Child Soldiers - Who, What and Why?

I am taking a break from finance because the developing world is not, strangely, all about finance… gasp! In fact though we tend to measure everything and anything using a monetary value countless travellers return from the developing world with a different view on what ‘life’ is and what to value after experiencing the child choirs of Africa, the hospitality of a poor shopkeeper in Thailand or the lively street parties of South America.

With that in mind I’m centring this article on understanding who are child soldiers, what happens to them after conflict and why the KONY 2012 campaign totally missed the point.These child soldiers are the emaciated generation ravaged by war in a world of finance which often neglects them.

What or who are child soldiers?

Children taught to kill before they can write

Child soldiers are children mostly taken from their communities by warlords to fight, or if female act as ‘wives’, in their armies and are coerced by fear, death and regulation.

The Lord’s Resistance Army, which was the focus of the Kony 2012 campaign, is led by Joseph Kony who forces children to kill other children that attempt to escape, commit atrocities and bans whispering. Whispering may seem a strange rule compared to the others but it is often the only way that children can plan their escape! Notably, some argue that Kony’s ability(?) to control spirits, an important part of the Acholi tribe’s belief system, contributed to his grip on his followers.

Children are taken because they are easier to mould into devoted followers unlike adults who have normally built up a resilient set of morals... hopefully?

In many war-torn areas children make up the majority of the population, are easier to feed and do not have a developed sense of danger.

What happens after the war when the children are freed?

Topically, we are beginning to discuss the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) on UK soldiers returning from Afghanistan and the consequences it has for the soldier’s family, mental health and lives (watch the recent Panorama documentary for more on the issue).

However, PTSD is already an issue rife among child soldiers, presenting a divide between him/her and their community due to a lack of understanding and the atrocities committed. Taking the LRA example above, if the ex-child soldier cannot sleep or screams throughout the night the villagers believe the child is still possessed by the evil spirit of Kony whereas the child is simply reliving the experience of battle or murder which is common among those who suffer from PTSD. Watch this video on Joesph, a former child soldier and Sergeant in the LRA, for a more detailed account.

A child soldier armed with a rifle and a teddy bear rucksack.

What is worrying is that child soldiers are taken before basic education is completed and therefore return knowing only one trade – the trade of death. In a post-conflict state the priority is to rebuild the damage done by the warlord or civil-war and therefore those with skills are prioritized in the effort. Ex child soldiers have no skills and consequently are left out of decision-making and employment. Children attempt to find any source of income and in some cases children have been known to dig up graves, selling the wood from the coffin and any trinkets from the dead.

This lack of employment forces many children on to the street, with no voice and nothing to occupy their minds. As a child soldier they were respected simply because of the fear, power they controlled and atrocities they committed – disarming the children was and is a priority for governments. It is when the children are disarmed and gain no form of employment I worry that they will be forced back into violence to re-claim their lost power. It seems that it is only when these children present a threat to a government will they gain the recognition they deserve. Indeed, the UN identifies youth alienation as a major factor in the 1991-2002 civil war that consumed Sierra Leone.

What are the governments doing?

It would be unjust to argue that governments have not attempted to remedy the plight of ex child soldiers. Below are just some of the schemes utilised:

• Most governments or non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have offered cash for weapons to remove them from the hands of child soldiers.

• Providing education.

• Offering courses in Vocational Skills Training for Enterprise Capacities (VSTEC) in trades such as electronics, catering and mechanical engineering.

These schemes have worked in some parts of the developing world. Substantially, I know from my intern that VSTEC courses in Sierra Leone are helping the youth create businesses that are relevant and needed within the market. In Bo, Pujehun, Moyamba, Bonthe, Kenema and Tonkolili districts some 1,800 trainees are studying in selected vocational training centres (VTCs).

Yet, within Liberia under a similar scheme, Tim Dokie, a 28-year-old former combatant, stated that, 'I was only praying for the teachers to hand me the tool kits promised at the end of the training, which I readily sold for $15'.

Evidently these programmes have varying levels of success…

Furthermore, offering cash for weapons presents problems due to its individualistic approach which fails to address why so many cheap weapons can be found within Africa. Arms traders, developed states and other African states are often behind the arms trade because conflict is simply a source of immense wealth for some. If you have the time reading this article by the Integrated Regional Information Network entitled 'Analysis: How best to remove guns from post-conflict zones' sheds more light on the issue.

In one such case the UK enacted a food embargo on Sierra Leone in 1997 yet Sandline, a UK Arms dealer, supplied arms to the Economic Community Cease-Fire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) during the troubles. Initially, ECOMOG was a peace-keeping force which helped restore order but in the following years many human rights abuses have been levelled against the organisation including Nigerian Alpha Jets strafing unarmed civilians. The food embargo largely affected the civilian population and not the intended target, the junta, even though weapons still found their way from the UK into Sierra Leone.

ECOMOG defended Sierra Leone's government

To conclude, children who are taken at night, cast into lives of murder, rape and atrocities and mostly forgotten by the governments who should have protected them in first place deserve to have a right to education or a means of providing for their basic needs. Nonetheless, looking beyond the ex child soldiers the state needs to occupy the minds of these children to safeguard the fragile peace that now exists. Investment from foreign powers will provide employment but the involvement of these alienated youth is paramount. Finally, removing weapons from Africa should become an agenda in the developed world instead of covertly supplying them.

Oh and the Kony 2012 campaign was a bit late as Kony had moved to the Central African Republic by last year so it didn't do much... apart from making the Ugandans think Kony was coming back to Uganda! I know I'm just as guilty for sharing it but it has made me realise how quickly our generation mobilises our support on an issue we don't understand because of a flashy video... opps.

If you want to find out more about child soldiers and their plight visit WarChild

ROSCAs - The Advantages, Disadvantages and Everything in Between.

Following the previous blog about loans and savings this blog will focus on what financial options are available to those in rural areas where finance is in the hands of the villagers. The advantages, disadvantages and everything in between. 

Let's start with ROSCAs or Rotating Saving and Credit Associations.

Individuals meet at pre-defined intervals of perhaps a week or a month and contribute small amounts of money into a 'pot'. Notably, ROSCAs have been used by those with high incomes in the developed world and therefore income is exogenous to ROSCAs. They are simply common  in rural parts of the developing world, 50 to 95% of Adults engage in them in the Congo, Cameroon, Gambia, and villages of Liberia, Ivory Coast, Togo, and Nigeria (Bouman [1995] for references),due to the advantages discussed later. ROSCAs operate by either:

• Each interval giving the total to one individual. You can only receive the contents of the 'pot' once.
• Conducting a lottery, with those members who have already received their payouts being excluded from the lottery.
• Bidding, in which members who want the money most bid an additional sum to that which they have contributed. When the winner is known his or her contribution is then shared out equally. This is a relatively unknown in Africa.

The advantages of ROSCAs: 

• Social capital getting to know contacts or information within the ROSCAs.
• A range of different ROSCAs exist - religious, market, ethnic, office or neighborhood.
• Women tend to utilise them more then men the due to social and financial (normally lower income) reasons. For instance, in Kibera the probability that a woman is involved in a ROSCA is 40% compared to a man at 10.1%. Further, a study in Nairobi by Anderson and Baland (2002) showed that a women's bargaining position in the household is directly related to her contribution to household income.
• ROSCAs offer a personal source of income for women, particularly in Africa. Men in Africa are seen as 'deserving' personal spending money whereas a woman's income is collective. The work of Hoddinott and Haddad (1995) empirically verifies this claim for African households where, relative to women, men spend a greater portion of their income on goods such as alcohol and cigarettes,whereas women are more likely to purchase goods for children and for general household consumption.
• Transparency due to group regulation.
• Efficiency - money is put in the 'pot', the meeting occurs and the money distributed in the chosen way. 
• Can be tailored to the income of the group.
• The savings of many are transformed into a lump sum for one person. This is often used to improve household livelihoods, to invest in a new business or to pay school fees.
• Protect an individuals savings against immediate consumption - identified as particularly beneficial for women (Anderson and Baland, 2002)
• Offers a protection against theft as savings are not left within houses

The disadvantages of ROSCAs: 

• If the ROSCA distributes money by prior agreement or by lottery it is unlikely to be available at the time in a business cycle when it is most useful. These types of ROSCA are often then used in order to save up for household durables such as utensils or roofing sheets. They are an effective savings instrument, but relatively ineffective as a means of capitalising productive investment 
• The amount of money is fixed and may be inadequately matched to a person’s investment plans 
• There is no return on people’s investment in a ROSCA, except a marginal time-value of-money benefit of receiving a lump sum at no interest cost before reimbursement 

Further findings:

• ROSCAs are not a substitute for credit but rather complement it. But, are often the sole saving and credit institutions in many rural areas.
• While, ex ante, all individuals are better off by saving through a ROSCA, the member who receives the pot last is ex post worse off. Particularly if investment is set. For instance:

1. The purchasing power of a pound is slowly decreasing due to inflation. 
2. If ten individuals put ten pounds into a ROSCA then each week an individual at random is given one hundred pounds. 
3. At the beginning of the ROSCA one hundred pounds will have the equivalent purchasing power.
4. However, after ten weeks one hundred pounds may equate to less purchasing power, say ninety eights pounds, then at the beginning of the ROSCA.

Simply if a ROSCA 'pot' was ten pounds and could buy you ten apples at the beginning you may only be able to buy nine apples at the end of the ROSCA due to the price of apples inflating. Yet, orders of ROSCAs change every cycle? Not really... Anderson and Baland (2002) contend that ROSCA orders rarely change and often follow the first pattern which does not explain why the last recipient would stay and by backwards induction why the ROSCA does not break down.

Last in the ROSCA queue means less apples for you! Fair?

In conclusion, the rationale proposed by Besley, Coate, and Loury (1993) concerning the financial detriment the last member to receive the pot suffers is not debatable. However, ROSCA must benefit the members in many other ways, apart from financially, to explain the high usage in developing states. These benefits are listed in the advantages section and include social capital, self-sufficiency for women who argue that they 'should not rely on their husbands' and the ability to tailor the individual investment per pre-defined interval to the level of income of the members.

I'll cover other financial options available to those in rural areas in the next blog.

Resources used in article:

Allen, H. (2002) - CARE International’s Village Savings & Loan Programmes in Africa: Micro Finance for the Rural Poor that Works

Anderson, S. and Baland, J. (2002) - The Economics of ROSCAs and Intra Household Resource Allocation.

Besley, T. Coate, S. and Loury, G. (1993) - Rotating Savings and Credit Associations, Credit Markets and Efficiency
Varadharajan, S. (2004) - Explaining Participation in Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (RoSCAs): Evidence from Indonesia 

Building an Understanding of Loan and Savings Schemes for a Stronger Community

Taking out a loan in the UK is difficult at present and talking to my friend yesterday who has set up his own tree-surgery business just typifies this. He is working seven days a week to make ends meet and on the suggestion that he should take out a loan he just responds, 'What's the point in buying expensive machinery if the next week there are no jobs? I'll survive that week but what if there is no work the next week and the next?' He has a point.

Nonetheless, if he did take out a loan, grew his business and then paid it back with the higher income then he might be left with a more recession-proof business. Well that is the logic anyway. It is a complex game of determination, experience and fortune.

So what have loans got to do with aid?

Well, microfinance (money on a smaller scale) is a relatively new addition to the arsenal of aid. Since the introduction of microfinance in Bangladesh by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus it has been one of strongest financial tools used to create sustainable projects, raise incomes and resolve conflict in communities. Alongside the realisation that women are better clients because they generally put the money towards development. Rather, the men often look towards the short-term, alcohol and themselves. A tad sexist but it’s a correlation that is shown in most aid programmes… sorry guys.

So what makes microfinance in the developing world different to the loans we get in the UK?

Within the UK we can be tracked due to the large amount of information we each output or is necessary to operate in the developed world. The government, banks and police know where we live, where we go and apparently now what we say in private (we all knew they did) so we cannot just simply default on a payment and slip away as we would be stopped at the border, frog-marched back and be forced to deal with the consequences. This traceability lessens the risk of the loan for the loaner which is reflected in the rates. Also, if the payments are matched to our incomes then we will be able to meet them unless we lose our job or overspend on other goods and services.

However, in the developing world the government, banks and police often have imperfect knowledge. Houses are not all aligned in pretty streets but rather everywhere and anywhere. Just imagine trying to find someone in the middle of a slum! Furthermore, unemployment is rife and even those with jobs have little security. The risk of loaning makes the loan’s interest rates higher and those with limited savings or income it is almost impossible to secure a loan.

That obvious theory aside, microfinance gets around these issues by tying a whole community into the loan and appeals to peer pressure to enforce repayments. A perfect solution.

Yet, I have been reading an essay entitled ‘What is the evidence of the impact of microfinance on the well-being of poor people?’ by Duvendack et al. which argues that micro-finance does not guarantee an improvement in the reduction of conflict. For instance, it states ‘access to credit for cash crop production controlled by men may result in reallocation of resources away from food crop production controlled by women, with adverse effects on their children's nutrition’ (pg. 10).

Nonetheless, I've heard and seen project statistics where communal loan schemes have been successively instrumental in securing the sustainability of a project. The need to repay keeps the beneficiaries focused and enables those without skills, particularly the youth, to learn, graduate and begin business. The argument that schemes which benefit one portion of the community over another does not dissuade me. An increase in income in Africa is directly coupled with a growth in that group’s rights and inequality is not solely sourced from microfinance schemes as a range of factors affect it including cultural norms, exploitation and livelihood choices.

This video is a testimony to the success of microfinance (if not a bit cheesy).

Microfinance unmistakably works. But, limitations occur in rural areas with poor infrastructure due to basic geography - they may be days away from the local(?) bank. Ergo, the microfinance schemes work more efficiently in semi-urban or urban settings as banking officials can cost-effectively monitor schemes.

So what schemes are available for those distant rural communities?  

A trend in savings rather than credit is identified in a Care report on ‘Village Savings and Loan Programmes in Africa’ as common practice in rural communities. A range of saving programmes exist under the Village Savings and Loan (VS&L) family including Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs) and Accumulating Savings and Credit Associations (ASCAs). ROSCAs operate by drawing together small contributions from all members and giving the total to one individual. ASCAs are similar but the total is not given to one individual but is applied to any project that the group chooses  These saving schemes enable those with a small income to gain access to a greater lump sum of money and further draws the community together due to regular meetings.

A more in-depth discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of these schemes shall be discussed in the next blog. 

Any thoughts? Anything captured your interest?

Agriculture, Science and the AASW6

It's the 6th Africa Agriculture Science Week (AASW6) by the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) hosted by the Government of Ghana this week and I've noticed two things:

1. Aid just seems to be one long list of acronyms making reading a report, post or blog difficult for outsiders. So within this blog I'm going to be committed to expanding every acronym I use and I want you the people to police me. 
2. More importantly I'm struggling to keep up to date with the reports, posts and twitter feeds. There are a lot of useful, insightful and grounded responses to aid being made today and that makes AASW6 a big deal. Shame its not on the BBC news.

Here are some of the posts:

Kips Isaac ‏@Kipsizoo 17m

"Smallholder farmers hold the key to African development" - Dr Kanayo Nwanze at the #AASW6

IITA ‏@IITA_CGIAR 11m

AASW6 keynote by IFAD Pres: African governments need to invest more on agricultural research. #AASW6

IFAD ‏@IFADnews 2h

#Africa can feed Africa. Africa should feed Africa and Africa one day will feed Africa, says #ifad Prez @knwanze #aasw6

AAS CGIAR ‏@AAS_CGIAR 1h

We're partnering with org's at local, national & global levels to achieve impacts at scale in #Africa: http://bit.ly/WY7Fdi  #AASW6

Fairtrade Intl ‏@FAIRTRADE 1h

Great convo on smallscale farmers at #AASW6. And while at it, check out our take on powering up smallholders http://ow.ly/n57pg

Addressing my first point IITA stands for the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture and AAS is the African Academy of Sciences. They are a mouthful but at least we are all on the same wavelength now. Also, Fairtrade International's take on smallholders and the report is well worth a read if you have some time.

Focusing on the second point, evidently there is a lot of traffic surrounding this forum and it's pretty difficult to pick out the key message. To summarize, Africa feels that Africa can feed itself, should feed itself and must feed itself to secure its future. AASW6 believes that science can make this a reality.

So as I watch delegates take their seats on the live feed I cannot help but notice that this is a united Africa saying what they need to resolve the issue of hunger that decimates the continent. It is not us prescribing a resolution to the issues Africa faces and often our ways of providing food aid which breeds dependency, assembling schools that never fill and sending monetary aid that ends in corruption, doesn't work miracles (I appreciate this form of aid is necessary at times but I want to look at the long-term solutions). Rather, Dr. Kanayo Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), has declared that Africa holds unprecedented opportunities to resolve their own issues through science and create an industry which engages the youth. Our western magic is not working, the miracle of genetics and breeding will.

A smallholder supporting himself and Africa (Taken from IFAD blog) 

There is hope. Firstly, the work and strategies discussed in the AASW6 are entering onto a world stage. Secondly, Fairtrade International infers that the value of the smallholder is 'starting to be recognized as a potential powerhouse to fix a broken system'. Finally, Africa is not a hopeless case, is a rising star and must be recognized as a new frontier for sustainable economic growth.

Thoughts?

Aid Be Aware! Why?

I'm new to blogging so setting the scene seems an appropriate start...

It's a hot summers day in England where laptops overheat, ice cream is sold out and going for a jog feels like you're halfway through the Marathon des Sables.

Not bad... let's add some intrigue...

Suddenly an unknown voice shouts from the rooftops, "Aid Be Aware!"

Okay, stop there.. woahh. Seems blogging just isn't for me as this becomes some form of dreadful comic/playscript in which an aid worker, an academic and Batman (I feel a joke coming on.. walk into a bar etc..) just merged and created the strangest catchphrase.

Actually it's the title of this blog.

What's with the strange catchphrase/ supposed title of the blog? Well those three words 'Aid Be Aware' and some related thoughts have been brewing inside my head, the rooftop, for days (My means a second year politics student who has just started an internship in aid.. ahhh makes sense).

So, the title outlines a need for a global understanding of the aid sector and the potential issues it presently faces. We need to be aware of whether national aid to national governments, organisations or actors is actually working? Or rather is localized, targeted and long-term aid the way forward?

An unexpected thought :
Batman considering the benefits of national or localized aid?

For example, if you type in 'aid' in google images the page is awash with direct, short-term food aid or figures. Should aid breed dependency? You can probably guess where I stand on the issue and I was attempting to remain neutral so I'll stop writing before I smother you with my views!

To conclude, that's the 'why' of this blog. Good evening and over to you!

Time for you to be a superhero.. for me! What's your general understanding and thoughts on aid? Do you see national or localized aid as more effective?