2008 Woodie Awards
Why Must Children Go To War?
Margaret Powers
Issue date: 9/30/05 Section: News
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"Jimmie Briggs ponders one of the most troubling problems of our time: why children, hardly free from their mother's apron strings, go to war," Director of the Human Rights Center of the University of California at Berkeley Eric Stover wrote. "He combines book-strap reporting with thoughtful insights that help us understand why so many children in war-torn countries fall prey to this perversion of innocence and what we must do to end it."
Jimmie Briggs, an investigative journalist, came to Colgate this week to discuss his new book Innocents Lost: When Child Soldiers go to War. The book is a powerful depiction of Briggs' six- to seven-year journey to document the lives of child soldiers around the world. He writes about the psychological and gender aspects of war with regard to children, based on his observations in Rwanda, Uganda, Colombia, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.
Briggs never envisioned himself as a journalist when he was a student at Morehouse College; in fact, he planned to become a doctor and double majored in biology and philosophy. He decided that journalism was a better fit for him, however, and took on a job as a mailroom clerk at the Washington Post in Washington, D.C. With some luck, Briggs was able to publish a music review, and that led to more publications, a job at the Village Voice, an assistant editor position at Emerge Magazine and, finally, a job as a reporter for Life magazine. It was while in this job that Briggs came to his current project.
In 1997, Briggs traveled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to write an investigative report on the guerilla movement occurring at that time. It was there that Briggs first encountered the use of child soldiers and met many women and children refugees from Rwanda. At an AIDS station in Kisangani, Briggs was compelled to help women and their dying babies, although there was little he could do for them. Eight or nine babies died in his arms from starvation in just one day. From this Briggs realized what war meant at a fundamental level and also that what he was doing was not enough.
Jimmie Briggs, an investigative journalist, came to Colgate this week to discuss his new book Innocents Lost: When Child Soldiers go to War. The book is a powerful depiction of Briggs' six- to seven-year journey to document the lives of child soldiers around the world. He writes about the psychological and gender aspects of war with regard to children, based on his observations in Rwanda, Uganda, Colombia, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.
Briggs never envisioned himself as a journalist when he was a student at Morehouse College; in fact, he planned to become a doctor and double majored in biology and philosophy. He decided that journalism was a better fit for him, however, and took on a job as a mailroom clerk at the Washington Post in Washington, D.C. With some luck, Briggs was able to publish a music review, and that led to more publications, a job at the Village Voice, an assistant editor position at Emerge Magazine and, finally, a job as a reporter for Life magazine. It was while in this job that Briggs came to his current project.
In 1997, Briggs traveled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to write an investigative report on the guerilla movement occurring at that time. It was there that Briggs first encountered the use of child soldiers and met many women and children refugees from Rwanda. At an AIDS station in Kisangani, Briggs was compelled to help women and their dying babies, although there was little he could do for them. Eight or nine babies died in his arms from starvation in just one day. From this Briggs realized what war meant at a fundamental level and also that what he was doing was not enough.