They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children

by Roméo Dallaire

  The only impediment in this new era of global connectedness may be the risk of being overwhelmed. As technological megacompanies like Google advance the digitization of all materials that have been written and printed, from fiction to the most complex scientific matters, access to information is limitless. You also have access to online, real-time observation of any specific spot on Earth—you can even check out what the locals are drinking at the cantina. There are downsides to this, but there are also tremendous upsides: we are entering an era in which evil has no place to hide and there is no limit to how we can present the good.

  The ancient rule of borders and boundaries, which have separated and split humanity into boxes, is broken—despite the lastditch attempts of barbaric regimes to cling to them. Can you grasp that there are practically no limits—except those we wish to impose upon ourselves, individually and collectively—that can prevent us from influencing the whole of humanity, from initiating and sustaining reforms from anywhere we live and work? With these tools we can attempt to extricate ourselves from those constraints that have driven us as a species so readily to evil and conflict and greed, and to express and make real our desire for improvement and serenity for ourselves and others around the world.

  Recognize the enormous potential this gives you, the influence you could muster. You’ll be able to change things faster, shifting more paradigms than your parents could ever imagine. In fact, the intensity and magnitude of the revolution is already beyond a mere “shift.” To express this limitless potential, we require a new lexicon: new action verbs and terms to guide us. You cannot allow anything, not even the limits of language, to hold you back.

  So go forth and invent, create and become a new generation of multidisciplinary individuals dedicated to ensuring that all members of the human race thrive on our vulnerable planet in peace and serenity. Attack with courage and energy those hangovers of the past that put the whole exercise of universal humanism at risk. Inventions like the child soldier: an insidious threat to humanity that you can aim to eradicate.

  You could create a global accountability process that would so overwhelm those in power that they would agree to the eradication of the use of child soldiers. This is an objective as tangible as was the elimination of slavery, or the pursuit of human rights, and it is within our grasp. Not only can you make a difference, you are ethically responsible to do so. Your generation must be a generation of activists. I have offered you some suggestions for how to proceed. But what is most important is that you develop your own ideas. You know the problem, you have the tools, and you have the will. You are more than halfway there.

  In this period of blistering change, persevere in your aims. Beware of fleeting popular interest. As quickly as you can bring an issue to the world’s attention, it can just as quickly be distracted. As I struggled against the Rwandan genocide in 1994, the world’s eyes flitted past Africa to American celebrity car chases. Be prepared.

  People sometimes get stuck in a rut doing nothing because their ambitions are too large: they won’t act until they discover their life’s purpose. I’d argue that it is only through action that we have a hope of discovering our purpose. Instead of asking yourself, “What do I want to do with my life?” ask, “If I had one or two years to devote to something, what would that something be?” What would you do? The great ones—Gandhi, King, Mandela—devoted their whole adult lives to creating “impossible” change. Your world is so much faster and smaller and the impossible seems so much more plausible, and you do not have to wait to be an adult to take a leadership role. (In fact, it is the adults who created child soldiers in the first place.) The action you commit to does not have to be large. It does not have to cost much money, or take much time or effort. It can be free and fast. You don’t even have to get out of your chair.

  As I discussed earlier, we have shamefully abdicated to the media our democratic responsibility to guide our politicians. They’re telling us what’s pertinent; they’re choosing the issues. What can you do to change this? Well, the media reports on what’s hot, what they think people are interested in. Let’s show them that we are interested in the children of Africa.

  Let’s say, for example, each day this month you emailed your local media outlet and asked them to tell you what was going on concerning the use of child soldiers in Uganda. At the end of that month, they would have received thirty emails. If everyone in the country did this, at the end of the month, they would be inundated with 996,380,880 emails. If everyone in France, Japan and Australia did this as well, in one month 7,291,402,320 emails would have been sent—and the Western media would surely have begun reporting on Ugandan child soldiers.

  Does this sound naive? It’s true—I have been accused of naœveté. But I hope that you, too, are a little naive, a little sensitive, a little hopeful. These qualities make us human, make us able to hope, to care, to act—not for profit or politics, but for humanity.

  I am not asking you to take action alone. I am asking you to join me, going forward, in the CSI movement, and all the other initiatives that are finding ways to enact and embody and enforce the human rights conventions and laws in the field, bringing to justice the perpetrators who use and abuse children as soldiers. It will not be easy and we will not be successful overnight; even though we are in an accelerating era, it will take time and concerted effort to shift our political leaders away from the status quo. But our efforts will be just and right and ethically responsible. To protest, to confront, to disturb, to argue: these are all gestures of a mature, democratic society. What an impact you will have on your elders, too, if you find ways to raise your voice. Don’t be torn by dilemmas of guilt and commitment. Get engaged in fighting to stop the conflicts adults create, in which children are forced to do the reprehensible dirty work; help me to eradicate the use of child soldiers.

  When I led the international peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, I was given strict orders from the highest commanders of the UN not to act, merely to observe. It was a legal order, but I refused to obey it because it was immoral. I didn’t hesitate to disobey, because I knew it would be a death sentence for the thirty thousand men, women and children—from both sides—we were protecting from the génocidaires. In the first days of the genocide, some troops pulled out without orders and the two thousand people they were protecting were slaughtered within hours. I simply refused to add the 30,000 humans under my protection to the 800,000 people who were ultimately mutilated, raped, traumatized by indescribable evil acts against family and friends, and ultimately slaughtered.

  I stress one more time that many of those génocidaires were children, forced to act against all moral references and instinctive feelings. Thousands of youth, indoctrinated, drugged, and overcome by mass hysteria created and sustained by adults who were aided and abetted by the rest of the world’s nation states, who refused to provide any assistance to stop this human catastrophe. Adults who pursued relentlessly their objective of destroying all humans they perceived as “different” from them, as a threat to them. They decided that they needed to exterminate them and that their most effective means of mass destruction were children, who they encouraged to be imaginative, energetic, deliberate and effective in inflicting physical and psychological pain.

  I will not rest from my goal of eradicating the use of child soldiers. I ask you to join me on this mission. The humanity of these children is as real and valid as your own, and I know you will not fail them. However you proceed, never let it leave your mind: all humans are human; not one of us is more human than any other. The challenge is before you, screaming for you to take it on. Become an activist: inform others, influence public policy and public opinion, join an NGO’s efforts, and get engaged in advancing humanity beyond the evil that it does.

  The time is now and the moment is yours to grasp. Go and get your boots dirty in the field. Go and smell, taste, feel, see, hear and cry with your peers, so many of whom are starving for love, aching for release from the grip of conflict, hop
ing that one day they will find again their inner world of childhood—that they will be aided in their desire to grow into mature, responsible adults, parents of future generations of children with a chance at being safe and happy. And then return to your own safe and happy home and take up the cause of the advancement of human rights for all with a passion, transfigured by witnessing with your own eyes the impact on your peers of being used by rogue adults as instruments of conflict.

  Bring your new-found depth of argument to the political elite of our nations and remind them day in and day out of their enormous responsibility to protect, to assist, to intervene.

  Peux ce que veux, allons-y.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Seventy-five years ago, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry crashed his plane in the Sahara desert, where he was stranded for days, suffering from unimaginable thirst, hunger, heat and hallucinations. It was ten years before he told his story, and when he did, he told it through the soul of the child he once was, about the child that is in all of us. Le Petit Prince was published in the midst of the Second World War. A book of sweet innocence, for an era of harsh experience.

  That natural human transformation from innocence to experience often comes too fast, too soon, too cruelly. Such is the transformation from child to child soldier.

  Since my return from Rwanda, the horrors that I witnessed have not left me. I carry them with me always, though I tried my best to release some of the demons in my account of that time, Shake Hands with the Devil. But there was one horror that I was not ready to release, one horror so terrible it was unimaginable, inconceivable, even though it was also a constant, tangible reality. A horror that exists to this day, around the globe, and which must simply be eradicated: the use of children as soldiers.

  For their support to me in producing this book, I am grateful to the following:

  Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, for creating a fictional child who exemplified the true meaning of childhood, reminding his readers that there are important things that only the young can understand, that only the young can express, and that only the young can accomplish.

  My family: my wife, my children, and my first grandchild—in hopes that this new child never experiences, but always remembers, the plight of child soldiers.

  Anne Collins of Random House Canada, my editor, my champion, my friend, for her encouragement and patience, plus her dedication to this project and the urgency of this cause.

  My research team: Brent Beardsley, for his deep knowledge and strength; Jessica Humphreys, for her enduring empathy and gift for writing; Tanya Zayed, for her expertise and dedication to this book, to children affected by war and the Child Soldiers Initiative.

  For leading by brave example: Ishmael Beah.

  For sharing their personal stories, insights, expertise and support: BGen Greg Mitchell (Ret’d), David Hyman, Imran Ahmad, Col Joseph Culligan (Ret’d), Linda Dale, Scott Davies, Dickson Eyoh, Caroline Fahmy, Nigel Fisher, Dr. Phil Lancaster, Marion Laurence, Sandra Melone, Maria Minna, Michael Montgomery, Jacqueline O’Neil, Ajmal Pashtoonyar, Diana Rivington, Michael Shipler, Sarah Spencer, Zeph Gahamanyi, Leo Kabalisa, Ruth Kambali, Muhammad Kayihura, Franko Ntazinda, Solange Umwali and John Ruku-Rwabyoma.

  Also for providing invaluable stories, insights, and expertise, the following organizations: the Canadian Forces (Col. Jake Bell); Dalhousie University Centre for Foreign Policy Studies (Shelly Whitman); Halifax Regional Police Department (Sgt. Penny Hart); Invisible Children; McGill University—Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (Dr Kirsten Johnson); The Network of Young People Affected by War (NYPAW); The Pearson Peacekeeping Centre (Ken Nette, Ann Livingstone); Public Inc. (Adrian Bradbury); University of Victoria School of Child and Youth Care (Sibylle Artz and Marie Hoskins); University of Winnipeg—Global College (Tom Faulkner); and Search for Common Ground.

  And for their contributions, support, and thousand kindnesses: Victor Amissi Sulubika, Kimberly Davis, Helga Holland, David Humphreys, David Hyman, Alana Kapell, Hélène Ladouceur, Casimir and Imogene Legrand, Findley Shepherd-Humphreys and Brock Shepherd, Alison Syme, my agent, Bruce Westwood, and the staff of Westwood Creative Artists, and the team at Random House Canada, especially the book’s designer, Scott Richardson; the insightful artist, Ben Weeks, who illustrated the world of my fictional child soldier; copy editor Stacey Cameron; my publicist, Scott Sellers, managing editor Deirdre Molina; and production head Carla Kean.

  APPENDIX

  INTERNATIONAL ACTION ON CHILD PROTECTION

  AND CHILD SOLDIERS

  In recent years, international attention on the issue of children in armed conflict and child soldiers in particular has increased dramatically, thanks in large part to the groundbreaking report Graça Machel presented to the UN in 1996. Legal standards since then have improved markedly, and international attention on children affected by war continues to grow, as is evidenced by the following chart. It is my sincere hope that this groundswell continues, and more importantly that these international laws and protocols are enforced so that perpetrators no longer feel impunity and the use of child soldiers is eradicated entirely.

  26 June 1945

  United Nations Charter

  10 Dec. 1948

  Universal Declaration of Human Rights

  12 Aug. 1949

  The Geneva Conventions

  (especially, Convention IV relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War)

  Relevant Passage: Requires special considerations for children under fifteen in times of war (e.g. protection if orphaned, adequate food and recreational space if detained). No mention of children active in combat.

  20 Nov. 1959

  United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child

  Relevant Passages: “The child shall enjoy special protection.”

  “The best interests of the child shall be the paramount consideration.”

  “The child shall be protected against all forms of neglect, cruelty and exploitation.”

  “The child shall not be admitted to employment before an appropriate minimum age; he shall in no case be caused or permitted to engage in any occupation or employment which would prejudice his health or education, or interfere with his physical, mental or moral development.”

  8 June 1977

  Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 Aug. 1949: relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts

  Relevant Passage: “The Parties to the conflict 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.”

  20 Nov. 1989

  United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)

  Relevant Passage: “State parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure that persons who have not attained the age of 15 years do not take a direct part in hostilities.”

  11 July 1990

  African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child adopted by the Organization for African Unity (now the African Union) Note: Charter does not come into force until 29 Nov. 1999.

  Relevant Passages: “For the purposes of this Charter, a child means every human being below the age of 18 years.”

  “States Parties to the present Charter shall take all necessary measures to ensure that no child shall take a direct part in hostilities and refrain in particular, from recruiting any child.”

  29 Sept. 1990

  United Nations World Summit for Children

  Document produced: “Plan of Action for Implementing the World Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children in the 1990s”

  Relevant Passage: “Children need special protection in situations of armed conflict.”

  2 Dec. 1993

  The General Assembly of the United Nations recommends the secretary general appoint an independent expert to study the impact of armed conflict on children.

  26 Aug.
1996

  “The Impact of Armed Conflict on Children”

  —report to the General Assembly of the UN by Graça Machel

  Relevant Passages: “Specific recommendations on child soldiers:

  (a)…a global campaign should be launched… aimed at eradicating the use of children under the age of 18 years in the armed forces. The media, too, should be encouraged to expose the use of child soldiers and the need for demobilization;

  (b) United Nations bodies, specialized agencies and international civil society actors should…encourage the immediate demobilization of child soldiers…

  (c) All peace agreements should include specific measures to demobilize and reintegrate child soldiers into society…

  (d) States should…rais[e] the age of recruitment and participation in the armed forces to 18 years.”

  20 Feb. 1997

  Resolution by the General Assembly on Children and Armed Conflict and the Rights of the Child

  Relevant Passage: “Calls upon States and other parties to armed conflict to recognize the particular vulnerability of refugee and internally displaced children to recruitment into the armed forces.”

  Also recommends that the secretary general appoint a special representative for the impact of armed conflict on children.

  27 Apr. 1997

  Cape Town Symposium.

  Document produced: “Principles and Best Practices on the Recruitment of Children into the Armed Forces and on Demobilization and Social Reintegration of Child Soldiers in Africa”