~
Angelina Jolie, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador
According to the Coalition
to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers:
“Child soldiers perform a range of tasks
including participation in combat, laying mines and explosives; scouting,
spying, acting as decoys, couriers or guards; training, drill or other
preparations; logistics and support functions, portering, cooking and domestic
labor; and sexual slavery or other recruitment for sexual purposes.” [2]
·
As
of mid-2004, up to 100,000 children - some as young as nine - were actively
involved in armed conflict in Africa.*
·
80 per
cent of children aged 8 to 13 in Sierra Leone had suffered the death of a
parent, sibling or close relative; 74 per cent had seen somebody being killed
or injured with machetes; 68 per cent had seen somebody being burned to death
or tortured; and nearly 10 per cent of girls had been gang-raped.***
·
66 per
cent of children in Angola had seen people murdered, and 67 per cent had seen
people beaten or tortured. **[3]
The recruitment of children under
age 15 for military purposes is a war crime under a statute of the
International Criminal Court. In 2007 the war crimes court for Sierra Leone was
successful in convicting three warlords for the use of child soldiers.
Despite the ending of various
civil wars and release of tens of thousands of
child soldiers in the period since 2004, the UN still names
as many as 16 armies and groups where recruitment continues. An estimated total
of up to 300,000 children are in military service, including a significant
proportion of girls. [4]
Campaigners are putting pressure
on over 60 countries which have so far failed to sign the “Optional Protocols”
to the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. Drawn up in 2000, these
Protocols prevent recruitment of children under 18 for hostilities.
The military use of children takes three distinct forms:
children can take direct part in hostilities (child soldiers), or they can be
used in support roles such as porters, spies, messengers, look outs, and sexual slaves; or they can be used for
political advantage either as human shields or in propaganda.
Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution
estimated in January 2003 that child soldiers participate in about three
quarters of all the ongoing conflicts in the world.[5]
CHAPTER 02: SOME OF THE African Nations and Groups
involved in Child Soldier
Burundi: In 2004 hundreds of child soldiers served in the Forces
Nationales pour la Libération (FNL),
an armed rebel Hutu group.
Children between the ages of 10 and 16 were also conscripted by the Burundese military.[9]
Central African Republic: Between 2001 and 2003 children serve in armed
rebel groups, including the Union of Democratic Forces for
Unity (Union des Forces
Démocratiques pour le Rassemblement, UFDR).[10]
Chad: Child soldiers are fighting with the Chadian Military,
integrated rebel forces - the United Front for Democratic
Change (Front Uni pour le Changement,
FUC), local self-defense forces known as Tora Boro militias, and two
Sudanese rebel movements operating in Chad - the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the G-19 faction of the Sudanese
Liberation Army (SLA).[11][12]
Cote d'Ivoire: During
the 2002 civil war, "children were recruited, often forcibly, by
both sides."[13]. Children serve in armed militia groups linked to
the government, including the Alliance patriotique de l’ethnie Wé (APWé)
and the Union patriotique de résistance du Grand Ouest (UPRGO). The
ex-rebel groups now allied into the New Forces (Forces Nouvelles de Côte d'Ivoire, FAFN)
also had child soldiers.
Rwanda: In 2002 Child soldiers were used by Rwandan
government forces and paramilitaries, operating within the Democratic Republic
of Congo.[14]
Sierra Leone: In Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War
and Terrorism anthropologist David M. Rosen
discusses the murders, rapes, tortures, and the thousands of amputations committed
by Small Boys Unit of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) during Sierra
Leone's civil war (1991-2001.) [15] Another
book describing the civil war is A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. It
describes the civil war from the view of Ishmael when he was forced to be a
soldier.
Somalia: A report published by Coalition to Stop the Use of
Child Soldiers in 2004 estimated that since 1991 - 2,00,000 children carried
arms or had been recruited in the country's militias.[15]
Sudan: "In March 2004, there were an estimated 17,000 children in government forces, allied
militias and opposition armed groups in the north, east and south. Between
2,500 and 5,000 children served in the armed opposition group, the Sudan’s People’s Liberation
Army (SPLA), in the south. Despite a
widely publicized child demobilization program, in which it claimed to have
demobilized over 16,000 children between 2001 and 2004, the SPLA continued to
recruit and re-recruit child soldiers."[16] In 2003
it was reported that armed groups were active in government armed forces,
Janjaweed militias, and opposition groups.[17] Former
child soldiers were sentenced to death for crimes committed while they were
soldiers.[18]
CHAPTER 03: INTERNATIONAL LAWS AGAINST CHILD SOLDIER
The Optional Protocol further
obligates states to "take all feasible measures to prevent such
recruitment and use, including the adoption of legal measures necessary to
prohibit and criminalize such practices." (Art 4, Optional Protocol.) Likewise, under the Optional
Protocol states are required to demobilize children within their jurisdiction
who have been recruited or used in hostilities, and to provide assistance for
their physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration. (Art 6(3)
Optional Protocol.)[20]
Under Article 8.2.26 of the Rome Statute of the International
Criminal Court
(ICC), adopted in July 1998 and entered into force 1 July 2002;
"Conscripting or enlisting children under the age of fifteen years into
the national armed forces or using them to participate actively in
hostilities" is a war crime.[21]
The United
Nations Security Council
convenes regularly to debate, receive reports, and pass resolutions
under the heading "Children in armed conflict". The most recent
meeting was on 17 July 2008.[22]
The first resolution on the issue, Resolution 1261, was passed in 1999 (it did not contain references
to any earlier resolutions).[23]
According to Article 77.2 of the Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection
of Victims of , adopted in 1977: The Parties to the conflict shall take all
feasible measures in order that children who have not attained the age of
fifteen years do not take a direct part in hostilities and, in particular, they
refrain from recruiting them into their armed forces.
As the ICRC commentary on
Protocol I make clear, this is not a complete ban on the use of children in
conflict. The ICRC had suggested that the Parties to the conflict should
"take all necessary measures", which became in the final text,
"take all feasible measures" which is not a total prohibition on
their doing so because feasible should be understood as meaning "capable
of being done, accomplished or carried out, possible or practicable".[24]
Article 4.3.c of Protocol II, additional to the Geneva
Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of
Non-International Armed Conflicts, adopted in 1977, states "children who
have not attained the age of fifteen years shall neither be recruited in the
armed forces or groups nor allowed to take part in hostilities".
Under the Optional Protocol to the Convention
on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, which was adopted and signed in
2002, National armed forces can accept volunteers into their armed forces below
the age of 18, but "States Parties shall take all feasible measures to
ensure that members of their armed forces who have not attained the age of 18
years do not take a direct part in hostilities".[25]
Non-state actors and guerrilla forces are forbidden from recruiting anyone
under the age of 18 for any purpose.
CHAPTER 04: MOVEMENTS TO STOP CHILD SOLDIER – NGOs
& HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS
The use of children as soldiers
has been universally condemned as abhorrent and unacceptable. Yet over the last
ten years hundreds of thousands of children have fought and died in conflicts
around the world.
There are
several Non-governmental organisations that try to rescue children from the
death traps.
Henri
Ladyi: Congo
based peace builder Henri Ladyi to liberate child soldiers. The documentary
focuses on the release of several dozen youngsters, and follows Henri as he
travels deep into the bush to meet with hardened rebel leaders. In the past
year Henri has rescued 650 child soldiers – 400 have since been reunited with
their families, the others are being cared for by foster families. 175 children
under ten have returned to school, and those older have been trained in skills
they can use to support themselves. [27]
"At 16, everyone I knew was talking about joining either the army or a rebel
group, it was all we knew. I felt so helpless seeing this violence around me,
picking up a weapon seemed the only answer. But when my cousin was killed I
began to question, to think, and to hope for a violence-free society. I knew I
was not the only one looking for an alternative but it took me seven years to
find people who thought the same as me" - Landry Ninteretse[30]
The
Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers: The Coalition - founded in 1998 is an
international human rights research and advocacy organization that seeks to end
the military recruitment and use of children worldwide. It joins child rights
NGOs in urging countries that have not ratified either the child soldiers or
sale of children (or both) Optional Protocols to the Convention on the Rights
of the Child - May 2010. It seeks to end all forms of military recruitment of
children or the use in hostilities in any capacity of any person under the age of
18 by state armed forces or non-state armed groups, as well as other human
rights abuses resulting from their recruitment or use. [31]
CHAPTER 05: INTERNATIONAL
CONVENTIONS ON CHILD RIGHTS
Convention on the Rights of the
Child:
Legal text from the UN, concerning children`s rights, to be implemented
nationally. It is proclaimed that “State parties shall take all feasible
measures to ensure that persons who have not attained the age of 15 years do
not take a direct part in hostilities." However minors who are over the
age of 15 but still remain under the age of 18 are still voluntarily able to
take part in combat as soldiers. - Entry into force 09/1990. OHCHR.[32]
Optional Protocol to the
Convention on the Rights of the Child: This
represents an optional protocol/ supplement to the convention mentioned above,
concerning especially the involvement of children in armed conflict. States are
required to demobilize children within their jurisdiction who have been
recruited or used in hostilities, and to provide assistance for their physical
and psychological recovery and social reintegration. - Entry into force
02/2002, OHCHR.[33]
Guide to the optional protocol on
the involvement of children in armed conflict: This is
a detailed guide (74 p.) which describes the protocol, with focus on key
provisions, ratification and accession, monitoring and reporting,
implementation, taking action. - UNICEF 2003. [34]
UN resolution 1261: This
resolution from the UN Security Council was the first to address the topic, the
Council condemned the targeting of children in armed conflict including the
recruitment and use of child soldier. – UN 08/1999. [35]
Additional Protocol I of the
Geneva Conventions from 1949 (art. 77.2): The
additional protocol of the Geneva Convention from 1949 was adopted in 1977,
relating to the protection of victims of international armed conflicts. “The
Parties to the conflict shall take all feasible measures in order that children
who have not attained the age of fifteen years do not take a direct part in
hostilities and, in particular, they shall refrain from recruiting them into
their armed forces. In recruiting among those persons who have attained the age
of fifteen years but who have not attained the age of eighteen years, the
Parties to the conflict shall endeavour to give priority to those who are
oldest”. – UN, 1972.[36]
Worst Forms of Child Labour
Convention: The Convention C 182 defines the worst forms of
slavery, and the use of children in armed conflicts is equated with slavery in
art.3/a: “all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery.....including
forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict.” –
Internat. Labour Organization, adopted 06/1999. [37]
UN Resolution 1612: This
resolution implements a monitoring and reporting mechanism regarding the use of
child soldiers. It is reaffirming several former UN-resolutions, all
contributing to comprehensive framework for addressing the protection of
children affected by armed conflict. - UN Security Council, 07/2005. [38]
Child and Young Adult Soldiers –
International Guidelines for Policy Decisions – The Capetown Principles
Here we
find a good collection and a quite complete overview about existing laws and
conventions (with links), as well as the “Capetown Principles” and ARC project.
– GINIE and UNESCO, 1999 [39]
Children and Armed Conflict: This
compendium (60 p.) collects relevant treaties and instruments on the protection
of children affected by armed conflict rendering easier dissemination as well
as providing the reference point for a more systematic monitoring and
reporting.- United Nations/UNICEF 2003. [40]
The Paris Commitments to
protect children from unlawful recruitment or use by armed forces or armed
groups
This is a
declaration (partly recalling the Capetown Principles etc) made in Paris, were
the participants agree on necessity to strengthen childrens rights. - UN/OSRSG
CAC 2007. [41]
CHAPTER 06: SOME OF THE IMPACTS
Military
recruitment is harmful not only for the children themselves, but also for
society as a whole, notes Mr. Olara Otunnu, the UN secretary-general's special
representative for children and armed conflict. Years of schooling are lost and
the children grow up to become alienated adults, prone to violence, he told
Africa Recovery. "Today's warfare in Africa, especially the exploitation,
abuse and use of children, is nothing short of a process of self-destruction.
Look at Angola, look at Sudan, look at Somalia, look at Sierra Leone. This
isn't a small matter. This goes to the very heart of whether or not in large
portions of Africa there is promise of a future for those societies." [42]
Children’s recruitment and use in
battle not only violates acceptable practices of war, but also makes conflicts
both more likely and bloodier. It can also lead to a proliferation of conflict
groups and warring parties. Almost any group is able to fight better and
longer, for a wider variety of causes, many of them personalized, unpopular, or
downright incoherent. Finally, the use of children as soldiers steals their
very childhood, laying the groundwork for further strife.
Probably the most prominent
mental impact on child soldiers is Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. According to
the National Institute of Mental Health, “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD,
is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or
ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. Traumatic
events that may trigger PTSD include violent personal assaults, natural or
human-caused disasters, accidents, or military combat.” In Ishmael Beah’s A
Long Way Gone, he confirms this impact by his recount of terrible nightmares
and an inability to sleep. Those whom PTSD has affected may experience
flashbacks to their traumatic moment(s) in addition to nightmares and sleep
loss, among others. Beah chronicles his own PTSD bouts, saying, “I had a dream that . . . a gunman stood on
top of me. He placed his gun on my forehead. I immediately woke up . . . and
began shooting inside the tent, until the thirty rounds in the magazine were
finished . . . I was sweating, and they . . . gave me a few more of the white
capsules.”[43]
Even
after the conflict is over, they have a hard time being reintegrated into their
home communities. The special needs of child soldiers, who usually represent
the poorest of the poor, are a real burden to the families and communities to
which they return. Girl soldiers — and there are a surprising high number of
them — have an especially hard time adjusting to normal life, especially if
they have children by the men who conscripted them.
But the
issue of child soldiers is a global security concern as well, according to
Peter Warren Singer, who has written a book about the topic. According to
Singer, the use of child soldiers makes conflicts easier to start, harder to
end and peace agreements more difficult to maintain.
Personality disorder occurs
as a result of exposure to violence, impressed ideologies, and forced
acceptance of a perverse code of morals. Child soldiers may lose the ability to
empathize, chronically partake in violent, aggressive, or manipulative actions,
and just act in an unnatural manner.[44] Adjustment disorder occurs
in many child soldiers as a result of the sudden change from civilian life to
that of a soldier. The process by which the child is removed from the army only
serves to compound the problem, as the child must undergo yet another rapid
lifestyle change. In the first phase, the children lose their identities to the
war, and more importantly, they lose their childhood. Depression is another
mental disorder that former child soldiers suffer from. The children who become
depressed feel as if there is not life left for them to live, and come to
regret their actions as soldiers, feeling ashamed. In a sense, depression is a
good sign, since the children have come to see the error in their ways,
although this introspection is also a consequence in itself. However, even if a
child soldier overcomes any kind of mental disorder, that child will never be
able to escape from his memories.
CHAPTER 07: A NATIONAL AND GLOBAL SECURITY ISSUE
“You have to start to look at this issue as not merely
one of human rights but also one that is critical to global and national
security,” Singer told America.gov recently.
Nations need to have a “hard interest” in stopping the
use of child soldiers, he said, because doing so provides the mechanisms to
shrink the pool of failed states and areas terrorists can exploit.
Singer
condemns the tendency of policymakers to lump children’s issues into a separate
and independent category. “This issue of child soldiers is not just about
children,” Singer said. It is “an inherent part of this broader breakdown of
global security that we’re seeing.” (Right Image: Peter
Warren Singer, senior fellow and director of the 21st Century Defence
Initiative at the Brookings Institution.)
Today’s wars regularly
involve horrifying levels of violence and brutality and the impact of on
children has been devastating as they are often abducted to fight and
participate in the full horrors of war. They are also forced to carry out
atrocities that adults shy away from including systematic rape, ethnic
cleansing and outright genocide. Fatin Abbas in his article The New Face of
Warfare described it as “possibly the world’s most unrecognized form of child
abuse”.[46]
Children are sometimes
preferred as they can be manipulated and terrorized and are often willing to
accept the most dangerous assignments because they lack a full sense of their
own mortality or as put by US Secretary of Labour Elaine L. Chao “Children make
good fighters because they think it is all a game, so they are fearless”.[47]
The issue of child soldiers
becomes an existential threat to national security as child soldiers, as young
as five years old, make up ten percent of the world’s combatants and remain
potential recruits for terrorist organisations. With US forces so widely
deployed since September 2001, the phenomenon of child soldiers is a daily
challenge US troops have to face. Thirty percent of all children in Afghanistan
have participated in military activity at some point in their lives. The very
first soldier killed in the “war on terror” was a Green Beret. The incident
which occurred in Afghanistan has been famously documented in several articles
as he was killed by a 14 year old sniper. [48] US forces have also
confronted similar problems in Iraq and the incidents range from child snipers
to full blown combat with children.
CHAPTER 08: CONCLUSION
Some
children are forcibly abducted into government or rebel armies, observes Mr.
Otunnu, but others join for ideological reasons or because viable alternatives
do not exist, given widespread socio-economic collapse, schools that do not
function and the break-up of families. "The fighting groups look
attractive relative to what there is," he says.
Mr.
Jean-Claude Legrand, a senior adviser to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) on the
protection of children in armed conflict, agrees that most children who join
armies are not really "volunteers." They usually join under various
economic, social and political pressures. "You find that some of them just
volunteer to get a meal a day. It's a survival strategy," he told Africa
Recovery. "And many of the children are being promised access to
education."[49]
More than 5000 children are, on a
daily basis, displaced due to armed conflicts somewhere in the world. Many of
these are able to run away from the violence together with their families, but
an increasing number may look track of their loved ones and find themselves
alone in a threatening situation. Among these, some will be recruited into
armed groups. Whereas some children have been abducted and forcedly separated
from their families, others have been driven to volunteer as a result of social
exclusion, and family breakdown, or after witnessing atrocities. Children, both
girls and boys, even under the age of 15 are cynically included and used as
cheap and expendable tools of war, and too many are also exposed to sexual
abuse and exploitation in the context of armed groups. Over the past decade we
have seen the number of child soldiers increasing. And as small arms and light
weapons become more accessible the children are readily armed, forming part of
the ongoing violent conflicts in the different and often forgotten corners of the
world. Despite strong international focus on preventing and bringing to halt,
the active participation of children in war, there is a long way to go. And at
the same time, the work to help the children out of this, to provide them with
safety, education, rehabilitation and social networks represent an extremely
important and complex endeavour. In the following, practical work and
experiences, along with international conventions and regulations are presented
in order to inspire and strengthen this necessary work among children and young
persons who have been exposed to loss, violence and lost childhoods.
The
Copenhagen School while identifying the traditional threat to state security as
a general category also broaden the scope of security and include economic and
societal security. Society’s most vulnerable citizens are made to fight in wars
and are turned into murderous aggressors who are denied a proper childhood. The
most troubling aspect is, however, not only what happens during the fighting
but the legacy it leaves for children after the fighting is done. The recovery
from the traumas of war is hard in itself but the children emerge from war with
little or no education; they are often stigmatized and shunned by communities
and with no family or social support. They have the potential to relapse into
violence, crime and drugs.[50]
The need
to reintegrate and educate former child soldiers is therefore paramount to
avoid recurring trouble and insecurity. A regimented process of rehabilitation
and societal reconstruction is a prerequisite for a secure nation and UNICEF
has been very vocal in securitizing the need for reintegration as a
prerequisite for lasting security which includes family tracing and reunion,
psychosocial support, vocational training and education.
Ms Graca
Machel, an expert appointed by the Secretary General to study the plight of
children in armed conflict, submitted her report to the General Assembly in
1996. Her ground breaking study The Impact of Armed Conflict on children highlighted
the brutal realities faced by children[49] recruited by armed groups
and the use of sex violence as a weapon of war. The UN subsequently took action
through the Security Council, the General Assembly, UNICEF, other UN
institutions, regional political networks, and the International Coalition to
Stop the Use of Children as Soldiers to bring an end to the exploitation of
children and prosecute those involved. One of the achievements was to make the
recruitment of child soldiers a war crime thereby ending impunity for rebel
commanders and others involved in their recruitment.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rerefences
3.
*The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers; **UNICEF; ***Plan; Child
Soldiers Global Report 2008
5.
Peter W. Singer (January 14, 2003). "Facing Saddam's Child Soldiers".
9.
ibid
14
– 18. ibid
28. ibid
30. ibid
44. ibid
51. http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N96/219/55/PDF/N9621955.pdf?OpenElement--------------------------------------------
~ T. Zamlunmang Zou @ Pupu Zou
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