Posts Tagged ‘Child Soldiers’

Just inside the door to Senator Roméo Dallaire’s Parliament Hill office is a large colour photograph showing several children on a grassy hill in Rwanda. Some of the kids in the 2004 photo are barely tall enough to be seen over the grass, but it is clear MOST were born well after the 1994 civil war and genocide that left hundreds of thousands dead and millions more, including Dallaire, deeply scarred.

In an issue that focuses on Canadian youth and explores our role in teaching and encouraging them to understand military history and remembrance, it is important to acknowledge that in some countries, veterans include the very young. Those kids carry the burden of war both as victim and perpetrator, and Canadian photographer Robert Semeniuk has witnessed that cost first-hand. His powerful images rank with some of the most affecting war art of our time. There is an odd similarity in the faces of his young subjects; a stillness, and that want of emotion, combined with such gritty subject matter, is [...]