Comments from the team

I was very disturbed by the mass graves and exhumations we filmed in Bosnia. I think the four of us found it quite difficult. No matter how prepared you feel - having seen the news footage and read about the war, the disappearances and massacres - being at the actual site and watching people's remains and personal belongings being unearthed, in such a peaceful, beautiful place, is shocking. And I will never forget meeting the hundreds of children who seek refuge in Gulu town, in northern Uganda, every single night because of one man's brutal and pointless war.

Kim Bartley

One strong memory I have is of Saah James who was 12 years old. When we met him, he was making a jigsaw designed for children aged 5. Saah had been a commander of a Small Boys Unit under Charles Taylor. He had fought with an AK dragon - an AK 47 with legs so that a small child wouldn't get tired whilst shooting. Saah told us about the battles he had fought and the people he had killed, one of them with his hands. Saah told us the reason he was so successful was that his commander had dipped him for three nights in a magic potion and that this potion had made him bulletproof. We knew that the commanders fired blanks at children to make them believe they were invincible. Saah was being rehabilitated, he was learning to read and write and play. But as we were leaving Saah told us he was still bulletproof and that he would always stay loyal to Charles Taylor, and that when Taylor came back Saah would we waiting to fight for him.

Keelin Shanley

One crazy place we filmed was the dump in Honduras. Here hundreds of children spend their day sorting through rubbish for what is only a few cent. It is a weird existence. They stand under the truck as it tips out the rubbish and they scramble to collect the best bits. Each child is assigned a particular item that they have to collect - be it aluminium cans or plastic bottles. They even seemed to know which trucks came from the best areas and therefore which of them had the best rubbish. The dust and filth was something else.

Mick O'Rourke

Sitting on a bridge in the centre of Monrovia, we came across an old and wrinkled blind man who was humming a tune that was both African but also profoundly blues in the style of Blind Willie Johnson. For me it seemed to sum up Liberia's complex history so beautifully and his careworn, melancholy vocal encapsulated the destitution and chaos of his country in the present day. It was really satisfying for me that the recording made of him became such a strong musical feature in the program on Liberia.

Ronan Coleman