Children's drawings of atrocities committed in Sudan may be used in a possible human rights trial to provide evidence of war crimes in the violence-wracked country.
Five hundred drawings by children aged five to 18, who have fled to refugee camps from Sudan, could be used in court because of the crimes that are depicted in the illustrations, according to humanitarian group Waging Peace that plans to submit the drawings to the International Criminal Court.
The images from the children came to light when a humanitarian worker, who works with Waging Peace and did not want to be identified for fear of reprisals, visited refugee camps in Chad. Many Sudanese people have fled to refugee camps located in Chad, the country neighbouring the Sudan.
The worker was directed by a refugee to ask the children if she wanted to know what was happening. After providing them with pens and pencils to help convey what they knew, the humanitarian worker was shocked by what she saw.
The children's drawings depicted beheadings, people laying in pools of blood, women being chained together. Their depictions also showed people being killed, and being lined up and shot. The illustrations also showed villages being set on fire and women and children being captured and led away.
"They show tanks, they show the horses, in some cases camels, that are attacking the villages," the humanitarian worker told CTV's Canada AM.
According to the humanitarian worker, the pictures show that the people committing these crimes are members of the Sudanese military and the Janjaweed, the armed Arab militia working together to commit the acts.
The Sudanese government has consistently denied being involved in any military attacks on the Darfur region.
Millions of people have been displaced and more than 200,000 people have been killed since the crisis began in the region and Waging Peace estimates that 110 people are dying in Darfur every day.
The ICC has named two suspects and issued arrest warrants for alleged war crimes in the region. They are Ahmed Muhammed Harun, Sudan's humanitarian affairs minister and Ali Mohammed Ali Abd-al-Rahman, a Janjaweed militia leader.
However, concerns have arisen over the veracity of the drawings by the children. The court's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo has yet to indicate whether the children's pictures will be used as evidence and doubts have been raised as to how much influence was exerted over children in their drawings.However, the humanitarian worker said she had directly questioned the children to determine what they had drawn was from memory and she was satisfied that this was the case.
"It makes a big difference when a child draws from memory and then explains things for you from memory or whether it is something that someone else fed into them," she said.
