Journalist, author sheds light on lives of child soldiers in new Amanpour lecture series

04/04/08 - "Imagine not being able to dream. Imagine that you grew up expecting to die, grew up expecting not to live past 20 or 21." Imagining this situation is necessary in order to begin to understand the life of a child soldier, journalist Jimmie Briggs told a packed auditorium in Independence Hall yesterday. Briggs, a distinguished journalist, advocate and author, spoke about his own experiences reporting on children in warfare and the parallels he sees between war-effected youth around the world and children in America affected by violence.

Briggs has traveled extensively in war-torn areas of the world as a reporter for publications such as Life, The Washington Post and The New York Times Magazine. His travels eventually led him to the theme of his 2005 book "Innocents Lost: When Child Soldiers Go To War."

During the lecture, Briggs described children as young as 8 years old going into battle under the influence of drugs, forced to walk before their comrades to detonate mines and even made to kill family members.

Briggs said women and children are the first to suffer and the most severely-affected in war. Children suffer on both sides of the conflict as victims and as perpetrators of violence, he said, and women and young girls face gender-based violence and sexual crimes.

"Unfortunately, we live in a time in history when rape in war is commonplace, it's almost inceptive or tolerated," he said.

Briggs showed a 10-minute clip of his first documentary, which is still a work in progress. The film segment contained images of children in Africa and Sri Lanka marching in formation, carrying guns and performing military exercises. One picture showed a smiling young child smoking a cigarette, posing with other young soldiers in the background and barbed wire in the foreground. Others showed young children and teens firing automatic weapons or lying dead in the streets.

"It's appropriate that you see these stories, that you see these images because this is what is happening around the world . to millions of young people who are much younger than you all are," Briggs said in introducing the material.

"The future is a coffin," Briggs said, quoting a child soldier he interviewed for his book. This is a sentiment he has heard repeated by youth from Colombia to the streets of Chicago, he said.

"All these stories are the same," he said. "The names are different, the languages are different, people may be a different coloring, all these stories are the same."

Briggs said he first became aware of the issue while reporting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1997. Prior to this point, Briggs said he subscribed to the popular glorification of violence and the military that he sees in the United States, but was changed by the experience.

"I had seen kids up close kill or be killed, and so I came back transformed, wanting to do something about it, wanting to express their voices," he said.

Briggs said now he sees journalism as a tool for advocacy and as a means of revealing and promoting unity.

"The power, the blessing, the gift of journalism the way I see it . is that journalism is not only a tool to uncover the truth but it is also a tool to bring us together, to connect all these stories together, to draw parallels between what's happening in Africa, in Latin America, to what's happening in Kingston, to what's happening in Boston or New York or Connecticut, all these places, to tell a larger story of all of us," Briggs said.

Many audience members reacted positively to the lecture.

"I liked it a lot. I think it was really interesting, I really hadn't heard about [child soldiers]," junior Aija Veiksane said.

Sophomore Mark Scialla offered a similar assessment.

"I thought it was really good, really eye-opening to issues that really aren't discussed a lot," he said. "I think it's really important that people learn about these issues."

The lecture was the first in what is to be an annual series of talks by distinguished journalists. The series is funded by a $50,000 endowment to the university from CNN international correspondent and URI alumna Christiane Amanpour.