Child soldiers: Children are often used in armed conflicts; why?

by Aftab Alam

(August 17, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) The United Nation Security Council at its meeting held on July 17, 2008, expressed once again its strong and equal condemnation of the recruitment and use of children in armed conflicts, and of their killing, maiming, abduction, rape and other sexual violence against them.

The President of the council, Pham Gia Khiem, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs of Vietnam, reaffirmed the need for states to comply with their obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocols, and for non-state actors to refrain from recruiting or using children in hostilities.

In his opening statement, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described the protection of children in an armed conflict as a litmus test for the UN and its member states, saying: “It is a moral call and deserves to be placed above politics.”

The active participation of children in hostilities is a disturbing factor—serious enough to justify the increasing attention the subject is receiving within the international community.

Children as young as eight are being forcibly recruited, coerced and induced to become combatants. Children drawn into violence are too young to resist and cope with consequences they cannot imagine.

Children participating in hostilities are a deadly threat not only to themselves, but also to the persons whom their impassioned and immature nature may lead them to shoot at. When the draft of the first protocol to the 1949 Geneva conventions was being introduced, the ICRC’s representative succinctly summarised the problem: “Too frequently children were used as fighting or auxiliary troops by a party to the conflict. Only too happy to make themselves useful and feeling that by doing so they were behaving like adults, children asked for nothing better.

“To take advantage of such feeling was particularly odious, for although children taking such action ran precisely the same risks as adult combatants unlike adults they did not always understand very clearly what awaited them for participating directly or indirectly in hostilities”.

According a report by the Coalition to Stop the use of Child Soldiers and endorsed by the UN, at any one time more than 3,00,000 children under 18 years, both boys and girls, are fighting as soldiers with government armed forces and armed opposition groups in more than 30 countries worldwide.

The participation of children in armed conflicts has become a common feature of new emerging armed conflicts in which there are regular armed forces on one side and guerrillas on the other. The changes in the nature of wars and military strategy have made children more vulnerable.

The recruitment of child soldiers is motivated by several reasons. Children from impoverished and marginalised backgrounds or separated from their families are most likely to become combatants.

According to a study by Graca Machel, child soldiers are recruited in many different ways — some are conscripted, others are press-ganged or kidnapped, and still others are forced to join armed groups to defend their families.

In many instances children are arbitrarily seized from streets, or even from schools and orphanages. Some children become soldiers simply to survive.

In war-ravaged lands where schools have been closed, fields destroyed and relatives arrested or killed, the report says, the gun is a meal ticket and a more attractive alternative to sitting home alone and afraid.

Children’s involvement in an armed conflict can extend from indirect help to actually taking up arms. While children might start out in indirect support functions, it does not take long before they are placed in the heat of the battle, where their inexperience and lack of training leave them particularly vulnerable.

Their participation in armed conflicts brings into focus two issues: first, whether children ought to be recruited into the armed forces; and second, whether they ought to be permitted to participate in armed conflicts.

The International Humanitarian Law responded to this issue in 1977 when two additional protocols to the 1949 Geneva Conventions were adopted. For both international and internal armed conflicts, the protocols establish 15 years as the minimum age of recruitment. This standard was reiterated in the Convention on the Rights of the child.

The most notable development in this regard was the adoption of the Optional Protocol (OP) on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict on May 25, 2000. The OP not only proscribes recruitment of children in armed forces but also requires that child soldiers recruited or used in hostilities contrary to the provisions of OP be demobilised, or otherwise released from service and that they be assisted in physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration.

The international law pertaining to children and armed conflicts has now moved from mere standard setting to being recognised as a crime.

The Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) sets out “conscription or enlisting children under the age of 15 years into the national armed forces or using them to participate actively in hostilities” as a war crime.

Notwithstanding the law, children are still taking part in hostilities and continue to be innocent victims of armed conflicts. A wide range of concrete measures on the part of the international community become pertinently important in order to check the enrolment of children into armed conflicts.

To end their suffering it is essential that the provisions already in force be observed and upheld by the international community.

Further by making these rules as widely known as possible, genuine respect for the rights of children can be secured. Non-governmental organisations, religious groups and civil society in general can play important roles in establishing ethical frameworks that characterise children’s participation in armed conflicts as unacceptable.

The demobilisation of child soldiers should be encouraged. The media can prove useful in exposing the use of child soldiers and highlighting the impact of armed conflicts on children.

( The writer teaches human rights at Aligarh Muslim University )
- Sri Lanka Guardian