28 Feb. - 6 March 2002
Issue No.575
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 28 Feb. - 6 March 2002 Issue No.575 |
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The child soldier
In conflict zones across the globe, children are being used as cannon fodder, writes Negar AzimiOmrie bolts through the bush, a Kalishnakov slung over one scrawny shoulder and a handful of grenades in either hand. His head, still spinning from the crack cocaine he and the rest of his regiment have just snorted, is filled with thoughts of Stallone; watching Rambo is a compulsory part of training as a member of Sierra Leone's rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Tonight, pro-government militias are said to be descending on the RUF stronghold of Koidu, and Omrie has been given the formidable task of manning a civilian checkpoint. He has been instructed to shoot, maim and terrorise on the spot -- routine tasks for this decorated soldier. After all, at the age of 14, he is a three-year veteran of one of Africa's bloodiest wars.
Congolese child soldiers brandishing their weapons (photo: Reuters)
While Omrie's case might at first seem unbelievable, or at least exaggerated, it is not. For upwards of 300,000 children in the world today, participation in combat is a harsh reality. In this twisted picture, children are too often found at both ends of the gun.
In the face of such an alarming rise in the use of child soldiers, the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, coming into force this month, exists as the strongest expression to date of the international consensus against the use of children in combat. The protocol, linked to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, prohibits children under the age of 18 from engaging in armed conflict, being subject to recruitment campaigns, or forced conscription of any kind -- monumental, perhaps. Before the protocol's entry into force on 12 February, existing statutes allowed children as young as 15 to be recruited and thrust into combat. As of today, 14 nations have ratified the protocol.
Steven Liebes, executive director of the US- based Child Soldier Network, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the protocol constituted a significant step in a grassroots effort to rid conflict zones of child soldiers: "The ratification of the optional protocol brings attention to the issue and the devotion of much needed UN resources in telling the world that putting children in the midst of war zones is unacceptable. Now we have the legitimacy of international law backing us."
While the afore-mentioned 300,000 figure is disturbing enough, in more than 85 countries around the world, hundreds of thousands more have been recruited into government armed forces, paramilitary organisations, civil militias and a variety of other non-state armed groups. Meanwhile, millions of children are subject to military training and indoctrination in myriad youth movements and schools from Burundi to the Philippines. For these children, the simple game of cops and robbers has assumed an unprecedented significance -- giving an entirely new meaning to what was once innocently deemed child's play.
The intersection of multiple factors has created conditions conducive to such a disturbing increase in the participation of children in combat. Perhaps most significant is the mind- boggling global proliferation of light-weight small arms. Technological advancement has made such weapons remarkably easy to use. In some countries, it is not uncommon to find a child of 10 stripping and reassembling a semi-automatic rifle in a matter of minutes. A single pull of the trigger is all it takes to release a steady stream of bullets. Cost is hardly an issue either; on the streets of Kinshasa, an AK-47 can be picked up for as little as $20.
Meanwhile, children as combatants often prove well-suited for today's brand of conflict because they serve as cheap and expendable commodities in the context of economies of war. Children are easily abducted and with the proper "motivation" may be rendered ruthless, remarkably obedient killers. Children are handy as spies, messengers, sentries and porters on the front line, and at times are designated for suicide missions. In Myanmar, children as young as 10 are used as human minesweepers. In Sri Lanka, in October of 1999 alone, 49 children, among them 32 girls aged between 11 and 15, were among 140 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelaam (LTTE) cadres killed in a clash with security forces at Amkapaman in the north of the country. The young girls among them taking part in suicide missions were ironically hailed the "birds of freedom" by fellow rebels.
Indeed, most child soldiers share a strikingly similar profile. These are often desperate, marginalised children. For the poor, orphaned, or otherwise disadvantaged in and about conflict zones, the promise of regular meals and shelter is enough to lure a child into the hands of combat. Here, "voluntary" service assumes countless subtleties as the line between a willingness to fight and the hand of force is terribly blurred.
Nevertheless, thousands of children are definitely kidnapped and forced into combat each year. Colombian government-backed paramilitary organisations routinely take kids as young as eight from rural families. In Iraq, thousands of children aged 10 to 15 are forced to participate in the Ashbal Saddam, or Saddam Lions Club, a youth movement formed after the Gulf War. Training reportedly includes small arms use, hand-to- hand combat, and infantry tactics. According to the London-based Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, more than 8,000 children in Northern Uganda have been abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel faction backed by the Sudanese government. The LRA, in turn, subjects such children to a most brutal existence, training them as fighters while, often, young girls are forced into "marriage" with rebel commanders. In the end, these girls serve as concubines -- virtual sex slaves. Needless to say, the problem of sexually transmitted diseases is a major one amongst these children -- to say nothing of the emotional hardship and trauma endured when one is systematically deprived of a childhood. Says Liebes of the Child Soldier Network, "All it takes is a gun at the back and these girls have little choice. You can imagine what a disaster this is in a period when AIDS is simultaneously devastating many of these countries."
While the problem of child soldiers has been most critical in Africa and Asia, children are employed as soldiers by governments and armed groups in countless countries in the Americas, Europe and the Middle East. A number of the most industrialised countries of Europe and North America, with some of the most sophisticated armed forces in the world, continue to accept voluntary recruits at the age of 17, and in the case of Britain, as young as 16.
A coalition survey of the Organisation for Security Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) found that more than half of all member states accept people under the age of 18 into their armed forces. Children are routinely picked up by recruiters in Western Europe to engage in the Kurdish and Kosovar struggles. The United States -- together with Somalia the only country in the world that has not ratified the all-encompassing Convention on the Rights of the Child -- has deployed people under the age of 18 in the Gulf War, Somalia and the Balkans.
It remains to be seen if the seminal protocol will carry any weight beyond being a merely symbolic gesture. Indeed, perhaps the biggest obstacles encountered in combating the endemic problem of child soldiers are found in the developed countries who have vested interests in the conflicts that thrive on such combat. After all, the root causes of conflict are often natural resources, while virtually all such resources are sold to countries in the First World. Thus, as long as such countries' energy, mineral and natural resource companies have access to oil, diamonds and other commodities, the conflicts, and by extension, their reliance on children as soldiers, may conceivably exist in perpetuity.
And while the optional protocol has few "teeth" in the realm of enforceability, human rights advocates argue that it will serve as a potential deterrent for governments and armed groups seeking legitimacy from the international community at large. In addition, the materialisation of the International Criminal Court (ICC), predicted to begin its work by mid-year, will serve as a crucial mechanism for the enforcement of the protocol. The statute of the ICC defines recruitment or use of children under 15 as a war crime, and will enable the landmark body to prosecute parties who have recruited children in such a manner -- whether enrolled in national armies, paramilitary organisations or opposition forces. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council has recently requested that the UN secretary- general prepare a list of parties to armed conflicts that recruit or use children.
Jo Becker, advocacy director for Human Rights Watch's Children's Rights Division, told Al-Ahram Weekly such developments would help "shame" violators.
Scrutiny of violators by the media and accompanying pressure by ratifying governments will also prove important: "We have already seen positive signs as a result of the protocol and increasing awareness of the problem of child recruitment. A number of countries, including South Africa, Columbia and several European nations, have amended their legislation to raise the age of recruitment into the armed forces. And in several countries, including Sudan, Sierra Leone, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, children are slowly being demobilised," Becker said.
Indeed, before this month's victory in the campaign to eradicate the problem of child soldiers, a handful of isolated victories had been registered. In Peru, for example, where it was publicly denounced in parish churches, forced recruitment reportedly decreased. In Myanmar, protests from aid agencies led to the release of boys forcibly recruited from a refugee camp, while in Sudan last year, more than 2,500 children were released from captivity in combat zones in southern Sudan in a negotiated agreement between the UN and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). A handful of rehabilitation programmes exist in both conflict and post- conflict zones, attempting to aid children in the arduous task of reintegration into some semblance of a normal existence.
However, for too many children, such victories and even the advent of the Protocol mean little in a tangible sense. Lofty declarations, resolutions and treaties drafted in privileged halls will continue to prove irrelevant until the day child soldiers are released from their miserable fates. Effectively, they are slaves enlisted in wars they often know little about.
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