Boy soldiers, once forced to fight alongside rebels of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA), are slowly adjusting to civilian life after being released.
Southern Baptist workers have joined other Great Commission Christians to meet the boys’ physical and spiritual needs.
More than 1,600 of 2,500 boys released by the SPLA in March have made their way to a refugee camp in Akot, Sudan. The boys, some as young as 8 years old, makeshift tents in the camp. UNICEF has pitched in to supply some food, sanitation, a T-shirt, hat and backpack for each boy.
Express relief
Most of the boys express relief at being anywhere else after their traumatic military experiences, but missionaries fear the boys soon will grow restless as conditions in the camp deteriorate.
Thousands of boys have been forcibly recruited into military units on both sides of Sudan’s 18-year-old civil war. The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers cites Sudan as having one of the worst child soldier problems in the world.
The Sudan Peoples Liberation Army, which had held these boy soldiers, fights on behalf of largely Christian and animist southern Sudan against Muslim-backed government forces from the north. Generally, boy soldiers are kidnapped and forced to fight against their own people.
UNICEF hopes to reunite the boys with their families, who are in Sudan’s northern Bahr El Gazal region, within four months.
“UNICEF has provided some basic medicines for the boys, (which) seem to be adequate at this time,” International Mission Board (IMB) worker John White said. While a medical clinic is being planned specifically for the camp, a separate clinic run by Southern Baptist workers and the Samaritan’s Purse relief agency is filling in the gap to care for the boys’ medical conditions.
The IMB is one of the first nongovernmental agencies to offer help to the boys. “We believe God is giving us an opportunity to work with these boys. We’ve been welcomed with open arms to share the message of Christ,” he said.
(BP)
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