Child activists say the absence of an integrated program to treat hundreds of thousands of traumatized children in Sri Lanka's war-torn North and East even 21 months after the ceasefire, forms a major impediment in bring them back to normalcy. Professor of Psychiatry at the northern Jaffna University, Daya Somasundaram, who has conducted extensive studies on war distressed children, stresses that although foreign agencies have made efforts to fill the void, given the large numbers of those affected, they remain hopelessly inadequate. Reportedly, nearly 80 percent of the 730,000 children in the schoolgoing ages in the two provinces, have had close brushes with the war. In the case of children living in areas controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) the figure hovers at 90 percent. Reveals Prof Somasundaram, "About 55 percent of them suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), while 25 percent have displayed serious complications." Symptoms of PTSD include fainting spells, loss of appetite, breathing difficulties, giddiness and sleep disturbances. Most children in this region suffer from one or a couple of them. Remarks Somasundaram, "Child soldiers are the worst affected. They usually suffer from a high degree of depression and other abnormalities." One of his recent patients included an 11-year old boy from the northern district of Jaffna, who lost several of his family members after his house was shelled three years ago. "He used to have regular fainting spells, before which he screamed that a shell was coming his way," recalls the Professor. After several months of treatment, the hapless boy is now showing some improvement. But activists say hundreds of other children with similar symptoms remain neglected. At a donor conference held in Tokyo last June, the Needs Assessment Reports prepared by the United Nations, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank stressed the urgent need to rehabilitate war-traumatized children in these provinces. Both the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF) and German development agency, GTZ are presently engaged in training counsellors for traumatized school children. Informs Sundaram Divakalalan, the project manager of a psycho-social project conducted by GTZ, "Bringing war traumatized children displaying many types of abnormal behaviour back to normalcy tops our priority list." Called "Basic Education for Children of the Disadvantaged Areas" (BECAre), the 2000 initiated GTZ project has trained 70 teachers as special counsellors to help students displaying abnormalities largely caused by two decades of war. Apart from this, the project has so far trained 700 "be-frienders," to engage strife-stricken children in activities to help accelerate their process of normalization. Says Divakalalan, "There's an obvious difference between students in the North and East and the other seven provinces. Having witnessed one of the most ruthless wars, a large percentage of them still suffer from problems related to concentration." UNICEF - the pioneering agency working on improving education in the North and the East, has also launched projects for war-traumatized children. One such is co-ordinated through the local NGO, Centre for Human Development, to give therapeutic treatment to war-affected children. UNICEF is running a program in the northern province of Vavuniya, to befriend street children from families of internally displaced people living in camps. Social workers identify their problems and give them financial and psychological help. Most children here are aged between ten and 17 years. Says UNICEF communication officer in Colombo, Sara Epstein, "Many of these children have lost either one or both parents. Coupled with the experience of war, this has made them very disturbed." Underlining the poignancy of their plight, she remarks, "Cases where the child has lost his/her mother, are the most tragic. They keep insisting they want to see their mothers." And deprived of an income, Epstein informs that, "Most of them make a living by collecting used bottles or selling apples." Local Jaffna-based NGO, Shanthyam (Peace), has also started a program to identify affected children especially in the LTTE-controlled areas, and refer them to psychiatrists. In its latest report, the Jaffna-based Information Centre for Mental Health, underscores the need for a sustained, integrated treatment program for such children. The report states that, "Witnessing the horrifying death of loved ones or strangers, seeing mutilated bodies, experiencing the death of all powerful parents are especially traumatizing and can cause a vacuum in the child's mind that can never be filled." But the government is yet to integrate programs conducted by foreign agencies and local NGOs to ensure help to all such children. Says Minister of Rehabilitation and Refugees, Dr Jayalath Jayawardena, "Since the majority of the war-traumatized children are in LTTE-controlled areas, the government and LTTE have to sit together to draw up a formal treatment project for them." He adds that this collaboration hinges on the resumption of the suspended peace talks. Lamentably, although the government and the LTTE have held six rounds of peace talks from September 2002 to March 2003, the rehabilitation of such children did not figure on their agenda. ______________________________________________________________________