The State We're In, 24 July 2010. Sudanese child soldiers who put down their guns and create a new life for themselves. A woman in Australia gets over the trauma of living through a massacre by learning how to shoot. Plus: deaf and blind kids in Beirut create and perform their own theatre pieces.

Photo - children in Darfur, Sudan have grown up around weapons

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Justice for child soldiers
Congolese warload Thomas Lubanga stands accused at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for conscripting and enlisting hundreds of child soldiers to commit rape and murder. This week, the ICC recently moved to release Lubanga. That’s disastrous news to documentary filmmaker, Bukeni Waruzi.
 
The State We're In spoke with Bukeni last February when the trial started. Bukeni’s work helped indict Lubanga. And even though Lubanga’s release is being appealed, Bukeni fears that if Lubanga ever returned to Congo, thousands of lives would be lost.
 
Link - A Duty To Protect at Witness.org
 
A new life for child soldiers
Both sides in Sudan’s civil war used child soldiers. About 20,000 of them. Contributor Zack Baddorf tells Jonathan how child soldiers in south Sudan are discovering what they’ve never known: the fun and comfort of family and village life.
 
Shooting therapy
Penelope Bergen lived near Port Arthur, Australia where in 1996, a gunman massacred 35 people.  Penelope had friends who were killed and knew the gunman in passing. The trauma ruined her ability to play orchestral music and affected virtually every aspect of her life. But three years later, she did something surprising: she took up pistol shooting lessons. And now, she feels the worst of the trauma is behind her.
 
The play’s the thing
Contributor Louise Williams has this story about a theatre troup for young people in Jaffa, Israel. They write and perform their own material - even though they're deaf and blind.
 
Link - Nalagaat Center
 
Old neighbours
During the civil war in Sri Lanka, Muslims were forcibly exiled from their homes in Jaffna. Kannan Arunasalam is originally from Jaffna. He travels back there to find out how Muslims are being welcomed back into their old communities.