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Child Soldiers
Edited by: Leora Kahn
Introduction by: Luis Moreno Ocampo
Photographs by: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Lynsey Addario, Martin Adler, Richard Butler, Francesco Cito, Gary Calton, Chris de Bode, Donna De Cesare, Miquel Dewever Plana, Tiane Doan na Champassak, Colin Finlay, Riccardo Gangale, Cedric Gerbehaye, Jan Grarup, Tim A. Hetherington, Rhodri Jones, Bob Koenig, Roger Lemoyne, Zed Nelson, Peter Mantello, Heather McClintock, Olivier Pin Fat, Giacomo Pirozzi, Q. Sakamaki, Marcelo Salinas, Dominic Sansoni, Guy Tillim, Sven Torfinn, Ami Vitale, Vincent van de Wijngaard, Tomas van Houtryve, Kadir van Lohuizen, Alvaro Ybarra-Zavala, Francesco Zizola
Essay by: Jo Becker, Jimmi Briggs, Dick Durbin, Emmanuel Jal, Michael Wessells
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“I would like to give you a message. Please do your best to
tell the world what is happening to us, the children, so that
other children don’t have to pass through this violence.”
—A 15-year-old girl who escaped from
the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda
Up to half a million children have been engaged in more
than 85 conflicts worldwide. As armed conflict proliferates,
increasing numbers of children are exposed to the brutalities
of war. Boys and girls around the world are recruited to
be child soldiers by armed forces and militant groups,
either forcibly or voluntarily. Some are tricked into service
by manipulative recruiters, others join in order to escape
poverty or discrimination, while still others are outright
abducted at school, on the streets, and at home. Aside from
participating in combat, many are used for sexual purposes,
made to lay and clear land mines, or employed as spies,
messengers, porters, or servants. Kids have become the
ultimate weapons of twenty-first-century war.
Child Soldiers focuses on countries with a history of
child warfare, as captured by photographers and writers
from across the globe. The book explores the children’s
time as combatants, as well as their demobilization and
rehabilitation. Included are Tim Hetherington’s photographs
from Liberia; Roger Lemoyne and Cedric Gerbehaye’s work
from the Congo; Ami Vitale’s series on child Maoist recruits
in Nepal; and other work from Burma, Columbia, the Central
African Republic, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and Palestine.
Leora Kahn is the founder of Proof: Media for Social Justice,
a nonprofit organization whose mission is to create awareness
of the issues faced by populations in post-conflict societies
and to encourage social change through the use of photography
and education. Kahn has served as the director of photography
at Workman Publishing and Corbis, and is currently at work on
global projects with Amnesty International, Participant Films,
and the United Nations. She recently edited the Lucie Awardwinning
Darfur: Twenty Years of War and Genocide in Sudan
(powerHouse Books, 2007) in collaboration with Amnesty, and
curated an accompanying exhibit that will tour the U.S. this
year with the Holocaust Museum Houston. Kahn is currently
working on an exhibition in Rwanda with Aegis Trust about
Hutu rescuers during the genocide.
Child Soldiers features the work of nine prominent photographers,
who have covered the use of children in combat
around the world. Contributing writers include Jo Becker,
Children’s Rights Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch,
Jimmie Briggs, journalist and author of Innocents Lost: When
Child Soldiers Go to War (Basic Books, 2005), Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, Luis Moreno-
Ocampo, International Criminal Court Prosecutor, Emmanuel
Jal, a Sudanese musician and former child soldier, and Michael
Wessels, a professor of psychology at Columbia University.
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