In the midst of Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war, there was a forcible recruitment of child soldiers. Unlike adults, children obey any order no matter how brutal. They do not tend to negotiate with enemies, take bribes or even form alliances with each other against their master. Children are much more manageable and controllable because they do not demand to get paid for any services; instead, they want to have someone to look up to, or someone to show them love. Most child warriors actually refuse to go home out of the fear of being killed and ostracized because of labels and stigmatizations like; ‘the boy who chopped off my arms’, or ‘the boy who killed my family’.
Another important dimension to realize is that in many cases, these children have already spent at least half of their lives as child soldiers: this type of life and family is all they have become socialized and accustomed to - the rebel leaders become their father figures, and their gang peers become their siblings. These young recruits may have had larger dreams for their future when they were younger, but were forced to abandon their desired future for this alternative.
This story of recruiting is mostly for the male children of Sierra Leone; for the female children however, it is a little different. A few of the female children become combatants, while the majority of them are recruited to perform more traditional roles as cooks, porters and sex slaves. Girls abducted in this brutal mayhem are raped and abused: they are vulnerable to both acquiring, and transmitting numerous venereal or sexually transmitted diseases, especially HIV/AIDS.
After a young girl, having gone through all of this, attempts to return to her village, she will face rejection from her family. This is so because she is no longer a virgin, and the family rational is; who would want to marry her? These young girls usually end up prostituting themselves for both survival; and because, that is all they know. The problem of rejection is one which both the male and female children in Sierra Leone share. There is a traditional cleansing ritual that war children can go through to redeem themselves of their crimes. An animal sacrifice is used in this symbolic ritual; however, because of the high costs, it is rarely performed.
“I’ve seen people get their hands cut off, a ten-year-old girl raped and then die, and so many men and women burned alive... So many times I just cried inside my heart because I didn’t dare cry out loud.”- A fourteen-year-old girl, abducted in January 1999 by the Revolutionary United Front, a rebel group in Sierra Leone.
Instead of the government of Sierra Leone discouraging these horrendous operations, they also participate in the recruiting of little boys and girls as combatants. The government actually justified the use of these innocent children as some sort of social-welfare program. The Ministry of Defense, Sam Hinga Norman passed a statement: “Alot of these kids witnessed the slaughter of their parents and were so traumatized that they were living like beasts in the bush......we had to catch them and bring them back into the fold as human beings.” The way which the government dresses these child “soldiers” makes them look more like little boys dressed for Halloween. These children are made to believe that this attire will shield them from bullets. The government insights and stirs up hate in these young children with mottos such as avenge and revenge the rebels who killed your loved ones. These children, unlike the rebels, do not have as much of a difficult time going back to their villages, as they are supposedly combating for a better cause and motive.
In this global village, we are faced with a double edged sword situation when dealing with child soldiers. On one hand, we may want to open our borders to these once innocent children; but at the same time, they are criminals. When dealing with this matter, one has to bring to light all possibilities and realities. Just because we find one to be a child, it does not acquit them from the atrocities they committed; whether or not they were forced into violence at the beginning, for the most part, as we have seen, it becomes a nature that they know.
The international community had for many years ignored the issue of child soldiers. There are a number of treaties and conventions that address the issue to some extent; however, have loopholes on important subjects such as, defining the age of which one is considered a child. These treaties are in regards to international human rights law, international humanitarian law, international criminal law and the international labor law. On June 21st 2000, it was established that children should not be recruited as child combatants by the government or any other rebel groups.
The more recent child soldiers’ protocol was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in May 2000. What this protocol does is basically add on to international law, stating that it is important to establish an age below which one is considered a child - 18 years was the resulting consensus. The Convention on the Rights of a Child, which was the previous treaty to this protocol, had established a child to be anyone under 18 years of age, but had a clause stating that in armed conflict, the minimum age of recruitment can be as low as 15 years. Not all countries have signed this treaty, and so this is part of the reason why child soldiers are still being recruited. This protocol addresses and forces governments to be more diligent in enforcing laws against child soldiers. Nonetheless, it is not the only way to help implement these laws. Most of the positive change that has taken place to date has been as a result of pressure groups and advocacy from the people, i.e. the government will not bother signing a protocol unless there is pressure coming from the international community, as well the individuals composing it.
A key to understanding the dynamics of child soldiers is to understand war and conflict. There is a significant tie between war and poverty. Many of these conflicts in Africa that recruit child soldiers are fought over specific resources. Conflicts over these resources carry high profits for not just the war lords, but the international market as well. Perhaps if international diamond and gold companies stopped buying their materials from these sources, these conflicts would not be as rapidly growing as they presently are. This rapid growth means rapid recruitment. Not just recruitment, but cheap recruitment. Many of these children grow up into these structures and they themselves become the recruiters.
Another key aspect in understanding and trying to prevent the recruitment of child soldiers is arms trades. When reporting news from regions facing war and conflict, reporters often use the term “small arms” to describe the weapons used to carry out these operations. Using such a term bears serious implications for everyone involved in this fight against war and conflict. The term “small arms” does not give a sense of urgency and undermines the bloody realities of these arms. The international community continues to participate in arms trading with governments and regimes in Africa and around the world.
These small arms are not that small in real life and neither is their capacity to successfully carry out an operation to kill. Children as young as 8 years old are forcefully groomed to pick up these arms and use them against their masters’ enemies. Governments and the producers of these arms need to realize that they have a moral responsibility to make sure that these weapons are not illegitimately use. International law needs to openly address and discuss how better to regulate arms trade. This body has to come up with concrete solutions on how to deal with the governments and producers that fail to comply with the set regulations. At this point in time, with so much weaponry all over the place in the wrong hands, there should be a ban or confiscation of all of these arms that are already out in the hands of innocent children. A program like this one can be carried out by local governments to help keep child soldiers numbers decreasing.
There is a lot that can be done in the fight against the recruitment of child soldiers:
a) Sign petitions to stop child soldier recruitment still going on in places like Uganda.
b) Raise awareness in the media, at work, at school and at home.
c) Observe children’s days such as, the International Children’s Day, or the African Child Day.
d) Most importantly, find out if your government has signed the protocol.
The practice of recruiting and exploiting children is one that is unfortunately too common in our world. Innocent children in Africa and around the world are being subjected to armed conflict, poverty and HIV/AIDS. The treatment of child soldiers in different African conflicts shares the same patterns, making it easier to detect and curb. One of the major reasons why these atrocities are still taking place is because the international community does not pressure these African governments to take serious action on this important matter. Many governments believe as a result that they can get away with this exploitation of children: others use international law’s neglect as a justification for continuing with thier recruiting.
“I would like to give you a message. Please do your best to tell the world what is happening to us, the children. So that other children don't have to pass through this violence.” A 15-year-old girl who escaped from the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda
So many promises are made to children everyday of which most of them are broken. There has been activism around the matter of children’s rights, but it has been mostly theory-based. It is time for more action and less theory because innocent children are falling victim to a fight they do not understand. There needs to be a great deal of specificity and solid outlines of accountability as to how to deal with those who fail to comply with these standards.
The right to education should be a fundamental right to all children on earth, regardless of geography, income and ethnicity. Children should be given an opportunity to be part of an educational institution so as to lessen their chances of involvement in armed conflicts at such early age. In war, children are the most vulnerable people. In comparison to adults, children are left with deeper scars and trauma. The children who are recruited into these armed conflicts are deprived the opportunity to education; and as a result, a future in civil jobs. Every child on earth should have the right to life and most importantly, a childhood.
I dream of the day when children receive protection from all of the perpetrators of these horrendous acts. Every adult has a moral responsibility to guarantee this fundamental right - governments or rebel groups, manufacturers of, or dealers in, weapons of war, unscrupulous businessmen, parents, teachers, siblings and friends; all of us have to work together to make this possible. Children should not be robbed of their childhood. There is a saying that goes, “your can tell a lot about a society by the way it treats its most vulnerable people.” When it comes to the issue of child soldiers, it is time that the world realizes that it is not “their” problem but ours - if not today, tomorrow.
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