A Long Way from Home
FNL Child Soldiers in Burundi
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 Ex-FNL child soldier getting a haircut in the Randa welcome center for former combatants in Burundi. © 2006 Human Rights Watch |
Children in the Randa Welcome Center
Problems of Children Facing Reintegration
International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law
International Prohibitions on Using Former Child Soldiers as Informants
International Obligations to Promote the Best Interests of Former Child Soldiers
June 2006 Number 3
“I want to be demobilized. After all this time in a mobile brigade with the FNL and because I have been wounded in the leg, I think that I deserve something—at least some money to help me. I have never been to school, not even in the first year, and I think that it is too late now. It’s hard now, I want to find my family and tell them that I am alive.”
—Seventeen-year-old former FNL combatant currently at Randa
“I arrived here in the prison on October 7, 2005. I spoke to a magistrate and she told me my case was in the courts but I don’t really know what is happening. I have been here a long time and I want to go home now.”
—Fifteen-year-old former FNL combatant currently in prison