CONTENTS | ANB-BIA HOMEPAGE | WEEKLY NEWS
by Patrick Mawaya, Malawi, June 1999
THEME = CHILDREN
The use of child soldiers is becoming increasingly prevalent in
Africa.
The school is no longer a place for the acquisition of knowledge but a recruitment centre
for soldiers
According to a report entitled: "The Use of Child Soldiers In Africa: An Overview", and having as subtitle: "Child Participation in Armed Conflict in Africa", it is believed that more than 120,000 children under 18 years of age are currently participating in armed conflicts across Africa. This report was issued by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, and was presented during the Appeal for Peace Conference which took place in The Hague, The Netherlands, 11-15 May 1999. Some of the children considered in the report are no more than 7 or 8 years of age.
The report states that the countries most affected are Algeria, Angola, Burundi, Congo-Brazzaville, Congo RDC, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan and Ug-anda. Furthermore, Ethiopian government forces engaged in an armed conflict against Eritrea, and the clans in Somalia, have both included an unknown number of under-18s in their ranks. On the other hand there has been little or no recorded use of under-18s by governments or rebels in the Comoros', Guinea-Bissau's, and Senegal's internal conflicts, and, according to the report, there are almost certainly no under-15s participating in hostilities in these three combat areas.
The report says children begin participating in conflict as young as the age of seven. Some of them start as porters (carrying food or ammunition) or messengers, others as spies. Children also spend sleepless nights watching for the enemy. They carry torches for grownup rebels. When they are not actively engaged in combat, they can be seen manning checkpoints. In the front line, adult soldiers can normally be seen standing 15 metres behind the children so that if bullets start flying, it's the children who are the first victims. And in any given conflict, when even a few children are involved as soldiers, all children, civilian or combatant, come under suspicion. For instance, according to the report, a military sweep in Congo-Brazzaville resulted in all "rebels who had attained the "age of bearing arms", being killed"
Children participating in armed conflicts face a number of risks. Their immaturity may lead them to take excessive risks. As a result of being widely perceived as being "dispensable commodities", they tend to receive little or no training before being thrust into the front line. Reports from Burundi and Congo-Brazzaville suggest that as a result, child soldiers often die in combat.
Girls, too, are used as soldiers, though generally in much smaller numbers than boys. In Liberia, according to the report, about 1% of the demobilised child soldiers in 1996-1997, were girls or young women. Females joined one or other of the warring factions for their own protection, becoming willingly or unwillingingly, girlfriends or wives of faction leaders.
The report says atrocities have all too frequently been committed by child soldiers, sometimes under the influence of drugs or alcohol which they may be forced to take. But the report further says drugs alone do not account for the atrocities committed by children. It is their systematic abuse by adults, combined with a pervasive culture of violence, that is ultimately responsible.
For example, In March 1998, at the trial of a 13-year old Congo RDC soldier who had shot and killed a local Red Cross volunteer in Kinshasa after a dispute on a football pitch, even the prosecution declared that the lack of control of boy soldiers was as much as the fault of their older commanders, and constituted extenuating circumstances. The boy was nonetheless condemned to death, but President Kabila commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.
Although recruitment of child soldiers continues unabated, it does not mean that there is no requisite legislation to prevent the recruitment of child soldiers. Possibly, what is lacking is the necessary mechanism for enforcing the legislation.
According to the report by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, the overwhelming majority of African States set 18 as the minimum age for recruitment, whether voluntary or through conscription. South Africa is in the process of increasing its minimum age for voluntary recruitment to 18 (conscription has already been abolished), and Mauritania may also be raising its minimum age from 16 to 18. In Angola, however, a country severely affected by the phenomenon of child soldiers, the government recently reduced the age of conscription to 17 years. Given the lack of systematic birth registration, even younger children are inevitably recruited, even if the will to prevent underage recruitment exists. Moreover, reducing the minimum age of conscription to 17 is currently lawful since international law sets 15 as the international minimum age.
Burundi and Rwanda have the lowest legal recruitment ages on the African continent - 15-16 years for volunteers. In Chad, parental consent appears to allow the minimum age of 18 to be effectively reduced. Concerns also exist as to legislation in Botswana, Kenya and Zambia where children with the "apparent age of 18" can lawfully be recruited. Libya appears to accept volunteers at 17 years, if not younger. In South Africa, in a state of emergency, children of 15 years of age or above can be used directly in armed conflict by virtue of the Constitution. Legislation in Mozambique, a country whose past has seen widespread use of child soldiers, specifically allows the armed forces to change the minimum conscription age (18) in time of war.
If only domestic legislation was always respected in practice, the problem of child soldiers in Africa would be significantly reduced. Many African States - Benin, Cameroon, Mali and Tunisia to name but a few - appear to follow appropriate recruitment procedures that prevent underage troops being recruited into the army. However, in Angola, Burundi, Congo-Brazzaville, Congo RDC, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan, and Uganda, children, some no more than seven or eight years of age, are recruited into the (government) armed forces (though the true number will vary depending on how one interprets the word "volunteer"). In Congo RDC, between 4,000 and 5,000 adolescents responded to a radio broadcast calling (in clear violation of international law) for 12-20 year-olds to enrol to defend their country; most were street children, according to the report.
Tens of thousands of children are forced to join up, sometimes at gunpoint. In Angola, forced recruitment of youth ("Rusgas") continues in some of the suburbs around the capital and throughout the country, especially in rural areas. It has been claimed that military commanders have paid police officers to find new recruits, and Namibia has collaborated with Angola in catching Angolans who have fled to Namibia to avoid conscription. In Uganda, there have been persistent reports that street children in Kampala have been approached by soldiers and forced to join the army in order to be sent to Congo RDC and in November 1998, parents protested against the forced recruitment by the Uganda People's Defence Forces, of 500 youths in Hoima.
In Sudan, although the minimum legal age of recruitment is 18 years, recruitment into the Popular Defence Forces can start lawfully at 16 years. Even in armed forces that otherwise appear to respect recruitment procedure, the creation of government-sponsored militia forces, tends to open floodgates to child recruitment...and so the sad saga continues
Recognising the problem of child soldiers, there is a campaign by various groups, to stop the use of child soldiers. Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund says: "We have to recognise the rights of children to survival and to peace. Every peace agreement must include the demobilisation of child soldiers and re-integration into society." She further says: "If the world has to achieve lasting peace, we must invest in the children now."
The Campaign to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers proposed the following:
Much work has to be done if the Campaign to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers is to be successful because using child soldiers is exploiting children.
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CONTENTS | ANB-BIA HOMEPAGE | WEEKLY NEWS
PeaceLink 1999 - Reproduction authorised, with usual acknowledgement