Innocents Lost—When Child Soldiers Go to War

Children's Rights Advocacy Director, Human Rights Watch

Jo Becker is the Children's Rights Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch, an independent organization that conducts regular, systematic investigations of human rights abuses in some seventy countries around the world. Becker represents Human Rights Watch before the press, government officials, and the general public, and works with other nongovernmental and international organizations to stop abuses against children, including the use of children as soldiers, hazardous child labor, and ill-treatment during detention.

Becker co-chairs the NGO Advisory Panel for the UN Study on Violence Against Children and co-convenes the NGO Group for the Convention on the Rights of the Child’s subgroup on children and violence. She was the founding chairperson of the international Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers and serves on the steering committees of both the international Coalition, and the U.S. Campaign to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. From 2000 to 2002, she was also a convenor of the Child Rights Caucus for the UN General Assembly Special Session on Children.

She has authored and edited Human Rights Watch reports on violence against children worldwide, abuses against children detained by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the use of child soldiers in Northern Uganda and in Burma. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, Asian Wall Street Journal, Miami Herald, and Christian Science Monitor.

Prior to joining the staff of Human Rights Watch, Becker was the executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a national interfaith peace and justice organization.

Becker has an international baccalaureate from the Lester B. Pearson United World College of the Pacific, a BA from Goshen College (IN), and a master's degree in political science from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

Journalist

The personal mission of Jimmie Briggs's decade-long career as a journalist has been to share with the world the voices and stories of the disenfranchised and voiceless. The release of his first book, entitled Innocents Lost: When Child Soldiers Go to War, is the culmination of over six years of painstaking investigative journalism. The book chronicles the personal stories of several child soldiers who participated in conflicts in Afghanistan, Uganda, Rwanda, Columbia, and Sri Lanka.

Briggs is the first African American to be appointed as a Goodwill Ambassador and Special Envoy for Children and Armed Conflict by WAFUNIF at the United Nations. In addition, Jimmie was accorded the honor of serving as a Special Consultant for the United Nations Special Session on Children.

Jimmie graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude with a degree in philosophy at Morehouse College. Following college, Jimmie's passion to write took him to Washington, D.C., where he parlayed a part-time job in the mailroom of the Washington Post into opportunities to write entertainment reviews for the paper. Jimmie was hired as an assistant editor at EMERGE Magazine. Jimmie's love of reportage and investigative journalism took him to LIFE. Briggs has published in a broad spectrum of publications (e.g., New York Times Magazine, People, Vibe, Bust, and Fortune).

For a number of years, Jimmie has taught writing and reporting to young people in Spanish Harlem for the International Center for Photography and Boys Harbor, Inc. He has also worked with the organization Seeds of Peace in both New York City and Kabul, Afghanistan, teaching young people in violence-affected communities how to tell their own stories and document their own experiences. In addition, Briggs has also served as an adjunct professor of investigative journalism at the New School for Social Research.

The importance of Jimmie's work has been recognized both nationally
and internationally. He has received a number of distinguished
fellowships (e.g., The Alicia Patterson Fellowship, Dart Trauma
Fellowship ,and an Individual Project Fellowship from the Open Society Institute) to study war-affected children. In addition, Jimmie received the Congressional Black Caucus Health Braintrust Media Award, The NABJ Magazine Award, and The John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Journalism. Jimmie speaks to various organizations and religious and academic institutions on issues that affect children engulfed in armed conflict. For additional information, visit his website, www.jimmiebriggs.com.

Writer and Co-producer

Born in the rural village of Cuscatazingo, El Salvador, in 1971, Oscar Torres was caught in the crossfire of the country’s brutal civil war. Almost as dramatic as the story of his survival during the conflict, which is depicted in Innocent Voices, are the events of his escape, alone, to the United States in 1985, at thirteen. Against all odds he was eventually reunited with his mother and two siblings.

Torres later entered the Latin American Studies program at the University of California at Berkeley before dropping out and moving to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. His first job there was as delivery boy for a talent agent who eventually agreed to represent him for appearances in commercials.

As an aspiring actor, Torres made ends meet with those commercials until he began to get work in theater and on television series such as ER, First Monday, and Any Day Now.

Through it all, Torres worked on the screenplay for Innocent Voices, which was initially intended as an act of personal exorcism. “At that point,” he says, “I still saw myself primarily as an actor. I was at the Beverly Hills Playhouse taking classes and working at it day in and day out.” It was Moctezuma Esparza (Selena, 1997) who convinced him that the script had potential and worked with him to develop it. Torres pitched the project to director Luis Mandoki “in two minutes flat” while shooting a commercial in 2002.

Oscar Torres is currently working on his second script; this time a romantic comedy.