CHAPTER 1 DEPRIVATION OF LIBERTY IS DEPRIVATION OF CHILDHOOD During most missions, I came across infants and small children, who were growing up with their incarcerated mothers in prisons, simply because they do not have any other caregiver and judges usually do not take the effects of decisions on children into account sufficiently when sentencing their mothers to a prison term. In the highlands of West Papua (Indonesia), I even came across an eleven-year-old boy who was living with his father in a prison. In Nepal, Sri Lanka and other war-torn countries, I interviewed multiple boys and girls, often not older than 14 years, who had been forcibly recruited and exploited by non-State armed groups as child soldiers and who were later detained by the military or State security forces. Often, these children had been subjected to torture by both Government and non-State actors in order to extract intelligence information and/or a confession from these poor kids. Children living with their mothers in prison in Nepal, 2005 One of the most violent places that I have seen in my life, was the ‘torture room’ at the Criminal Police Headquarters in Lago’s Panti district (Nigeria). There were 125 people, including children, crammed into this extremely hot, humid, and filthy room without a solid roof, who had to sit and sleep on a dirt floor. A hole in the corner was the only toilet. Among these cowering people were three women and several children, the youngest eleven years old. Detainees had been taken to this room to be interrogated and tortured immediately after arrest. Several had been in this room for more than two months. Every single person we spoke to had been severely tortured and the torture had taken place in the presence of the others! All torture instruments were neatly hung on the walls! There was not enough food for everyone, and detainees had to fight among themselves to grasp food. The medical doctor of our team noted severe malnourishment, notably among the children. One of the children whom we interviewed was too weak to stand up. 8