Carita's War
- PDF / 73,603 Bytes
- 6 Pages / 536.96 x 698 pts Page_size
- 68 Downloads / 244 Views
10/8/01
8:39 am
Page 30
Development. Copyright © 2001 The Society for International Development. SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi), 1011-6370 (200109) 44:3; 30–35; 019069.
Thematic Section
Carita’s War C A R O LY N NORDSTROM
ABSTRACT Carolyn Nordstrom argues that millions of girl-youths are affected by political violence taking place in the world today, yet less is known about what happens to girls in war zones than to any other segment of the population. This ‘invisibility’ is not an accident, but relates to the many ‘wars’ children encounter on the frontlines. Girls suffer the assaults of war, and in addition face the escalating levels of sexual and domestic violence, poverty and social dislocation that war brings. As well, they may be preyed on by international criminal rackets exploiting the invisibility of poor girls in war zones for illegal sexual, domestic and industrial labour – the tragic underbelly of development that generates billions of dollars annually. And in an enduring irony, young girls working in informal subsistence trade are able to survive, yet their work produces financial assets for adult ‘business people’. Solutions rest with making visible girls’ realities, and the links between wartime and peacetime profiteering across legal and illegal development schemes. KEYWORDS development; girl child; human rights abuses; informal economies; profiteering; violence
Invisible girls Carita is invisible. It is an invisibility politically executed. She is never interviewed by the media, she is not represented in statistical indices, she is not part of the war stories bantered like cultural currency in military enclaves or produced in literature. But she stands centre stage in war and development. Carita is a war orphan in central Angola. She survived the 1993 siege of her hometown that took 30,000 lives in less than a year. Living close to the lines that demarcate government from rebel-held areas, she has since 1993 survived subsequent battles that have continued into the 21st century. In the midst of this, Carita faces a number of other ‘wars’ as well: physical and sexual violence, landmines, violent crime, poverty, economic exploitation and the sheer wrenching pain of orphanhood. All of these forms of violence rise with the escalation
07 Nordstrom (to/d)
10/8/01
8:39 am
Page 31
Nordstrom: Carita’s War of political conflicts (Nordstrom, 1996; Kirin and Povrzanovic, 1996; Lorentzen and Turpin, 1998). As we will see in the second half of the article, Carita, in a profound irony, is also central to development issues. Carita was about six when I met her in 1996. There are hundreds of thousands of children orphaned or lost from their families in war-afflicted Angola. These figures also hold for the wars that have taken place in Mozambique, Sudan and Sierra Leone, among others. Other children have been forced into militaries: UNICEF (2000) estimates there are 300,000 child soldiers worldwide.1 Invisible wars There are taboo truths in war, ‘public secrets’ as Michael Tau
Data Loading...
