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Especially in these countries, they are a sordid, dark world,
with a routine that seems to have stopped time.
Sierra Leone, 10 years ago, finished a very long civil war. It lasted almost 10 years.
It devastated the country. It's a very poor country, with no resources.
The prisons... they are full.
Nobody is going to worry about the conditions of the people in the prisons.
Many prisoners are accused of minor crimes, small robberies, petty theft.
There were 32 children, and I never saw anybody visiting children.
They were really abandoned.
Many of the children are orphans, are homeless.
I never knew very clearly why children, clearly children,
13 to 14 years old, were transferred to adult courts as opposed to juvenile courts.
And after that, they go directly to adult prisons, if found guilty.
The young men in prison are twice as oppressed. They have to bear a double burden,
because first, the situation with malnutrition, and a lack of medical treatment and sanitation.
And then, since they are children, they have the pressure of adults over them.
This is an injustice, a crime. These are children who wouldn't be in an adult prison.
And they are at risk of losing their lives in prison.
This situation does not only occur in Sierra Leone and in this prison, it's not specific.
There are thousands of children throughout Africa, dozens, hundreds of prisons in a very similar situation.
Photography has the big advantage to be an international language.
Whenever you do some work, you hope for the publication of the work to generate debate,
raise awareness of the problem.
But I'd like to go one step further, besides raising awareness about the problems and such,
to generate actions.
I've created a small NGO.
And with the help of some volunteers, well, we are going to go back to Sierra Leone
and establish the basis of direct help to children through legal assistance,
and working on the rehabilitation of these children as they leave the prisons.
If we all know that this problem exists, that's good, but then, we have to do something more.