Film og debat: Unge eks-soldater og overlevende i Sierra Leone

TIME: Tuesday, 1 May, 15.15 – 17.00

VENUE: Auditorium 7, 1st floor, Købmagergade 46, 1150 Copenhagen K

This documentary (of 38 minutes) centres around three young men making do in the down-town area “Belgium” in Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown. Its focus on street life and illegal and semilegal trade in stolen goods, diamonds and drugs (referred to locally as Jew-Man business) raises.

TIME: Tuesday, 1 May, 15.15 – 17.00

VENUE: Auditorium 7, 1st floor, Købmagergade 46, 1150 Copenhagen K

This documentary (of 38 minutes) centres around three young men making do in the down-town area “Belgium” in Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown. Its focus on street life and illegal and semilegal trade in stolen goods, diamonds and drugs (referred to locally as Jew-Man business) raises.

Key issues concerning the daily struggle for survival and respect in one of the world’s poorest countries. Ice T is a former rebel soldier who discusses both his life today as well as his traumatic experiences during the country’s civil war (1991-2002).

Bone Thugs makes you understand the hardships of surviving in the streets, including homelessness, violence, police brutality and drug abuse.

And finally Junior’s story shows his efforts at constructing a normal life away from the Jew-Man business in Belgium, through trying to build a family and dealing with the quandaries around love and relationships.

Hovering above all three stories is the ongoing unpredictability of the Sierra Leone state and the need for alternative techniques of organizing oneself in order to improve individual security and predictability and if possible achieve minimal prosperity.

Mats Utas is Associate Professor in Cultural Anthropology at the Nordic Africa Institute as well as Head of the Africa Programme at the Swedish National Defence College. He has written extensively on child and youth combatants, politics and economy of informality, contested sovereignties, media, refugees and gender in conflict and war zones.

He has also researched street life, informality, and alternative forms of organization in urban centers. Utas has conducted fieldwork in Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast and Somalia, as well as teaching at universities in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Sweden.

He is the editor of African Conflicts and Informal Power: Big Men and Networks (Zed Books, February 2012), and co-editor (with Henrik Vigh and Catrine Christiansen) of Navigating Youth – Generating Adulthood: Social Becoming in an African Context (Nordic Africa Institute, 2006) as well as author of numerous articles in journals and edited books.

He is currently researching three interrelated subjects: urban poverty and street life; former mid-level commanders and their roles as brokers in postwars; and election related violence. All three projects have a focus on West Africa.