Suicidal children thrown a lifeline by Plan

Children living in West Africa who have suffered terrible trauma as a result of poverty, conflict and abuse are being offered support by new mobile counselling units.

"Two times the lady I was working for put hot pepper in my vagina as a punishment. Then she tied up my hands and feet and locked me up for an entire day without food or water. You can still see the scars. I was very scared and it hurt so much. It gave me terrible nightmares and I would wake up screaming.

"Now I am back in Togo, it is the wife of my husband's brother that treats me badly. She tells my husband that I am bad and he beats me as well. It got to the point where I felt I could not go on and I bought chemicals so I could end my life."

This is the story of Akissi from Est Mono in Togo. She is 15 years old, already a mother and a survivor of child trafficking.

Her story is just one of many uncovered by researchers from the Plan West Africa Regional Office (WARO) as part of their research project into the requirements for psycho-social support for children in the region.

During their study, the researchers began speaking to young people who had been through terrible ordeals and were considering suicide. Some, like Akissi, had already bought the means by which they planned to kill themselves.

The researchers looked at child trafficking in Togo; war-affected communities in Sierra Leone and Liberia; communities with high HIV prevalence in Cameroon; and child refugees in Burkina Faso affected by armed conflict in the Ivory Coast.

More than a thousand children aged between eight and 18 took part in individual interviews, case studies and group discussions conducted in local languages.
 
The first and very dramatic results showed there was a high risk of suicide among those interviewed who had suffered physical and sexual abuse.

Most of the severely affected were girls, some of whom had babies as a result of rape and were not able to take care of their children. Others had lost their children and suffered from guilt and remorse on top of the trauma caused by abuse.

The report also showed that existing initiatives in the region were not always offering the best support for these traumatised children.

As a result, Plan has now set up its own mobile psycho-social support units to help the high-risk children identified by the researchers, in the first initiative of its kind for Plan.

These units provide traditional healing ceremonies, family mediation, medical facilities and social assistance, including financial support for school or apprenticeship equipment and fees.

So far they have been set up in Togo, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Sierra Leone and Liberia and aim to provide an immediate response to children identified as at a ‘high-risk’ of suicide, with the hope of continuing and expanding the project over the coming years.