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| Cold War: a term used to describe the relationship between the United States and Soviet Union from World War II until 1990 that was characterized by intense political opposition and military rivalry that never developed into a full-scale, armed war |
With the increase in intra-state wars in the 1990s after the end of the Cold War, the use of children as soldiers increased rapidly. It is a global problem with estimates suggesting as many as 300,000 children are being used in 30 conflicts around the world.1 National militaries and rebel groups alike are using children in armed conflict. In part, this staggering number has been driven by the availability of lightweight arms that are easy to use even by children.
Children are particularly susceptible to manipulation and forced recruitment due to their physical and emotional immaturity. In particularly violent or political conflicts, adults may prove difficult to recruit and to manage, whereas highly impressionable children are more easily molded and forced into service. As a result, armed forces are more likely to target children for recruitment in prolonged conflicts as a way to replenish their ranks.
In many instances, children are abducted from their families off the streets or from their schools. After their abduction, children may be forced to commit atrocities against their own families in an effort to alienate them from society and bind them to their abductors.2 In some circumstances, children will be forced to use drugs as a means of brain washing them into believing that they must fight for a given cause.
Other times, children may join forces to obtain regular access to food or for survival as a result of extreme economic hardship at home. Further, ongoing conflicts may eliminate other alternatives for children by ruining their family farms, closing their schools, or robbing them of their parents.
Once pressed into service, children fill many roles, from serving directly in combat to working as spies, messengers, and cooks, to clearing mines with their bodies or being forced into sexual roles for the personal use of commanders. Girls are particularly susceptible for the latter role, but have also been forced to commit atrocities and can make up as much as one third of the child soldiers pressed into service in some conflicts.3
Additionally, some of these children are younger than 10 years old and are forced to participate in unbelievable violence.4 The atrocities they are encouraged to commit, sometimes through the use of drugs or threats of violence, are often incomprehensible to such young children. The gruesome level of violence they are exposed to often results in severe psychological stress that can prove debilitating throughout their lives even once hostilities have ended.
Because of the horrific consequences for children, international human rights law has sought to prohibit their use as soldiers. The Convention on the Rights of the Child specifically states that state parties “shall take all feasible measures to ensure that persons who have not attained the age of fifteen years do not take a direct part in hostilities.”5 The Convention further encourages states parties to give priority to older recruits when recruiting children between the ages of 15 and 18.
Some states have tried to strengthen these restrictions by adopting the Optional Protocol to the Convention. This protocol extends the obligation to take all measures to prevent those under 18 years of age from taking a direct part in hostilities, while also banning the drafting of anyone under 18 into the armed forces, but allowing voluntary recruitment of 15 to 18 year olds.6
The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child contains a stronger prohibition, banning the recruitment (voluntary or otherwise) of anyone under 18. Importantly, the International Criminal Court includes the use of children under 15 in hostilities as a war crime that it can prosecute. These overlapping legal requirements on states that have adopted these conventions, charters, and statutes are designed to strengthen the notion of children as a protected class particularly deserving of defense against hostilities and the disruption of their development.
The Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008 became effective in 2009. This act requires that the U.S. State Department’s Annual Trafficking in Persons report publishes a list of countries that recruit and use child soldiers. In the following fiscal year, those governments that are identified are subject to restrictions on security assistance and commercial licensing of military equipment. Countries identified in 2010 include: Burma, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.7
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Child Soldiers in Sierra Leone The devastating eleven year civil war in Sierra Leone wreaked havoc across this West African country of approximately six million people from 1991 to 2002. Throughout the conflict, horrific brutality and unconscionable crimes were committed by forces on all sides of the war. In particular, children were heavily recruited to become ‘soldiers’ by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), the two primary opposition forces, as well as by government forces later in the war. The various forces recruited child soldiers for many of the reasons outlined above in this issue brief; children are easily indoctrinated, fearless, and have not yet developed a clear sense of what is morally right or wrong. It is unclear how many children ended up fighting in the civil war, but during the conflict, one government commander estimated that in one small district alone over 3,000 children were involved in the fighting.8 Sadly, many of the children who were pressed into service in Sierra Leone were forced to commit some of the worst atrocities such as killing their own families and murdering or maiming innocent civilians. Often, commanders would give the children drugs prior to any attacks so that the children would do anything they were ordered to do, no matter how violent. The brainwashing and exposure to violence often became so complete that some of the children were proud of how good they were at killing. As the civil war came to a close in 2001 and 2002, the fledgling government of Sierra Leone sought United Nations assistance for delivering justice for the innocent victims caught in the civil war. A novel approach was adopted, creating the Special Court for Sierra Leone that is a hybrid domestic-international court. This court has been given jurisdiction to try crimes related to the recruitment and use of child soldiers by all parties in the civil war. The Court was also given jurisdiction over the crimes committed by child soldiers themselves – a controversial decision because it could mean the prosecution of children as young as eight.9 (The discussion of children in criminal justice systems that follows will shed light on the controversy surrounding the prosecution of children.) The creation of the Special Court for Sierra Leone was an important step in the effort to confront the evil of using children as soldiers. It will help strengthen the norm against this particularly gruesome exploitation of children and may discourage the future use of children in combat situations. Presently, Charles Taylor, the former President of Liberia, is undergoing trail at the Special Court for Sierra Leone (which is located at the Hague) for crimes against humanity and several other charges. To watch a personal account of child soldiers in Sierra Leone, click here. |
1 “Child Soldiers: A Global Issue.” Amnesty International
2 “Facts about Child Soldiers”
4 Amnesty International, “Child Soldiers”
5 “Convention on the Rights of the Child”
7 “Trafficking in Persons Report.”
8 “Sierra Leone: Sowing Terror; Atrocities against Civilians in Sierra Leone”
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