Name: Oliver
Social Justice Group: Child Soldiers
Date of Fieldwork: February 21, 2018
Name of Organization: OPAC
Person (people) with whom I met and their job titles: Hiba Qaraman, Senior Advocacy Advisor
Type of Fieldwork: Event
What I did:
We went to the UN and sat in on an OPAC meeting where the SRSG, her board, and country representatives, talked about Children In Armed Conflict and what is being done. We also sat in on a presentation by more country representatives and watched a video, and almost participated in a Q and A.
What I learned:
I learned that the UN’s campaign, ChildrenNotSoldiers is gaining momentum, OPAC should be made a universal standard, Sierra Leone is a close sponsor of OPAC turns 18, and that they should double child soldier protection to implement and oversee these efforts. I learned that some countries did not yet publish their initial report about child soldiers, and that this is a problem. I learned plenty of other things through observing about what needs to be and what is getting done by UN in great detail, but these are just a couple. I learned statistics like, 375 million children live in countries with armed conflict, Since 2000 over 130000 children have been released, 10s of thousands of boys and girls are known to be in government forces, 200 children were used as suicide bombers in Nigeria last year, and most were girls, 44 states have not stopped recruiting children, 30 states have not yet radicalized OPAC, and that the Paris Commitment created 10 years ago lies out the guidelines for reintegration and such, 108 governments have signed on. In our second panel we learned a bunch of things regarding girls in armed conflict and reintegration. I learned that ⅓ of the child soldiers in DRC are girls, Only 7% of the children that were rescued were girls in 2016, and that girls aren’t as represented even though they are more susceptible to death or shunning when they get home. We also watched a really helpful video during this panel that we are using in our presentation.
What I learned about Social Justice “work” and/or Civil and Human rights “work” from this fieldwork:
I forgot more than I learned, due to the density and complexity of what they were talking about. This was different than past fieldworks because in this one people didn’t explain themselves, they assumed you knew everything that they were talking about, which made a lot of parts very confusing. I still thought that I learned a ton of information, but it was not nearly as helpful as it could have been if we had interview every single one of the people that spoke. I learned about social justice work that the entire process of organizations is very complicated, fieldwork layouts are not always ideal for learning, and that I got some useful experience tucked under my belt for attending conferences.
