The
Scourge of child soldiers in Africa.
Situational
analysis
Article
22 of the African charter prohibits the use of children for the use of war.
However according to the new African the June 2011 edition approximately 300
000 children were participating on conflicts of the continent. It is estimated
that 1 in every 10 solders is a child. Thomas Lubanga was prosecuted by the ICC
for the abduction of 14 000 children for the purpose of war in DRC. Joseph Kony
was wanted by the ICC for abducting 30 000 children for the purpose of war in
Uganda. In Angola both the largest opposition group, National Union for the
Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), and the government used child soldiers in
the war. Children's rights groups have estimated that as many as 11,000
children were involved in the civil war. Some children received weapons and
arms training and fought in the conflict. Many others acted as porters, cooks,
spies and labourers. In South Sudan, an estimated 9 000 children have been
recruited into armed forces and groups by both sides in conflict in the
country. While many children participate in combat, others are used for sexual
purposes, as spies, messengers, servants, or to lay or clear landmines. In
Liberia, for instance, 10 percent of an estimated 60,000 combatants in the
civil war that began in 1989 were children.
The reason why the problem is eluding all
these international legal frameworks is because the causes of child soldiering
are complex and structural and that most of the time communities would try to
deal with the symptoms of the problem. The major contributory structural cause
in child soldiering is poverty (Cahn, 2005) which transcends
through almost all other causes of the problem.
However, other causes could cover failure of
regionalism, failure of enforcement systems of enacted regional policies or
laws and the collapse of government systems in a conflict afflicted country.
All
children have the right to be protected from violence, exploitation and
abuse. Yet millions of children
worldwide from all socio economic backgrounds across all ages, religions and
cultural suffer such abuses especially in conflict zones. The most prevalent child abuse in conflict
zones is child soldiering where motivations are wide and spread, though this
essay will mostly dwell on structural ones. The Machel Study (1996) showed
that in some countries, children constitute a significant percentage of the
combatants. In Liberia, for instance, about 10 percent of an estimated 60,000
combatants in the civil war that began in 1989 were children.
The
most common structural cause of the menace of child soldiering is poverty (Zack-Williams,
2001). This happens to be the primary cause of child
soldiering. Poverty is prevalent in
Africa owing to a number of factors but mostly poor development policies. This poverty is most predominant in rural
areas where the largest chunk of Africa’s population lives and worse still
where most of the conflicts are fought (Cahn, 2005). Most of the time the rural people depend on
substance farming such that the eruption of civil war would invite absolute
poverty to communities.
Poverty
could be at national level whereby a government is not able to provide the
basic social services that would guarantee a better future for the youths (Singer, 2001). One such a social
service is education. As the
children are often not attending school they are in effect limiting their
future chances of actually improving their situation and are more likely to
continue a cycle of poverty through to the next generation (Hope, 2005) that
would force them into child soldiering.
The circumstances of education have a very immense impact on young
children as they help in forming their morals, values and goals for later life (Hughes, 2000). Access to education and the
content that is actually taught in schools are of equal importance. The
relevance of education to employment, the way in which children are treated in
their schools, or the way the school operates as a recruiting place are also
important when studying the relationship between education and the recruitment
of child soldiers. Likewise, the lack of education is a perilous trap because
children will find armed violence as the only possible solution to their
unappeasable boredom (Singer, 2001).
Whilst
studying the significance of education, the link between education and
employment is also very important. In many of Africa’s unstable countries, this
connection is very fragile and as a result children often find themselves
thrown into a world of poverty and unemployment where education has no value. A
consistent cycle of poverty leads to one course for its children that appears
to offer economic protection and that course is that of armed involvement (Cahn,
2005). As poverty increases in third-world countries the
connection between education and employment is rapidly eroding and tragically a
child coming to the conclusion that education is not very important in their
lives.
Weak
state systems also allow child soldiering to thrive in conflict zones as
monitoring becomes ineffective (UNICEF, 1997). The ‘state’ is often virtually non-existent due
to corruption or conflict and thus not able to provide sensible economic
policies that may encourage industrial development or any social safety nets.
The result is that there would be simply insufficient jobs; the only
organization is that of the army or rebel group and therefore child soldiers in
Africa do not exist exclusively for ideological reasons, but rather reasons of
survival and escape from abject poverty. There is need to address weak state
systems to deal with child soldiering.
Failure
to relocate from the conflict zone due to poverty would render families or
clans defenseless (Singer, 2001). As a result children are forced by their
elders to join the war to defend their tribes or families. This is prevalent in tribal or religions
conflicts as is the current case with the South Sudan and the Central African
Republic (CAR) conflicts respectively.
In South Sudan the conflict is mostly between the Dinka and the Neur tribes
with the latter led by President Salva Kiir and his former Vice President Riek
Machar. In CAR the conflict is mostly between the Moslems and the
Christians. At times in such
circumstances the children join voluntarily to protect their religions, beliefs
or their relatives.
Motivations
that may lead to a child ‘voluntarily’ choosing to become a child soldier often
stem from a view that the armed force will provide various opportunities not
available at home. Additionally they are seen as providing a sense of
adventure, survival in the case of an orphan, revenge against killed family
members (blood revenge) and escape from an either oppressive or abusive home
(Cahn, 2005). In Ethiopia, families have encouraged sons to join opposition
groups as a means of avenging the deaths of family members (Matthew, 2008). Psychologically, people who have been victims of
violence are at great risk of becoming perpetrators of violence. Families may
also encourage sons to join the military for economic reasons, seeing the
salary from soldiering as the most likely route to survival. Some boys join the
military for adventure or to win fame and the respect of other males, others
bask in the praise of mothers who express pride in seeing their sons in
uniform.
However,
assertions that children join armed groups voluntarily are debatable. Coomaruswamy
(2013) argues that it is difficult to measure the extent of voluntary intention
of the child in joining the struggle.
She argues that children are not capable of making such a morale
judgment. As such she believes that any
decision by children to join the armed group is either through direct coercion
or through indirect coercion by way of bad conditions that exist in the local
environment. At times the young soldiers are hardened through drug abuse (Hughes,
2000).
Nevertheless the quest for national identity,
liberation, and a secure homeland animates many armed conflicts. Typically,
identity conflicts are saturated with an ideology of liberation struggle that
draws a sharp line between Us and Them, glorifies the in-group while
denigrating the out-group, and honors high levels of commitment to the cause
(Cahn, 2005). Particularly in conflicts influenced by strong religious
ideologies, youth may view the cause as having divine sanction, making it a
clear-cut struggle between Good and Evil. Conflicts bordering around religion
and ethnicity usually recruit child soldiers due indoctrination or
identity/ideological issues. In Rwanda during the early 1990s, the
Hutu-dominated government used radio to spread hatred of the Tutsis, who were
demonized as murderous outsiders (www.savethechildren.org). This helped prepare children for roles as killers
in the youth militias in the 1994 genocide. Such conflicts usually lead to martyrdom
which feeds into child soldiering.
Children could join armed groups
through direct coercion or mandatory conscription (Singer, 2001). In such an environment children are
threatened with death or they would witness those resisting being shot to death
and resultantly fear is instilled into them.
Well
known targets for this repulsive behaviour are schools, children walking home
from school, refugee camps and from the home, often during the night. Militias
often use brutish methods to weaken resistance to forcible recruitment. The
case study of Uganda reports that people who resisted attacks by the Lord's
Resistance Army would be cut with pangas (machetes)
(Matthew, 2008). Quite a number of victims
had their lips and ears chopped off in macabre rituals. Some
are severely beaten or dragged by armed group elements. In
Ethiopia, armed militias would surround a public area such as a marketplace,
order every male to sit down, and then force into a truck anyone deemed
"eligible." At particular risk of abduction were also teenagers who
worked on the streets selling cigarettes or candy.
Another contributing factor is that of
‘displacement’. Children that are separated from a family due to a variety of
different reasons and the children will not have any reference for guidance,
support or education. These children’s displacement may be the result of past
wars that have created a generation of orphans as well as other children that
are dislocated (Coomaruswamy, 2013). Often these times children may identify with an
armed group and possibly even volunteer their services to an armed group.
However many children most likely initially move to either live on the streets
in urban areas or possibly be able to access an orphanage for protection and
shelter, although many will end up in refugee camps for displaced peoples. It
is from these places of ‘safety’ that these special risk groups are often
forcibly recruited and as they are especially vulnerable and feel defenseless
they will usually come to acceptance of promises that a powerful armed group
will also provide them with protection, shelter, food, and other basics of
survival (Save the Children Federation, 2001).
Failure
of regionalism is another contributory factor that has led to child
soldiering. Regional blocks have failed
to come up with specific protocols that are enforceable to deal with child
soldiering. Some Governments have not ratified and implemented pertinent
regional and international treaties and incorporate them into national laws,
for instance, the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child,
which, upon entry into force, should have restricted the age of 18 as the
minimum age for recruitment and participation in any armed force or armed group
as enunciated in the Charter’s Article 22 (http//treaties.un.org).
The ACERWC (2012) notes that, more than ten years after the entry into force of
the Charter, its ratification has not yet been completed and observes that
there has been slowness in the reporting of its implementation as required by
Article 43 of the Charter. The African Committee of Experts on the Rights and
Welfare of the Child (ACERWC) bemoans that more than ten years after the entry
into force of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, only
forty-six (46) of the fifty-four (54) Member States have ratified it, and only
fifteen States Parties have fulfilled their obligation of submitting reports on
the implementation of the Charter to the Committee. Regionalism has also failed
to stop wars in DRC, CAR and South Sudan for instance. Such a situation has
provided fertile ground for child soldiering.
Most African states do not have
national laws that specifically deal with child soldiering although they have
ratified the ACRWC. However, it is generally difficult to regulate fighting
groups outside the government. This is
the reason why the world has failed to capture Joseph Konny of the Lord’s
Resistance Army (LRA) who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC)
for war crimes that include child soldiering (Matthew, 2008). It is naturally difficult to expect terrorist
groups like LRA or the Boko Haram of Nigeria to effect laws to protect
children’s rights. Singer
(2001, p. 45) attributes the expansion of child soldiers to the proliferation
of light weapons
“Rarely mentioned in analyses of
world threats, which typically focus on the most complex and expensive systems,
light weapons (rifles, grenades, light machine guns, land mines, and other
“child-portable” systems) are the weapons most often used in contemporary
warfare and produce 80 to 90 percent of all the casualties. Technological and
efficiency advances in these weapons permit the transformation of children into
lethal fighters”.
After
the Cold War there were enormous amounts of small arms in surplus throughout
the world. Until recently, the weight and technicality of small arms precluded
the employment of children in front-line positions. The proliferation of
simple, light arms such as the M16 and AK-47 assault rifles has meant that they
are now easily handled and carried by the child. This is due in part to lighter
weight, less moving parts, which allows for easy stripping and reassembling
even for a child under the age of 10 (Faulkner, 2001).
Failed
Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) also lead to former child
soldiers opting to return to become rebels. This is mostly due to the fact that
the ‘gun’ would have given a sense of power to the former child soldier
(Honwana, 2002). One thing
that is hate by former child soldiers is that the process takes long and
difficult in many cases and will require feasible and special programs to
achieve rehabilitation and reintegration (Zack-Williams, 2001; Malan,
2000). The most intriguing situation in the DDR
programme is the reintegration of the former child soldier into a community
he/she would have committed atrocities. In Mozambique, for instance, recruiters
from RENAMO forced boy recruits to kill someone from their own village (Machel
Study, 1996). In such a scenario the former child soldier will opt to remain in
the bush than to return to a village where there is an uncertain future.
Finally
it must be understood that war in some societies, after it has existed for some
time, is a “growth industry” with its own logic and trajectory (Matthew, 2008).
The supply of arms, control of resources through force, the recruitment of
fighters all become part of the political economy. Arms dealers acquire vested
interest in perpetuating the war, as do local commanders and local warlords (Malan,
2000).
In such context children are socialized to accept as a part of life and to seek
advancement within the structures that are created.
Such
an industry grew because of the impunity that has been characteristic of most
perpetrators of child soldiering (Singer, 2001). However, recent development are
encouraging as twelve (12) high profile individuals publicly indicted by
the International Criminal Court at The Hague, seven have been charged with war
crimes against children such as using child soldiers. They include Lord’s
Resistance Army leaders Joseph Kony, Vincent Otti (since deceased) and Okot
Odhiambo (Matthew, 2008). Also on trial or in the
pre-trial stage are cases against Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, a militia leader from
the Democratic Republic of Congo, who is on trial for recruiting children under
15. The ICC also has open cases on DRC commanders Bosco Ntaganda, Germain
Katanga and Matthieu Ngudjolo Chui for their crimes against children.
Liberia’s
Charles Taylor has already been convicted and sentenced in The Hague over
crimes against humanity that includes child soldiering.
The
rehabilitation of child soldiers
The
process of rehabilitation of child soldiers is divided into three categories
1. Disarmament
and demobilisation
This
is the process of removing child soldier from the ranks of military groups.
This may come as the result of the end of the conflict or the development
worker, must negotiate for the removal of children from the ranks of military
groups. Jimmy Carter tried in Sudan, Betty bigobe in Uganda negotiated with
Joseph Kony.
Once
the children are removed from the ranks of the militia groups , there must be
given immediate basic needs in transit and an interim care centre in the place
of arrival.
2.
Provision of the rehabilitation ideals
NB
This step involves working on the child’s physical, mental ,spiritual and
economic wellbeing.
Physical
aspect
This
involves instituting the treatment of physical injuries, the treatment of STIs,
drug rehabilitation, disability training and a focus on nutrition.
·
Mental and emotional aspect
Upon
return from the trenches former child soldiers suffer from physichological and emotional
disturbance like extreme aggressiveness, with-drawl insominia, feelings of guilt
and high turned anxiety. It is important to start solutions like Team building
activities i.e. sports , counselling memory book and memory box programs the
re-establishment of normal daily routines the resumption of education and exposure
to the normal forms of leisure are methods by which the development worker can
rehabilitate the child and physichologically and emotionally.
·
Economic aspect of rehabilitation
In
some cases it is necessary to expose former child soldiers to vocational
training and provide the children with the start up kits upon re-integration.
The final step of the process of rehabilitation is re-integration.
3.
Re-integration
The
process of tracing the child’s parent or guardians or the child’s community of
origin. The aim is to reconcile the child soldier with the above named
institutions.
NB to this end it is a process that involves
counselling of the child and the probable recipients of the child.
NB
In the some cases there is a need of the development worker to facilitate
spiritual cleansing of the child and other rituals for example in Angola where
cleansing rituals are done. When the child gets re- admitted into their
community the development worker will continue to undertake Monitoring and
Evaluation.
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