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Security Council team visiting Sierra Leone hears plea from former child soldier
11 October -- A Security Council delegation, currently in Sierra Leone on a mission to promote stability in the region, visited a camp for former child soldiers today where it heard a plea that children be not prosecuted by a proposed special court to try war crimes in the country.

At the camp housing hundreds of young ex-combatants, 14-year-old Al Haj Baba Sewane made a "simple and direct plea" to the Council members to exclude children from prosecution by the proposed court, a United Nations spokesman told reporters in New York.

The Security Council is currently considering the parameters of the special court, which will try persons deemed most responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity and other violations of international humanitarian law.

The teenager, who arrived at the camp nine months ago after spending three years in northern Sierra Leone, said, "We have been forcibly involved in a war we benefited nothing from." He added that the children were "pleading as victims that you please involve us in the peace process, and absolutely exclude us from the proposed special court."

United Kingdom Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock, who is leading the 11-member Council delegation, "swiftly responded to the boy's appeal, saying that no child regarded as a victim of the war, even if he had been fighting, would be taken to the proposed special court," according to the UN spokesman. Ambassador Greenstock added that only those bearing the most responsibility for abuses would be liable for indictment.

The meeting with former child soldiers came on the second day of the delegation's visit to Sierra Leone, during which it continued reviewing the UN peacekeeping operation on the ground. Today, the delegation travelled to Lungi, just north of Freetown, where the Kenyan, Bangladeshi and Zambian contingents, backed by a Russian attack helicopter unit, are defending the capital from several positions. The Council mission is in the midst of a five-nation tour to explore ways of promoting stability in West Africa.