War has always been a source of destruction and ruin.  The rationale for war in modern times usually involves some higher purpose – creating a master race, overturning tyrants, or righting old feuds.

However, the benefits of war enrich the few – at the expense of the majority.

And the cost to innocence - the children - is a consequence that cannot be  rationalized.  Those who survive the death and destruction are changed forever.  Children lose what is their most precious quality, that of being a child.  

Peace is more than elusive; it seems not to exist.  For the past 200 years war has raged continuously somewhere in our shrinking world. There seems no hope for peace. Wars for profit, religious ideology and control of dwindling resources, including water – the very nature of human survival - are on the increase.

Violence holds children captive. Childhood is destroyed. The ruin of innocence is immutable

My project uses GAP Kids headless soft mannequins as a metaphor for the  experience of children captured by war.  The mannequins are suspended off the ground hung as if carcasses in a meat processing plant.

The following is a partial list of countries that have ongoing armed conflicts which puts the lives of children in peril: 

1.        AFGANISTAN
2.        AFRICAN CENTRAL REPUBLIC
3.        ALBANIA
4.        ANGOLA
5.        BURUNDI
6.        CHAD
7.        DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
8.        ESTONIA
9.        GEORGIA REPUBLIC
10.      INDONESIA
11.      IRAQ
12.      ITURI
13.      KENYA
14.      KYRGYZSTAN
15.      LEBANON
16.      LIBERIA
17.      MACEDONIA
18.      MOLDOVA
19.      MYANMAR (BURMA)
20.      NIGERIA
21.      PALESTINE
22.      PAKISTAN
23.      PHILIPPINES
24.      REPUBLIC OF CONGO
25.      RWANDA
26.      SOMALIA
27.      SUDAN
28.      SOUTH AFRICA
29.      SRI LANKA
30.      UGANDA
31.      ZIMBABWE