries as evidenced by Mouzayan (2003), for whom those children were enrolled for dangerous and alienating activities (fights, chores, spying, messengers, and sexual slaves). Whatever children are involved directly or indirectly in they are in danger (Anwo, 2009). Many reasons motivated those children of *Moyen-Cavally*. They put it bluntly that revenge was the N° 1 motive (13.91%) though as Honwana (2006), argues, in some conflicts, a variety of reasons, including coercion, poverty, or sheer violence turns young men into assassins before they are able to understand the complexities of morality. As seen on the field, all the children were not enrolled by force, or by constraint. In fact, some became "willing" members of a gang or an armed force to protect their family or themselves, changing thus their status: from children who must be protected by parents, they become those on who lies the survival of the family. For others whose family members became victims of the conflicts a desire for revenge (Huyghebaert, 2009) motivated them to take up arms as we found it. For Ayissi& Maia (2004), children are above all vulnerable physically, mentally and emotionally, and therefore more docile and more malleable than

violence that we were talking about.

that they endured in their early age.

7 to 8 years tends to become more and more frequent.

**8.1.2 Did they take or were they given arms?** 

**8.2.1 Pain or psychic suffering?**  The war attacks children and destroys them as Bertrand (1997) puts it; those who survive will carry almost irreversible marks. Even if this argument carries a rather violent character, it is however the sad reality.

The war generates psychic wounds with which children are doomed to live with because they are part of their history. Those "invisible wounds" are visible, identifiable, through their own expressions in children's behavior and through their relation to others and to the outside world.

The encounter with those child soldiers was followed by a direct contact with an important psychic pain. This psychic pain is different from psychic suffering. Citing Ferenczi, Bertrand (1997)recalls that this pain may have extremely serious effects; destroyers of the individual. The risk may be the sudden decomposition under the form of a delirium or traumatic cleavage, but also as depression, somatizations, and disabling chronic pains with no detectable lesions. The idea of the existence of this pain in the children's psyche could explain the various clinical charts that we mentioned. Anguish and pain are limits to experiences, at the border of our being; limit of both the possibility of existence and of the possibility of subjectivities.

With those children, this brutal and raw pain, assimilated with difficulty because the trauma could not possibly be comprehended by their young minds, and therefore still carried (even after a period of four years) of its emotional impact, was palpable at the beginning of our fieldwork. Is it not an important obstacle to the possibility of being fully human for those children? For Tomkiewicz (1997), psychic disturbance could be the must link between traumatic stress and its psychological consequences.

Around 56% of the children had seen a man killed under their own eyes. Dapic & Coll (2002) have studied this parameter with primary school children (Grade 5) victims of the Bosnia-Herzegovina war, in a Sarajevo district. 90.7% of them had seen war wounded and 74.3% had seen a dying man.

Among our sample, before the "show" of execution of a person, some were said to be abreactive (8.41%), scared (25.51%), and shattered (9.27%); other emotions had been described as joy (4.93%), pity (2.32%), revolt

(1.45%). 3.78% said to have been traumatized.

The issue of social support in the course of events was also brought forward. Most of the time, the children had accompanied someone they knew into the war (36.52%) and 26.38% said that they had followed a parent. Others have certainly experienced solitude, but few talked about it. On this subject, Tomkiewicz (1997) explains that solitude may be considered as an aggression, because it engenders or increases suffering. It pervades children when they have lost their families, their bearings, their friends and their dearest around them;

War in Côte d'Ivoire and Management of Child's Post Traumatic Stress Disorders 177

2001). Explanations for the rejection of former child soldiers in Mozambique resides in the enrolment motivation in Mozambique where children were fighting outside their communities, where as those of *Moyen Cavally* in Cote d'Ivoire took up arms to defend their communities. In return, the community fully supported them. The Ivoirian children of *Moyen Cavally* were motivated in great extent by the desire of revenge or the liberation of their village, which has a great community connotation. As Gannagé puts it, parents must act as protecting filter and as pare-incitement to the child. The capacity of the children to dominate and to memorize trauma depends on their parents' capacities of elaboration and implementation of trauma, of figuration and representation, to think and to communicate to

The best social reintegration (in the sense of being able to contribute anew to the development of one's community) is perhaps that of the *Péhé* and *Pantrokin* children. In saying it, we have in mind the idea that some factors linked to the recuperation environment have positively influenced this normalization of social life. In fact, *Péhé* is a sub prefecture endowed with a number of commodities like *Pantrokin* the nearby village. This standard of living as well as the advantages, which go with it in terms of employment, contributes to reintegration. Yet, even here, as in *Kébouébo*, a village with no drinking water and electricity as well as in *Béoué* and *Kaadé,* located on a tarred road, provided with water and electricity, a good number of children had hard time to readapt and to invest in the activities proposed to them. Even if all children of the project initially had the same motivation to participate to the war, the socio-cultural post-conflict reintegration to promote better for most of them. As for the conditions of girls, Huyghebaert (2009) argues that it is difficult for girls who have been kidnapped and who, during their captivity, gave birth to babies to return to their families and communities. Reintegration therefore proves to be a complex process of readaptation and, at times, of community expiation, as well as negotiation with the families to convince them to accept to take back their children and, the children of their children. Concerning the girls that we met and their progenitor, the cultural context encouraging maternity has probably contributed to facilitate their reintegration and the acceptance of

Thirty-seven percent of the children in our sample used alcohol, and fourteen percent used drugs such as gunpowder and cannabis (14.49%). The use of psychoactive substances is a misuse because there are no data to discuss here an insulated handles abuse. But the children have told us to use these substances to overcome the atrocities they saw, lived and

The misuse of alcohol and other psychoactive substances enhanced the children's ability to act and endure the hardships, psychic pain and anguish, insomnia, and physical pain of war (Douville, 2007). Alcohols *(cane juice, koutoukou*) that children took came primarily from local

In our sample the war was still present in the children's mind and the possibility of the resumption of war was not brushed aside. Personalities were marked with fragility and by narcissistic flaws. The children expressed their anger, their aggressiveness and their revolt. One could notice, at times, a great pessimism associated with a feeling of a blank future and a social disinvestment. The children were moving about in the village in groups. The need to reform them was evident and urgent: it seemed imperative to set up a reform program in

Many of the children (81.45%) showed evidence of mental disturbance before intervention. Our estimates are higher than those of Cordahi et al (2002) who found 62.5% of Lebanese

the child about the event.

their children's babies born to the enemy or the invaders. .

committed. They sought out the effects of these mind-altering substances.

order to neutralize "the many bombs of aggressiveness" in the children.

manufacturers and were sold at low prices and were easily accessible to the poor.

when they find nobody with whom to share their fear, their anguish, and their hope. The absence of schools and of any educational and socializing institution participates to this solitude. The question in this context is how the children who lost everything including social networks (27.6% who joined armed groups out of solitude) could ever be helped to find solace in their lives.

### **8.2.2 Psychiatric and social consequences**

Our data revealed that 9.6% of the children were victims of sexual violence and they are forever marked by this aggression; 52.17% were sexually active and among them 36.67% had many partners, perhaps as a method of coping with their experiences and aggression from the war as, a child told us: "when I think of all that happened and of what I saw during the war, I don't sleep and consequently, I could go with five or six girls a day."

In the course of the conflicts, cases of child abuses are probably countless, sometimes increasing the risk of exploitation and sexual abuse. Cases of abuse apparently continue into the "post-conflict" period: chores becoming servitude, recrudescence of child trade, and sexual violence and exploitation in refugee camps (Huyghebaert,2009).

However, the issue of violence is pushed into the background, as no direct allusion to sexual abuse transpired in the course of our discussions with the former child soldiers. This observation may be explained by the customs of the people of the western region of Côte d'Ivoire where teenagers have been raised with the idea that having a child is a sign conferring the status of adult and challenges mental health professionals' concerns over child sexual abuse as an explanation for psychological problems in times of conflict and war. Since early active sexual involvement is socially accepted in Cote d'Ivoire, 27% of the girls were mothers at the 1st assessment and at the 2nd assessment, and this rate rose to 34%. Moreover, despite awareness campaigns, one had more than 30% of the children had evidence of STI recurrence.

Though the early involvement of the children in Cote d'Ivoire exposes them to the risk of health problems and crime (early and unwilling pregnancies, STI/HIV/AIDS, infanticide, deserting children) the link with mental health problems is not explainable as early sexual activity is socially and culturally sanctioned. Some studies indicate HIV sero-positivity in post-conflict period of 60% nationwide (Leblanc, 2004). Concerns exist concerning the welfare of children born during the period of violence to mothers who were themselves victims of violence. However Tomkiewicz (1997) explains that most of the time, the children who survived conflicts reach a better social adaptation than that could have been predicted. The same author claims that more or less rapidly, those children succeed in integrating into an "after war" society, and very few become really marginalized. As Tomkiewicz (1997), our results allow us to reach such a conclusion, as from one village to another, "survivors" were more or less integrated

As a matter of fact, most children surveyed had been integrated in the villages because they used to live there and were able to resume, for most of them, an activity: returning to school, farming or breeding. That's how most of the children interviewed had been integrated into the villages because they lived there and were able to resume, most of them, an activity: back to school, farming or breeding ... This is especially important that the integration (reintegration) refers to a social return be inserted individually in the community clean.Our data agrees with observations made in Mozambique where families of former child soldiers rejected the children who faced social integration problems as a result (Green&Honwana,

when they find nobody with whom to share their fear, their anguish, and their hope. The absence of schools and of any educational and socializing institution participates to this solitude. The question in this context is how the children who lost everything including social networks (27.6% who joined armed groups out of solitude) could ever be helped to

Our data revealed that 9.6% of the children were victims of sexual violence and they are forever marked by this aggression; 52.17% were sexually active and among them 36.67% had many partners, perhaps as a method of coping with their experiences and aggression from the war as, a child told us: "when I think of all that happened and of what I saw during

In the course of the conflicts, cases of child abuses are probably countless, sometimes increasing the risk of exploitation and sexual abuse. Cases of abuse apparently continue into the "post-conflict" period: chores becoming servitude, recrudescence of child trade, and

However, the issue of violence is pushed into the background, as no direct allusion to sexual abuse transpired in the course of our discussions with the former child soldiers. This observation may be explained by the customs of the people of the western region of Côte d'Ivoire where teenagers have been raised with the idea that having a child is a sign conferring the status of adult and challenges mental health professionals' concerns over child sexual abuse as an explanation for psychological problems in times of conflict and war. Since early active sexual involvement is socially accepted in Cote d'Ivoire, 27% of the girls were mothers at the 1st assessment and at the 2nd assessment, and this rate rose to 34%. Moreover, despite awareness campaigns, one had more than 30% of the children had

Though the early involvement of the children in Cote d'Ivoire exposes them to the risk of health problems and crime (early and unwilling pregnancies, STI/HIV/AIDS, infanticide, deserting children) the link with mental health problems is not explainable as early sexual activity is socially and culturally sanctioned. Some studies indicate HIV sero-positivity in post-conflict period of 60% nationwide (Leblanc, 2004). Concerns exist concerning the welfare of children born during the period of violence to mothers who were themselves victims of violence. However Tomkiewicz (1997) explains that most of the time, the children who survived conflicts reach a better social adaptation than that could have been predicted. The same author claims that more or less rapidly, those children succeed in integrating into an "after war" society, and very few become really marginalized. As Tomkiewicz (1997), our results allow us to reach such a conclusion, as from one village to another, "survivors" were

As a matter of fact, most children surveyed had been integrated in the villages because they used to live there and were able to resume, for most of them, an activity: returning to school, farming or breeding. That's how most of the children interviewed had been integrated into the villages because they lived there and were able to resume, most of them, an activity: back to school, farming or breeding ... This is especially important that the integration (reintegration) refers to a social return be inserted individually in the community clean.Our data agrees with observations made in Mozambique where families of former child soldiers rejected the children who faced social integration problems as a result (Green&Honwana,

the war, I don't sleep and consequently, I could go with five or six girls a day."

sexual violence and exploitation in refugee camps (Huyghebaert,2009).

find solace in their lives.

evidence of STI recurrence.

more or less integrated

**8.2.2 Psychiatric and social consequences** 

2001). Explanations for the rejection of former child soldiers in Mozambique resides in the enrolment motivation in Mozambique where children were fighting outside their communities, where as those of *Moyen Cavally* in Cote d'Ivoire took up arms to defend their communities. In return, the community fully supported them. The Ivoirian children of *Moyen Cavally* were motivated in great extent by the desire of revenge or the liberation of their village, which has a great community connotation. As Gannagé puts it, parents must act as protecting filter and as pare-incitement to the child. The capacity of the children to dominate and to memorize trauma depends on their parents' capacities of elaboration and implementation of trauma, of figuration and representation, to think and to communicate to the child about the event.

The best social reintegration (in the sense of being able to contribute anew to the development of one's community) is perhaps that of the *Péhé* and *Pantrokin* children. In saying it, we have in mind the idea that some factors linked to the recuperation environment have positively influenced this normalization of social life. In fact, *Péhé* is a sub prefecture endowed with a number of commodities like *Pantrokin* the nearby village. This standard of living as well as the advantages, which go with it in terms of employment, contributes to reintegration. Yet, even here, as in *Kébouébo*, a village with no drinking water and electricity as well as in *Béoué* and *Kaadé,* located on a tarred road, provided with water and electricity, a good number of children had hard time to readapt and to invest in the activities proposed to them. Even if all children of the project initially had the same motivation to participate to the war, the socio-cultural post-conflict reintegration to promote better for most of them.

As for the conditions of girls, Huyghebaert (2009) argues that it is difficult for girls who have been kidnapped and who, during their captivity, gave birth to babies to return to their families and communities. Reintegration therefore proves to be a complex process of readaptation and, at times, of community expiation, as well as negotiation with the families to convince them to accept to take back their children and, the children of their children. Concerning the girls that we met and their progenitor, the cultural context encouraging maternity has probably contributed to facilitate their reintegration and the acceptance of their children's babies born to the enemy or the invaders. .

Thirty-seven percent of the children in our sample used alcohol, and fourteen percent used drugs such as gunpowder and cannabis (14.49%). The use of psychoactive substances is a misuse because there are no data to discuss here an insulated handles abuse. But the children have told us to use these substances to overcome the atrocities they saw, lived and committed. They sought out the effects of these mind-altering substances.

The misuse of alcohol and other psychoactive substances enhanced the children's ability to act and endure the hardships, psychic pain and anguish, insomnia, and physical pain of war (Douville, 2007). Alcohols *(cane juice, koutoukou*) that children took came primarily from local manufacturers and were sold at low prices and were easily accessible to the poor.

In our sample the war was still present in the children's mind and the possibility of the resumption of war was not brushed aside. Personalities were marked with fragility and by narcissistic flaws. The children expressed their anger, their aggressiveness and their revolt. One could notice, at times, a great pessimism associated with a feeling of a blank future and a social disinvestment. The children were moving about in the village in groups. The need to reform them was evident and urgent: it seemed imperative to set up a reform program in order to neutralize "the many bombs of aggressiveness" in the children.

Many of the children (81.45%) showed evidence of mental disturbance before intervention. Our estimates are higher than those of Cordahi et al (2002) who found 62.5% of Lebanese

War in Côte d'Ivoire and Management of Child's Post Traumatic Stress Disorders 179

village. Thus the children are not denied any capacity as adults in society (Howana, 2000). But, in reality, it is a precarious position and psychologically unbearable situation to be no longer a child and not to be a real adult. The young freedom fighters hold interstitial social spaces, between the adult and juvenile worlds. In Côte d'Ivoire it appears that the place of the child is ill defined, ill conceptualized, moving from a traditional conception of the child (submissive, usable and stooge for the parents) to a more modern conception that parallels what is going on in the West. Even if the relation between children and parents is changing, the perception of children as potential labor force remains still very strong (Berry, 1985). The issue of child soldiers appears to parallel a long history of child labor force in colonial and

Jézéquel (2006) explains that war situations are marked by inversion phenomenon through which elders lose their authority over the youngest, whole towns are conquered by bands of teenagers not always controlled by their leaders. This is due to the mass deterioration, loss of links to reference and to the ancestry caused by the war. Conflicts lead children and teenagers to roam about feeling that they have been destroyed in their actual humanness. There is a fragmentation of the society. The possible role of family running over social running is destroyed, sometimes inexorably so that the common space limit is often narrowed to extremely precarious clans ( Douville, 2007). Douville goes on to say that there is a destruction of the image of the other and that when is war over, children and teenagers have much difficulty in entering an ordinary social link. In addition to generation gap, war aggravates the erosion of parental and adult authority and family links are disrupted and destroyed (Bertrand, 1997). As war dismantles and destroys the civil organization of a country, schools, justice system, police and post office services, children run the risk of losing all their marks of common life and fail to conform to what is permitted or what is good or forbidden and bad (Tomkiewicz, 1997).As Tomkiewicz puts it, the apparent ignorance of the law and the loss of bearing constitutes the main expression, or at least the

Most of the time, post conflict recovery programs aim to demobilize and reintegrate children associated with force or armed groups. For children affected by the conflict, there are usually no programs of social reintegration, of education (private lessons, for example), of vocational training, of cultural activities, of sport and/or income generating activities (for example, setting up small businesses). Destined to all the children affected by the conflict and not exclusively targeting child " soldiers" or child victims of sexual violence, programs, while privileging a communal reintegration that should be as inclusive as possible, constitute sound programs of preventing (re) enrolment. To this extent, children and community's involvement in the choice of programs of reintegration finds its place in order

To have children and communities get involved at a certain level of the project implementation relies on taking into account the socio-cultural considerations in order to foster the success of social re-integration programs. It is important, not only to take care of investigating the psychological and societal aspects peculiar to the host milieu, but also to insure the approval of the parents and community members. The passion of some adults, in

most visible psychological consequences of the war on short term.

**8.5 When culture invites itself, we should not avoid it** 

to optimize the latter (Huyghebaert, 2009).

postcolonial African economies.

**8.4 The shake-up of social order** 

children and teenagers who went through the 1996 "*raisins of wrath.*" were psychologically affected one year after the events of war and loss of a father/mother. We might explain the high rates of psychiatric disturbance in our sample of children and teenagers by the duration and number of traumatic events, the scarcity of communal resources, social disorganization and the threat of Cote d' Ivoire been split into two countries at the time of our intervention in the border region with Liberia, a country that had itself been in conflict for years.

As observed in other war areas, the commonest diagnoses in our study were post-traumatic stress disturbance (53.38%) and depression (20.29%) four years after war. However the rate of post-traumatic stress disorder among children one year after war in a study conducted by Schwarzwald et al in 1994 and cited by Jolly (2000), was 12%with those whose house had been bombed showing a more significantly prevalence: 23.8 *versus* 9.1% (Green &Honwana, 2001). In 1994, in the course of the conflicts between Muslims, Croats and Serbs, a study of displaced Bosnian children aged 6 to 12 years old, showed a PTSD rate of 93.8% and the rates of associated disorders were observed: sadness (90.6%), anxiety (95.5%), feeling of guilt (66.6%) and anorexia ( 59.7%) (Green &Honwana, 2001).These and our study show that a traumatic event provokes fear, horror, a feeling of disarray and desperation.

The experience or commission of violence creates a staggering level of depression and a melancholic behavior that could lead to suicide (Douville, 2007).

As in other studies, the physical pain that participants in our study experienced was palpable, the violent emotions were, so intense that words could not tell, the narration being interrupted the liberating power of words sometimes became incommunicable because, in the first place, the traumatized people were unable to talk about them for a number of reasons including the low literacy of the children, the lack of opportunity for the children to talk about their experiences, and the relative lack of skills among our organizers to enhance liberating cathartic communication from the children about their experiences.

Tomkiewicz (1997) asserts that, if one wants to save a child victim of war, it is not enough to heal his body, his wounds, his lesions; it is not enough to give him something to eat, to vaccinate him; we need to caress him, to smile to him, to talk to him. To be able to talk to him and to listen to him, it is necessary to associate him to a local team, whose members could infuse confidence in him. We could not wholly act according to this principle for a number of reasons including the fact that our own humanness was too upset by this human catastrophe, by this dehumanizing catastrophe at the beginning; the organizers' emotional equilibrium, and ours was seriously too inadequate to restore a minimum of decent psychic and social life among our participants.

The local organizers were themselves, either veterans, or war victims and were ill equipped to help our participants to talk about their emotional and psychic pain. The relations of the organizers with those children were most of the time conflicting.

#### **8.3 The status of children in African societies**

African societies have developed and they retain at times their own perceptions of childhood (Jézéquel J.H, 2006; Ferme, 2001). It transpires from the works of anthropologists such as Ferme (2001) that childhood is, in sub-Saharan Africa, sometimes assimilated to a time of ambiguity, an unstable and hybrid situation. In Ivory Coast a number of children were involved in the conflict, most of the time by taking up arms, to defend their village, in the place and along side adults. They fought and they gained (at an early age) a status of adults, of defenders, of liberators; this status conferred upon them a special position in the village. Thus the children are not denied any capacity as adults in society (Howana, 2000). But, in reality, it is a precarious position and psychologically unbearable situation to be no longer a child and not to be a real adult. The young freedom fighters hold interstitial social spaces, between the adult and juvenile worlds. In Côte d'Ivoire it appears that the place of the child is ill defined, ill conceptualized, moving from a traditional conception of the child (submissive, usable and stooge for the parents) to a more modern conception that parallels what is going on in the West. Even if the relation between children and parents is changing, the perception of children as potential labor force remains still very strong (Berry, 1985). The issue of child soldiers appears to parallel a long history of child labor force in colonial and postcolonial African economies.

#### **8.4 The shake-up of social order**

178 Post Traumatic Stress Disorders in a Global Context

children and teenagers who went through the 1996 "*raisins of wrath.*" were psychologically affected one year after the events of war and loss of a father/mother. We might explain the high rates of psychiatric disturbance in our sample of children and teenagers by the duration and number of traumatic events, the scarcity of communal resources, social disorganization and the threat of Cote d' Ivoire been split into two countries at the time of our intervention in the border region with Liberia, a country that had itself been in conflict

As observed in other war areas, the commonest diagnoses in our study were post-traumatic stress disturbance (53.38%) and depression (20.29%) four years after war. However the rate of post-traumatic stress disorder among children one year after war in a study conducted by Schwarzwald et al in 1994 and cited by Jolly (2000), was 12%with those whose house had been bombed showing a more significantly prevalence: 23.8 *versus* 9.1% (Green &Honwana, 2001). In 1994, in the course of the conflicts between Muslims, Croats and Serbs, a study of displaced Bosnian children aged 6 to 12 years old, showed a PTSD rate of 93.8% and the rates of associated disorders were observed: sadness (90.6%), anxiety (95.5%), feeling of guilt (66.6%) and anorexia ( 59.7%) (Green &Honwana, 2001).These and our study show that a

The experience or commission of violence creates a staggering level of depression and a

As in other studies, the physical pain that participants in our study experienced was palpable, the violent emotions were, so intense that words could not tell, the narration being interrupted the liberating power of words sometimes became incommunicable because, in the first place, the traumatized people were unable to talk about them for a number of reasons including the low literacy of the children, the lack of opportunity for the children to talk about their experiences, and the relative lack of skills among our organizers to enhance

Tomkiewicz (1997) asserts that, if one wants to save a child victim of war, it is not enough to heal his body, his wounds, his lesions; it is not enough to give him something to eat, to vaccinate him; we need to caress him, to smile to him, to talk to him. To be able to talk to him and to listen to him, it is necessary to associate him to a local team, whose members could infuse confidence in him. We could not wholly act according to this principle for a number of reasons including the fact that our own humanness was too upset by this human catastrophe, by this dehumanizing catastrophe at the beginning; the organizers' emotional equilibrium, and ours was seriously too inadequate to restore a minimum of decent psychic

The local organizers were themselves, either veterans, or war victims and were ill equipped to help our participants to talk about their emotional and psychic pain. The relations of the

African societies have developed and they retain at times their own perceptions of childhood (Jézéquel J.H, 2006; Ferme, 2001). It transpires from the works of anthropologists such as Ferme (2001) that childhood is, in sub-Saharan Africa, sometimes assimilated to a time of ambiguity, an unstable and hybrid situation. In Ivory Coast a number of children were involved in the conflict, most of the time by taking up arms, to defend their village, in the place and along side adults. They fought and they gained (at an early age) a status of adults, of defenders, of liberators; this status conferred upon them a special position in the

traumatic event provokes fear, horror, a feeling of disarray and desperation.

liberating cathartic communication from the children about their experiences.

melancholic behavior that could lead to suicide (Douville, 2007).

organizers with those children were most of the time conflicting.

and social life among our participants.

**8.3 The status of children in African societies** 

for years.

Jézéquel (2006) explains that war situations are marked by inversion phenomenon through which elders lose their authority over the youngest, whole towns are conquered by bands of teenagers not always controlled by their leaders. This is due to the mass deterioration, loss of links to reference and to the ancestry caused by the war. Conflicts lead children and teenagers to roam about feeling that they have been destroyed in their actual humanness. There is a fragmentation of the society. The possible role of family running over social running is destroyed, sometimes inexorably so that the common space limit is often narrowed to extremely precarious clans ( Douville, 2007). Douville goes on to say that there is a destruction of the image of the other and that when is war over, children and teenagers have much difficulty in entering an ordinary social link. In addition to generation gap, war aggravates the erosion of parental and adult authority and family links are disrupted and destroyed (Bertrand, 1997). As war dismantles and destroys the civil organization of a country, schools, justice system, police and post office services, children run the risk of losing all their marks of common life and fail to conform to what is permitted or what is good or forbidden and bad (Tomkiewicz, 1997).As Tomkiewicz puts it, the apparent ignorance of the law and the loss of bearing constitutes the main expression, or at least the most visible psychological consequences of the war on short term.

#### **8.5 When culture invites itself, we should not avoid it**

Most of the time, post conflict recovery programs aim to demobilize and reintegrate children associated with force or armed groups. For children affected by the conflict, there are usually no programs of social reintegration, of education (private lessons, for example), of vocational training, of cultural activities, of sport and/or income generating activities (for example, setting up small businesses). Destined to all the children affected by the conflict and not exclusively targeting child " soldiers" or child victims of sexual violence, programs, while privileging a communal reintegration that should be as inclusive as possible, constitute sound programs of preventing (re) enrolment. To this extent, children and community's involvement in the choice of programs of reintegration finds its place in order to optimize the latter (Huyghebaert, 2009).

To have children and communities get involved at a certain level of the project implementation relies on taking into account the socio-cultural considerations in order to foster the success of social re-integration programs. It is important, not only to take care of investigating the psychological and societal aspects peculiar to the host milieu, but also to insure the approval of the parents and community members. The passion of some adults, in

War in Côte d'Ivoire and Management of Child's Post Traumatic Stress Disorders 181

talk to them and to listen to them, it is absolutely necessary to associate them to a local team whose members could bring confidence in them. Even if we find this idea judicious, this

On the one hand our own humanness was too upset by this human catastrophe, and by this dehumanizing catastrophe. At the beginning, the organizers emotional equilibrium, and ours was seriously required by anything to be done in order to restore a minimum of decent

On the other hand, the local organizers were themselves, either veterans, or war victims and

Our results indicate that 89.32% of the children achieved some degree of improvement in

Anwo J. Conscription and use of child soldiers in armed conflicts. Journal of Psychology in Africa, Vol 19(1), 2009. Special issue: Violence against children in Africa. pp. 75-82.

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Dapic, R., Sultanovic M., JahicH.s., Cerimagic D, Bajramovic I. et Lomigora A.

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psychic and social life to permit us help the traumatized former child soldiers.

seemed difficult to implement in our context for several reasons.

their relations with the children were, most of the time conflicting.

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http://www.irenees.net

**10. References** 

the villages where we worked, to thwart, even to destroy the projects and the difficulties met by our agents in overcoming this difficulty leads us to argue that it is imperative to prepare field through a good alliance with the villagers and the parents of the beneficiaries of post-conflict reintegration programs. The question was to offer the possibility of the villagers to accept the activity through an understanding of the project and a better knowledge of the short and long term benefit for the children, but also for them and for the whole community.
