Shem Boniface Schneider: stones and flowers. An interview on therapy with former child soldiers and war-affected adults

Abstract

In this interview, conducted in the summer of 2026, psychotherapist Shem Boniface Schneider describes his therapeutic work with former child soldiers and survivors of the civil war that devastated Northern Uganda until 2006. As part of a project carried out by Vivo International and through a screening process conducted directly in local villages, individuals suffering from severe post-traumatic disorders were identified and were subsequently offered the opportunity to undergo a course of Narrative Exposure Therapy. Schneider explains how finding a trusted person to whom they could recount the atrocities they had suffered and committed has helped many former child soldiers to mentally reintegrate their experiences of extreme inhumanity. Coming to see themselves no longer as born killers, but rather as children who had had no other choice, enabled them to reconnect with life and gradually regain a sense of trust in themselves and in others.