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Cite as: Goodwin-Gill, Professor G S and Cohn, Dr I,<BR> Child Soldiers, The Role of Children in Armed Conflicts
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Goodwin-Gill, Professor G S and
Cohn, Dr I,
Child Soldiers, The Role of Children in
Armed Conflicts
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994 Hb stg 25, Sb stg 10.95
Reviewed by
Stuart Maslen
Research Officer, United Nations Study on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children, c/o UNICEF Geneva< smaslen@unicef.ch>
Copyright © 1995 Stuart Maslen.
First Published in Web Journal of Current Legal Issues in association with Blackstone Press Ltd.
Web JCLI | [1995] 3 Web JCLI | Download this file | Bibliography
A representative of a Sudanese, allegedly non-governmental, organisation recently informed me that, contrary to international propaganda, no children were currently serving in the armed forces of the Khartoum regime and hence none was participating in their divine struggle against the SPLA. I was delighted to receive the news. If only it were true. In fact, in Sudan, as in dozens of other countries that have been engaged in external and internal conflicts during the past decades, children, some as young as seven or eight years old, are not only serving in the armed forces of government and armed opposition groups, but are participating directly in hostilities. Although accurate information is scarce, it is generally agreed that the magnitude of the problem is increasing. In the aftermath of the recent Rwandan conflagration, several hundred children were imprisoned in Kigali prison accused of participating in acts of genocide.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (hereafter the "ICRC") sought to raise international awareness of the incidence of "child soldiers" in the 1970s. Their efforts resulted in the inclusion of provisions in each of the two 1977 Additional Protocols to the 1949 Geneva Conventions relating to recruitment and participation (PI, article 77; PII, article 4), although they were disappointed in their attempt to set the minimum age for both Protocols at 18. "Child Soldiers: The Role of Children in Armed Conflict" (hereafter "Child Soldiers") was conceived by the Swedish and Icelandic national Red Cross societies as a means of supporting initiatives to achieve this objective. Commissioned by the Henry Dunant Institute, the research centre of the Red Cross movement in Geneva, Child Soldiers is the work of two eminent lawyers, Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill and Dr Ilene Cohn.
As things stand, international law provides that children should not be recruited or allowed to participate under the age of 15. This prohibition is, however, subject to differing interpretations. The obligation set out in article 77 (2) (c) of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, for instance, provides that States:
"shall take all feasible measures in order that children who have not attained the age of fifteen years do not take a direct part in hostilities and, in particular, they shall refrain from recruiting them into their armed forces."
The ICRC's draft proposed "all necessary measures", but delegates at the prior Diplomatic Conference wished to "avoid entering into absolute obligations with regard to the voluntary participation of children in hostilities" (Dutli 1990, pp 421-34). Clearly, then, the obligation is rather less than absolute.
There is also debate as to the precise scope of the term "recruitment". The authors are firm in their assertion that it covers voluntary enlistment, basing their argument on the language of article 77 and the ordinary definition of the word "which is to strengthen, reinforce or replenish, irrespective of source or method" (p 62). Doubts, however, remain and uncertainty is easily exploited by those who would seek to bypass international law. In the draft optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Quaker Peace & Service have sought to clarify this question by specific allusion to the scope of the term as covering voluntary and compulsory enlistment.
Indeed, the drafting of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989 had provided a further opportunity for the ICRC, the United Nations, particularly UNHCR and UNICEF, together with a plethora of non-governmental organisations finally to reach their goal of setting the minimum age at 18 for recruitment and participation. Overt resistance from states came initially from France, Russia, the UK and the US. The US proved to be indefatigable in its opposition, relying on a legalistic argument that international humanitarian law should not be amended by a human rights treaty.
In the 1994 working group of the Commission on Human Rights convened to discuss a draft optional protocol on the participation of children in armed conflict, the US continued to maintain this stance, though with rather less conviction than previously. Negotiations continue in October 1995, though it would seem that a compromise may be reached whereby an exception allowing the attendance of under- 18s at military academies would be granted.
Some individuals and organisations have questioned the advisability of drafting new, stronger standards when existing ones are not respected. In addition, cultural relativists claim that the West is seeking to impose its view that children are passive creatures to be mollycoddled until the age of 18 but who then, almost magically, turn into full independent adult human beings. They argue that in many African and Asian societies, children mature at the age of 15 or below and, therefore, have the right to participate from this age. Although there is some merit in both arguments, neither is convincing. The anomaly in the international legal protection for children in this particular instance is rather glaring and the consequences for all children, not just those who take up arms, are severe. Combatants will always tend to shoot first and determine combatant status afterwards. Equally, children are more likely to commit abuses against civilians, whether through inexperience or ignorance of the rules. It is in everyone's interest to set the age limit as high as possible. The only "losers", if such they are, are the military commanders who are deprived of their cannon fodder.
The great strength of Child Soldiers lies in its lucid exposition of the problem. Based on primary field research in Liberia, Sri Lanka and the Occupied Territories and on other secondary sources, the authors set out the reasons for the involvement of children in conflict and the conditions of their participation. Some children are forcibly enlisted. RENAMO, for example, the Mozambican opposition force, regularly raided schools killing the teachers and kidnapping the children. Once "recruited", the children were put through a cruel period of training which sometimes involved their being forced to kill friends or members of their own family (see Boothby 1992, pp 4-5). Likewise, youngsters in the refugee camps in Goma have been rich pickings for the armed forces of the former Rwandan government. Based on their, admittedly anecdotal, research, the authors suggest, however, that instances of forcible recruitment represent the minority of cases. Most children volunteer (depending perhaps on one's definition of the word), whether out of a desire for revenge, ideological conviction, a need to participate in society, or simply as a means of securing food and shelter. For unaccompanied children and street children, the army may be the father they never had.
The seemingly positive aspect of belonging is picked up on in the book. Roger Rosenblatt's assertions (Rosenblatt 1983, p 101) that war gave child participants a mission in life, order, hierarchy, physical fitness and a sense of importance, are balanced against the physical and mental abuse often, though not always, a part of military training, the self-evident risk of death or serious injury in combat, and the often acute value distortion resulting from their experiences. Extreme cases of human rights abuse include the Iranian children, for example, who were driven across minefields during the 1980 to 1988 war with Iraq in order to detonate mines before the adult soldiers trod on them. More commonly, children will be beaten or tortured in order to encourage discipline and to create ready killers. A recent Human Rights Watch publication on the problem of child soldiers in Liberia (1994, p 37) reports the observations of a childcare worker in the country:
"Kids were flogged for minor offenses, or locked up. Sometimes they were tabayed*, which temporarily paralyzes your arms, because the blood doesn't circulate. Sometimes they were made to tabay others. Some kids have told us that they were forced to have sex with a woman in public, to please their commanding officer and to humiliate the woman. Some took part in gang rapes; some were raped themselves."
* A form of torture in which a person's elbows are tied together behind his back and the rope is pulled tighter and tighter until his rib cage separates.
In Liberia, inducements to join armed groups included promises to children of money and whatever they could loot. Having endured such brutalisation in training and given such an incentive to pillage, respect for civilians is inevitably compromised.
What, then, should happen to these children when the fighting finally comes to an end? Rehabilitation projects are scarce in number and frequently poorly funded. When the United Nations sought money for the rehabilitation of the children in Kigali prison accused of genocide, they were rebuffed. An effective project was set up by the International Catholic Child Bureau and others in Sierra Leone and received 360 children that UNICEF helped to demobilise from the governmental armed forces. Many more remain, however, and the problem of access to children serving in the forces of armed opposition groups remains a major challenge to programmers. Even after the cease-fire in Mozambique, RENAMO was very sensitive about its child soldiers, particularly after a radio station used reports as propaganda against them. Hence, when the demobilisation process took place, children were excluded. This ultimately resulted in riots by the children themselves, keen to receive their food and salary in the same way as any other soldier.
Child Soldiers is an impressive piece of work with good description and clear legal analysis, although it is certainly not the last word on the subject. The authors acknowledge that much remains to be done, particularly in the programmatic field. They rightly identify the need for preventive measures to tackle the root causes of recruitment and participation, but the precise programmatic interventions required (if such are possible, for it may require a substantial improvement in fundamental socio-economic conditions within a particular country or area) are not adequately discussed.
In response to this Study, in June 1995, the Henry Dunant Institute is bringing together in Geneva selected Red Cross national societies from north and south. They will endeavour to draw up a plan of action for all national societies to assist children affected by armed conflicts, particularly child soldiers. In tandem with this, the Red Cross movement is conducting an advocacy campaign with UNICEF to raise public awareness of the problem.
Professor Goodwin-Gill is now continuing his interest in the subject having been recently appointed Research Co-ordinator for the United Nations Study on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children headed by Ms Graca Machel, the former Education Minister in Mozambique. He is currently working with a consortium of NGO's headed by Quaker Peace & Service in Geneva who will seek to obtain the data on child soldiers that is so sorely needed and so notably lacking. Until now, organisations have been forced to rely principally on speculation and press reports. We do not have enough profiles of child soldiers, nor a clear enough idea of the numbers that are actually involved. The information obtained by the project will feed into a database set up by Radda Barnen, the Swedish Save the Children organisation, following a recommendation made in the book.
Fifty years ago, the mention of child soldiers evoked 10 year-old members of Hitler Youth defending Berlin against the Russians with Panzerfaust in the dying days of the Second World War. With the increasing recognition that the participation of children in armed conflict is a problem spiralling out of control, this issue is finally receiving the public and media attention that it deserves. Whether serious attempts are made to reverse the trend depends to a large extent on the long-term impact of Child Soldiers and the initiatives it has already spurred.
Boothby, N, Upton, P and Sultan, A (1992) "Boy Soldiers of Mozambique", in Refugee Children (Oxford: Refugee Studies Programme).
Dutli, M T (1990) "Captured Child Combatants", in International Review of the Red Cross, Sept- Oct 1990, pp 421 et seq.
Human Rights Watch, Asia and Human Rights Watch, Children's Rights Project, Easy Prey: Child Soldiers in Liberia, USA, September 1994.
Rosenblatt, R (1983) Children of War (New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday).