They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children

by Roméo Dallaire

  It is absolutely essential that we prosecute the adult leaders, but what should we do with the child soldiers? Almost all member nation states of the UN have agreed to formal processes to protect child soldiers from prosecution and to deem their use a crime against humanity through conventions and administrative procedure (see the appendix for a complete listing of these significant legal and administrative conventions and international processes). So has the ICC, which classified not only the employment of children under fifteen years of age in hostilities as a war crime and a crime against humanity, but also their recruitment, along with intentional attacks on hospitals or schools, rape and other grave acts of sexual violence against children.

  And yet in the global report issued by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers in 2008, incidences of the detainment, prosecution and punishment of former child soldiers are numerous, including in Burundi, Rwanda and the DRC. From that report:

  Burundi

  After taking office in August 2005, government forces targeted real or suspected FNL [Forces nationales de libération] supporters, arresting, torturing, and even summarily executing those suspected of belonging to or supporting the FNL. Although the age of criminal responsibility was 13, children as young as nine were detained on suspicion of collaborating with the FNL … Captured child soldiers were reportedly severely beaten in detention, some with metal bars and hammers. Some were denied medical attention until human rights groups intervened on their behalf.

  Democratic Republic of the Congo

  Children captured from armed groups were detained by FARDC [the Armed Forces of the DRC] members in order to gather information on armed groups or to extort money from family members. Some had been beaten while in detention. Former child soldiers faced intimidation and harassment by FARDC members, including non-respect for their official demobilization certificates … Children were arrested, detained and tried in military courts for military offences and other crimes allegedly committed while they were in armed forces or groups. The trials contravened Article 114 of the Military Justice Code, which stipulated that persons below the age of 18 did not fall under military jurisdiction … At least 12 children were known to have been sentenced to death since 2003. The Child Soldiers Coalition was informed in mid-2007 that executions were no longer carried out in the DRC, but at least five children were believed to remain in detention under sentence of death in July 2007 in prisons in the eastern DRC.

  Rwanda

  Some Rwandan child soldiers repatriated to Rwanda were reportedly arrested and beaten by the authorities … Of the 120,000 people detained for involvement in the 1994 genocide, some 4,500 were reportedly below the age of 18 at the time of the genocide. Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, ordered the release of all “genocide minors” in January 2003, but under implementing regulations only those who had spent the maximum possible sentence in pre-trial detention were eligible to be freed.

  Child soldiers do, however, have some influential support in high places. David Crane, the American lawyer who served as chief prosecutor for Sierra Leone’s UN-backed war crimes tribunal (and the person who issued the indictment against Charles Taylor, at the time the president of Liberia), testified with me before the government of Canada’s Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development in 2008. In part, he said:

  [W]hen I was the chief prosecutor … I chose not to prosecute child soldiers, as it is my opinion that no child under the age of 15 can commit a war crime … I literally walked the entire countryside, listening to the people of Sierra Leone in my town hall meetings tell me what took place in that particular region. I was in Makeni, the former headquarters of the infamous Revolutionary United Front, and I was speaking to a group of about 400 people … I was answering questions about the special court and other issues, and a little hand came up from the back. I walked to the back of the room and this young man about 12 years old stood up. He had been injured and had become deaf from the conflict. He signed, but he also spoke, and in the atonal voice of someone who is deaf, looked me right in the eye and said he had killed people, he was sorry, he didn’t mean it. He was 12, the conflict had been over about two years, so you can do the math. He was probably eight or nine years old when he was killing human beings. I went over to him, tears coming down my cheeks, and hugged him. He wept in my arms. That’s a child soldier. There were 35,000 of them in Sierra Leone alone. So one has to consider, despite what he may have done, who is really at fault here. I would say that a child soldier and the victims of child soldiers all are victims, because they are usually placed in these situations in armed conflict, be it in Afghanistan, East Africa, Uganda, or West Africa, in situations they cannot control.

  The international law in this area is pretty clear, even though it doesn’t say that children are immune from their war-like acts. It just says that children are to be especially protected—as per the Geneva Convention. That suggests that we shouldn’t put them in situations that cause them to do these things, even if they do them voluntarily, because a child does not have the capability of making such choices.

  Before I go further—having covered why children are being targeted in this fashion, next I want to explore how they are recruited—I need to reinforce the point that David Crane was making in his testimony. Whether commanders abduct children or recruit them voluntarily, using children as combat troops is always a crime on the part of the leaders. The child in either case should be viewed and treated as a victim of this crime and not be held responsible for decisions made under extreme duress.

  It may be hard to imagine that children would voluntarily enlist as child soldiers, but remember the conditions under which so many children exist, in the Great Lakes Region of Africa alone. Such a challenging existence in and of itself can lead some children to volunteer to become soldiers. A war or conflict breaks out and a child sees a national army, militia or rebel force whose members seem to have plenty to eat, who wear attractive clothing, who get respect from wielding a gun, and who take not only what they need but what they want. Understandably, such a life, for a child who has only known poverty and hunger and disenfranchisement, can be alluring, especially considering the child does not know or understand the reality he or she will soon encounter as a child soldier. The disastrous economic and social conditions in regions such as this can and do significantly contribute to voluntary recruitment.

  Another form of “voluntary” recruitment can occur as a result of displacement, which civil war in this region naturally occasions. A family may have to flee their home for somewhere they feel safe, usually a refugee or internally displaced persons’ camp. At such camps, security is usually non-existent and rebel groups, bandits or even government forces can take control through the force of arms. They can impose rules, put taxes on families and conduct strategic violence, such as rape. The predominant ethnic group in the camp may have legitimate grievances with the government or the rebel force, may feel an extreme loyalty to their country or ethnic group and may willingly wish to join the fight for what they perceive to be their rights. Or a family or parent can lead their child willingly into service as a soldier, buying protection for the rest of the family and the village by providing a “volunteer.”

  A heartbreaking and far too common means of both voluntary and involuntary recruitment arises when children are orphaned or separated from their families during a time of conflict. Solitary children may decide that their only means of survival is to attach themselves to the nearest group of adults who appear able to protect and provide for them. Peer pressure or support inside the group can reinforce this sense of false security. Armed groups can replace the desperately needed family as well as prey on the child’s sense of fear or revenge. The consequences for the child can be lifelong. As T.S. Betancourt and K.T. Khan noted in a paper on the mental health of children affected by armed combat, published in the International Review of Psychiatry in 2008:

  Armed groups
offer access to food, shelter and other basic needs during times of conflict when access is difficult and when child combatants are taken far outside of their native homes and villages. Once a child is a member of an armed group, the child develops a “sense of belonging to something, when nothing else is functioning.” The younger a child is at the time of their capture, the less likely they will have memories in the long term that reflect society before the war. This impacts their desire to end conflict and to return to their villages once the fighting is over. Consequently there is a need to ensure the youngest children are protected.

  But by far the most common form of recruitment is involuntary. Children are targeted by government, police, army, rebels or plundering bandits who physically and psychologically sever them from their homes and families. Kidnapping or abduction is sometimes temporary—for example, when the child is used as a porter to carry supplies or wounded personnel, until the child drops and is left to die from exhaustion and starvation. But often the abduction is relatively long-term—a matter of years, not weeks or months—with the child taken to some sort of base for training and socialization.

  An armed group may simply enter a school, village or farm and forcibly take the children. In these cases, parents and siblings are often murdered and the children’s homes destroyed. In many conflict zones, children may be forced or tricked through the use of a blindfold to hold and fire weapons at their neighbours, friends and family members. Such an act, infamously employed by the LRA, is likely to irrevocably sever the children from their family and community, so even if they were to escape they would not be able to return home.

  Girls represent about 40 per cent of all child soldiers and are often considered a more valuable resource than boys. Boys are generally limited to fighting and some support roles, but in these male-dominated societies where the women do most of the manual work of sustaining the “home,” girls have many more useful skills than boys do. Far from being weaker or more passive, girls have proven to be as easily and effectively used in the same psychological, logistical, reconnaissance and combat tasks as boys—for instance, a significant proportion of the volatile and brutal LRA in Uganda is made up of girls. A perceived advantage of girls over boys is that they can be used as sexual rewards for the soldiers (though boys do not entirely escape that fate). They can be taken as bush wives (monogamous or polygamous sexual companions of a commander or leader) or used as sex slaves by the troops. Rape of girl child soldiers is a matter of course in most of these conflicts, and the resultant psychological damage, physical injury, sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy, and childbirth complications are additional abuses the girls suffer.

  And what about the children who are the result of these rapes and sexual abuse? There are reported cases of long-lasting conflicts in which the children of child soldiers have been trained and are now engaged in the fight. I cannot fathom the degree of human abuse and gross destruction implicit in the life of a girl soldier who is used to produce the next generation of child soldiers.

  A warning: if contemplating the conditions that lead to the recruitment of children as soldiers is rough, exploring how they are trained and actually used in combat, as I do in the next chapter, is even rougher. And all the more reason why we need to marshal all our efforts to stop this.

  6.

  HOW A CHILD SOLDIER IS TRAINED AND USED

  EVERY MILITARY FORCE IN THE WORLD employs a formal training system to impart its knowledge, skills, experience and ethos to its recruits. From the basic training or boot camp through to the teaching of advanced leadership and technical competencies, the purpose of such training is to immerse recruits—and veterans—in the norms, identity, culture, values and beliefs of the military institution that safeguards the disciplined use of force within a nation state.

  But the training that most child recruits are subjected to is often inhumane and gruelling, designed to separate the strong from the weak in the crassest of ways, in the shortest of time, using the minimum of resources. As the authors of Human Rights Watch’s 2003 report, “You’ll Learn Not to Cry: Child Combatants in Colombia,” write: “From the beginning of their training, both guerrilla and paramilitary child recruits are taught to treat the other side’s fighters or sympathizers without mercy. Adults order children to kill, mutilate, and torture, conditioning them to the cruelest abuses. Not only do children face the same treatment should they fall into the hands of the enemy, many fear it from fellow fighters. Children who fail in their military duties or try to desert can face summary execution by comrades sometimes no older than themselves.”

  Whether the children are abducted or volunteer to serve in a government army, a rebel group or any other belligerent armed cadre, they will undergo some form of training and socialization or indoctrination to ensure they become “good soldiers” or die trying.

  Upon recruitment, the child will be assessed: those considered too young or too weak may become camp followers, employed in menial tasks like gathering wood, tending fires, cooking, drawing water, moving loot and supplies, taking care of the sick and wounded, performing latrine duty and so on. In return for performing these tasks, they will be provided with some water, food, hand-me-down clothes and a certain level of security. But these necessities are treated as rewards and may be withheld for lack of effort or failure to complete an assigned task. There are no rights for a child soldier, only privileges.

  The essence of the training is to push the child to complete obedience and unblinking compliance to orders from a superior and also to forge the child’s identification with the armed group. As the child ages, gains experience and grows stronger, they may receive more formal training in combat-related tasks.

  Children who are too weak to carry loads or conduct garrison duties may, if they are lucky, be abandoned and have a chance to return to their home villages if they are physically able to get there—or if those villages still exist. (As Ishmael Beah recounts in A Long Way Gone, the factions fighting in his homeland of Sierra Leone habitually destroyed the villages from which they abducted children, leaving them no home to return to.) In other cases, such “weak” children may be abused or executed as an example to the others. The LRA perfected the technique of coercing children to carry heavy loads on a forced march back to its base. Those unable to keep up were executed by the other children as a means of further separating them from their past connections, and hardening and familiarizing them with killing. The consequences for children who cannot keep up or refuse to do anything they are ordered to do are swift and terminal.

  As I have mentioned in earlier chapters, rape is inevitable for the girls and sometimes for the boys. A resilient child soon learns that it is better to endear herself to one soldier with the gun and the power to protect her, than to be a communal sex object. The more power the adult soldier has, the better off the girl will be. As Chris Coulter writes in Bush Wives and Girl Soldiers, an account of the impact of ten years of civil war on the girls and women of Sierra Leone:

  Commanders’ wives had the power to punish or reward and were often in a position to get everything they asked for: clothes, shoes, jewellery, music and videos, either by looting it themselves or having it done for them … Those girls and women who did not become wives were forced into labor, which could mean domestic work, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of small children … [G]irls or women who had no “husbands” suffered physical hardship, lack of food, and frequent rapes. A “wife,” on the other hand, would be protected from sexual abuse by other men and would also often have girls working for her, making her own situation less straining.

  Boys are also forced to be creative in order to protect themselves. Emmanuel Jal, the former child soldier from the Sudan who is now a musician and the author of War Child, recently described in an interview how Sudanese boys would stuff their pants at night with paper bags and newspaper so that if a commander tried to assault them, the paper would crinkle and not only wake them up but wake up the others around them. As a result
a commander could no longer rape the boy in the night with impunity and no witnesses.

  Forced sex serves the needs of the adult leaders of these child soldiers, but its most insidious purpose is to undermine and alienate the child, making her (or him) a creature of the armed group. This form of torture also stigmatizes girls, especially within their cultural milieu, and makes it exceedingly hard for them to ever go home again.

  In most standing armies, a formal basic-training course will be conducted at a school on an established military installation or garrison. With non-state belligerents, the training is less formal and often conducted on the move. In either case, where child soldiers are a significant component of the force, the methods used on children by government armies or rebel groups are largely the same. Training is violent, with the children experiencing blows or beatings for the slightest mistake or transgression. Threats, physical abuse, harassment and bullying by older and battle-hardened child soldiers against the younger children are encouraged. The new child rapidly learns that obedience and enthusiasm bring rewards and that disobedience and incompetence bring punishment. Serious errors, such as falling asleep on sentry duty, attempted desertion and insolence, are commonly punished by execution, often performed by their closest friends or even siblings.

  After losing his mother and being discarded by his father, a commander in the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), Emmanuel Jal ended up a child recruit in the SPLA after a stretch in a refugee camp in which he nearly starved to death. In his memoir, he writes, “The SPLA made sure that discipline was strict. If you fought with another boy, you were beaten on the buttocks by members of your group; if you stole something, you were beaten again. I was often punished for forgetting to do jobs such as collecting firewood and water, sweeping and cooking, because I was interested in trying to find fun.”