"What was it like before the war?"
"What is it like now, during the war?"
"How do you picture the future?"
These three questions were put to 100 Bosnian and Croatian children between 6 and 12 years of age who were displaced from their homes and living in temporary (and unsafe) conditions in Croatia. It was 1993, at the height of the war in the former Yugoslavia, and Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières was developing ways to help traumatized children express their experiences of war.
The result of this endeavor is "Childhoods Interrupted," a moving exhibit of 54 original drawings, each responding to one of the three questions and designed to raise international awareness of the atrocities that were committed against civilian populations in the Bosnian war. The exhibit premiered at the Pompidou Center in Paris in 1993 and toured throughout Europe before it visited New York, Boston and Los Angeles in January 1999.
The trauma experienced by these young children is evident in their use of color, disproportion, or sense of detachment. The texts accompanying the drawings describe the experiences that inspired each drawing: a seven year old witnesses a public rape of a young girl; a nine year old remembers his house being bombed and his ensuing evacuation; empty landscapes reflect the disappearance of civilians from the village of a five year old whose father was among those massacred.
Throughout the war in the former Yugoslavia, Doctors Without Borders ran surgery programs, distributed medical supplies and drugs to hospitals and clinics, operated mobile clinics, and worked in refugee camps.
Confronted with an entire population experiencing intense and massive trauma, Doctors Without Borders implemented a comprehensive mental health program which continues to this day in the hands of the Bosnians themselves. Begun in 1993, the program was structured to respond to the emotional trauma of tens of thousands of people, including children, affected by the war and atrocities they had witnessed. It was in this context that the project took shape.