FROM RHETORIC INTO REALITY - THREE STEPS TO END CHILD SOLDIERING

Recent years have witnessed a growing international consensus on the illegality and immorality of recruiting and using children as soldiers. Child protection advocates have worked to strengthen international legal standards, based on an underlying assumption that a child-oriented body of international law will help to counter the culture of impunity surrounding crimes against children. However, international law is not enough; more effective implementation is required to end child soldiering.

International legal standards and child soldiering

The prohibition on all recruitment of children under the age of 15 into both armed forces and armed groups has acquired a customary international law status. It is therefore binding on all armed forces and armed groups regardless of whether the State is a party to specific international treaties, or even if there is no State.

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) allows for prosecution of those who recruit and use child soldiers. The Statute defines as a war crime the recruitment and use in hostilities of children under the age of 15 by any armed force or armed group, in both international and non-international armed conflicts. Moreover, it includes sexual slavery as a crime against humanity. This is important as some child soldiers are also forcibly held and used as sex slaves. The ICC has jurisdiction over crimes committed after the entry into force of the Rome Statute, on the territory of, and by nationals of, all State parties.

There is increasing international consensus on the prohibition of conscription or forced recruitment of children under 18. This higher standard is embodied in the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict (Optional Protocol), the International Labour Organisation Convention 182 (ILO 182) and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC).

Challenges to implementation

While these legal developments do set important standards of child protection, too often they do not effectively prevent child soldiering, because of inadequate implementation. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), for example, all parties to the conflict continue to recruit and use children, some as young as nine, despite a prohibition on under-18 recruitment. What steps can be taken to prevent continued child soldiering in violation of international law?

1. Knowledge of children's rights and/or capacity to assert them

Where children, families and communities are unaware of children's rights, they are not empowered to resist child recruitment. Sensitization and public education are important advocacy and prevention tools. Moreover, child rights training sessions with governments and armed groups will help them to understand their commitments, translating legal treaty provisions into practical terms.

However, social awareness is not enough. Efforts must also be made to address “push” factors for child soldiering, rooted in poverty, militarisation of society and break-down of social structures. These issues go beyond a narrow focus on the legal abolition of child soldiering, to broader development and peace building efforts.

2. Monitoring and reporting

Child recruiters more readily violate international law if they feel they act outside public scrutiny. In response, several initiatives have been undertaken recently to gather data on the recruitment and use of children. Monitoring and reporting are inherently difficult, because of political sensitivities, limited access to affected populations and generalised break-down in infrastructure due to war. While precise figures are often difficult to obtain, trends and patterns can highlight problems and motivate appropriate actions for redress.

In November 2002, the Secretary General produced a list of parties to armed conflict on the Security Council agenda that continue to recruit and use children as soldiers in violation of international obligations. Based on the provisions of Security Council Resolution 1379, the list was limited, but a significant precedent in publicly “naming and shaming” child recruiters. Subsequently, Security Council Resolution 1460 called for on-going monitoring of parties on the list and other groups of concern, as well as proposals for more effective monitoring and reporting within the UN system.

The impact of the weight of national and international public opinion on recruitment behaviour will vary from group to group. At the governmental level, regimes that are heavily dependent on international aid and/or domestic support will likely be more concerned with tarnishing their image, while “rogue states” and strong, repressive regimes may be less susceptible to public pressure. Similarly, non-state armed groups tend to react to public scrutiny of their actions in a way that reflects their ultimate aims. For example, the Rassemblement pour la démocratie-Goma (RCD-Goma) perceives itself as the legitimate authority in eastern DRC. As a “government in waiting”, the RCD-Goma has publicly stated on numerous occasions its intention not to recruit child soldiers, and to cooperate with international agencies in demobilising some child soldiers within its ranks. On the other hand, the Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army is intent on fulfilling its interpretation of a higher spiritual calling; therefore, it is less concerned with international and domestic public opinion and regularly commits atrocities against civilian populations, including the abduction and brutalisation of children for military purposes.

3. Accountability

Unless the international community acts upon information obtained through monitoring and reporting, child recruiters will be tempted to limit actions to public relations exercises, without effectively changing the situation on the ground. In the DRC, for example, the government demobilised less than 200 child soldiers in a high profile ceremony, but kept thousands more children within its ranks. The RCD-Goma has tracked demobilised children, re-recruiting them once they have left the safety of rehabilitation centres.

Where clear evidence of child soldiering exists, it is important that perpetrators are brought to account. In Resolution 1460, the UN Security Council endorsed the Secretary General's call for an “era of application” and expressed its intention to “enter into dialogue” with parties guilty of child soldiering “in order to develop clear and time bound actions to end this practice”.

The Special Court for Sierra Leone has set an important precedent by indicting several men accused of conscripting and enlisting children under the age of 15 years into their groups or using them to participate in hostilities, enslavement, pillage, intentionally directing attacks against humanitarian personnel or peacekeepers, unlawful killings, abductions and hostage-taking. Members of the international community have also called for leaders of groups that recruit and use children in the DRC to be declared war criminals and prosecuted by the ICC.

In formal judicial processes, prosecutors only have the capacity to bring to justice those who bear the greatest responsibility for the most serious crimes. It is therefore important that crimes against children are also mainstreamed in parallel reconciliation processes. Truth Commissions in South Africa and Sierra Leone, for example, have specifically addressed violence against and by children. Traditional justice processes, based at the community level within the socio-political sphere governed by village elders and chiefs, should also be conducted in a child-sensitive way. Moreover, traditional cleansing and healing ceremonies in Angola, Mozambique, Sierra Leone and Uganda have allowed some communities to recognise and assuage the guilt that child soldiers carry.

In all accountability processes, appropriate and meaningful child participation should be incorporated. This requires careful reflection on the ways in which children have been involved in, and impacted by, conflict. The best interests of the child should be the guiding principle in discussions surrounding juvenile justice for child soldiers accused of war crimes, and participation of child witnesses in formal judicial processes.

Conclusion

Increasing international momentum has led to the criminalization of the recruitment and use of children as soldiers. This legal progress must be matched by practical implementation. This is a multi-step process involving increased community sensitization and public awareness; adequate monitoring and reporting; and accountability processes for child recruiters. The increasingly robust body of international law prohibiting child soldiers is an accomplishment, but not an end in itself. More must be done to translate this rhetoric into reality.

* Christina Clark is Programme Officer for Africa at the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. This editorial is written in her personal capacity and should not be attributed to the Coalition or its members.

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* An estimated 1.2 million children - both boys and girls - are trafficked each year into exploitative work in agriculture, mining, factories, armed conflict or commercial sex work. World Day Against Child Labour on June 12 aims to focus attention on trafficking in children to prevent and stop the practice. Visit http://www.ilo.int/public/english/bureau/inf/events/cl2003/index.htm for more information.

* In Soweto South Africa, thousands of black school children took to the streets in 1976 to protest against apartheid education policies. Hundreds were shot down. In the two weeks of protest that followed, more than a hundred people were killed and more than a thousand were injured. To honour the memory of those killed and the courage of all those who marched, the Day of the African Child has been celebrated on 16 June every year since 1991, when it was first initiated by the Organisation of African Unity. The Day also draws attention to the lives of African children today. To find out more about this year's Day of the African Child visit http://www.unicef.org/noteworthy/day-african-child/