“In the maquis of Darfur, among Abdul Wahid Al-Nour’s guerrillas, children are trained in torturing, mutilating and killing...Who are these children, armed to fulfil the dream of a Sudanese renaissance?”

Beninese freelance journalist and former editor of Le Point au Quotidien, Larisse Houssou posed this question and went into the miasma of Sudan’s warring militias to find answers. This past week, the 2008 Lorenzo Natali journalism prize given by the European Commission since 1992 in partnership with the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), honoured his reportage on the issue.

Houssou was not sent to cover this topic, but rather, as he wrote, “to make a report on ‘real’ motivations of these guerrillas and not on these child soldiers. In the end, he exposed one of the most brutal aspects of the independent region’s martyrdom, the people behind the guns and mutilation: children, most of who have seen their own families already killed.

“Since 2003, along with the escalation of the conflict, the group has more than doubled. The number of militants has passed from 165,000 to 350,000. The official objective is to reach 500,000 - a number that should allow to defeat the jajawids - the “devil troopers,” armed, trained and financed by Khartoum...In order to achieve this, children need to be recruited, no matter their age. Recruited by force, beaten, drugged, trained to torture, to mutilate and to kill, these children become involved in a conflict which for two decades has brought millions of deaths,” Houssou wrote in his article.

The paradox of this cataclysm, Houssou showed, was that these armies have become the only family of children, orphaned by war. One child, Hassan, aged 11, said to Houssou, “The camp has become my family, my rifle, my supplier and protector, my motto kill or get killed.”

“Since their birth, Mohamed, Hassan, Boubacar, Njaima and the others [children soldiers in the Al Nour army], they have known nothing but war. And as long as Sudan stays in the arena of fights, these kids won’t have any other perspective,” Houssou concluded.

“It was a big joy, a lot of emotions, since I learned that it was me who won first place in the Lorenzo Natali Journalism Awards. Until now, I did not completely realise it. I am very grateful of the European Commission for the sympathy, the support, and the solidarity that I have received. My work on the child soldiers in Darfur was celebrated on the global scale and I have gotten a lot of satisfaction from accomplishing this,” said Houssou to RAP 21.

In next week’s issue, RAP 21 will feature a more in depth piece on the work of Larisse Houssou.

To find out more about the Lorenzo Natali Journalism Prize please visit: http://www.nataliprize2008.eu/en/in...

To read the full article by Larisse Houssou please visit: http://www.nataliprize2008.eu/en/re...