THE use of child soliders in the twenty-first century
lacey walkinshaw
The 1980s brought about a new issue in warfare. Reports of war conflict with the involvement of children as soldiers was announced for the first time. The new idea of using children in war conflicts became more popular in the 1990s during the Rwandan genocide as well as in neighboring African countries like Sierra Leone and Uganda. In the Rwandan genocide, for example, large numbers of children under the age of eighteen are responsible for the mass murder of large populations of Rwandans. These child soldiers, as well as the others in Sierra Leone and Uganda were being abducted from their homes and forced into armed conflict. The children of the Rwandan genocide are often forgotten about as many look at the number of casualties of the genocide rather than the survivors and what they had to go through and experience. Rebel groups throughout central Africa, in areas such as Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Uganda have all been known to have children working in armed conflict.
Sadly, the use of child soldiers continues to this day. Children involved in warfare continues to be a problem not just in Africa but throughout the world as well, yet it receives very little attention. It is estimated that over two hundred and fifty thousand children have been engaging in armed conflicts around the world. The Rwandan genocide brought the issue of child soldiers in warfare to light with Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire. His experience in Rwanda and working for the United Nations has seen the devastating effects experienced by child soldiers and the countries they live in. He is just one of many whose mission is to better the lives of children around the world who have been affected by war. Child soldiers are important to the topic of genocide and justice because many of these children have witnessed horrible acts of violence, and many have been forced to carry out violent acts against people they are close to like family, friends, and neighbors. Child soldiers consist of both boys and girls and are abused sexually, physically, and mentally, as well as drugged and maimed. It is important to study child soldiers because although they were at one time killers, these children are nonetheless victims of war and need rehabilitation. More effort needs to be made to eliminate the use of children involved in warfare around the world. When looking at genocide and justice, it is important to look at who was affected by the atrocities. Not just the victims, but also the killers and how these mass murders affected them. One must ask oneself, how the survivors of genocides like Rwanda, both the victims, the perpetrators, as well as those who stood by and did little to help? Through looking at the Rwandan genocide and the use of child soldiers in Rwanda, as well as in other parts of Africa like Sierra Leone and Uganda, one can see how child soldiers were a benefit to rebel groups but also destructive, due to the devastating effects that they had on these young victims.
The Rwandan genocide occurred in 1994. By the fall of that year, five hundred to eight hundred thousand people had been killed in Rwanda and two million were now refugees. The United Nations were in Rwanda in the spring of 1994. Known as UNAMIR the United Nations in Rwanda found themselves incredibly vulnerable when the plane of President Habyariman went down unexpectedly. The President's death left the five thousand UN peacekeepers, who were only carrying a small amount of weapons for protection, with the overwhelming atrocities performed by the Hutu extremists to exterminate the Tutsis and Hutu moderates. Michael Barnett, who was a political officer at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and was assigned to cover Rwanda, argues that the peacekeepers of UNAMIR, "... were instantly confronted by two increasingly untenable tasks: protecting the lives of civilians and defending themselves." UNAMIR's main goal in Rwanda was to implement the Arusha Accords. Barnett describes the Arusha Accords as, "the blueprint to end the civil war between the Tutsi-backed Rwandan Patriotic Forces and the Hutu-dominated Rwandan government." UNAMIR also aimed to establish a new government that would speak to all Rwandans and not just one dominant majority.
After the President's plane crash, the violence escalated and the United Nations were dealt another blow when ten Belgian peacekeepers, who were protecting moderate Hutu politicians, were killed by Hutu extremists. Clearly, the United Nations were unprepared for what was going to happen and by April 21, 1994 the Security Council made the decision to disengage the majority of the peacekeepers of UNAMIR as ..."there was a general recognition that peacekeepers, unprotected and exposed, could do little good and much harm both to themselves and the United Nation's reputation and future." With the majority of the peacekeepers gone, Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire was given the task of trying to negotiate a cease-fire arrangement between the two parties. The lack of bodies and supplies caused Dallaire's actions in Rwanda to be unsuccessful. The United Nations again were seen as negatively impacting Rwanda because they left with the majority of their troops, leaving the civilians of Rwanda to become victims of genocide as the Hutu extremists went on a killing spree. It was clear that an intervention was desperately needed, however, there were no countries willing to send troops. "It seemed that the daily reports of carnage and brutality only contributed to the belief that it was highly improbable that a modest-sized outside force could halt the terror."
The Hutu extremists that were in charge of constructing the plans for the genocide were "...a small tight group... who had conspired with the "Zero Network" killer squad in earlier smaller massacres, and shared a common ideology of radical Hutu domination over Rwanda." The killings developed with great speed in the capital of Kigali and highly centralized. The victims at first were those who were educated and posed a threat to the Hutu radicals like the civil rights activists, doctors, journalists, politicians, and teachers. Those who the Hutu extremists got to join them on their mass killing sprees had a similar obedience to their orders to those of the Nazis. This was the ideology that, "When the authorities in that state told you to do something you did it, even if it included killing."
In the novel, "Innocents Lost: When Child Soldiers Go to War," by Jimmie Briggs, there are examples of the children of Rwanda who were forced to kill. One of these examples is of a sixteen-year-old by the name of François Minani. Minani had given up school after finishing elementary to work on his parents farm. One morning he was approached by a band of youth about his age at his parents farm and they ordered him to come with them and to bring his four nephews with him. They brought them to a shallow pit, where they handed François a hoe to beat his nephews to death, as well as narcotics to help detach himself from the situation. François was forced to kill his nephews because his sister was engaged to their father who was a Tutsi. His nephews' parents had already been killed by the Hutus and François was forced to finish off his nephews. Sadly, there are thousands of stories like François. Innocent children forced to kill their own family members or friends. Eugenie was a Tutsi and just sixteen years old in April 1994 when she was abducted by the Rwandan Hutu soldiers and taken in as their wife. In an effort to escape from the soldiers, she was taken into the forest and repeatedly raped by boys and young men for over a week.
These are just two examples of how children were traumatized during the Rwandan genocide. There were four main roles that children played in the Rwandan genocide. The first was the role of militia. In Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, thousands of boys all around the ages of fifteen to eighteen were participating in the armed forces. From these thousands of boys under the age of eighteen, those who were interviewed claimed to have taken the lives of as many as ninety people while in the militia. The second role, was the informant. This was the most common role given to children involved in the armed conflict. Their role was to discover moderate Hutus and Tutsis who were in hiding from the military. The third role was looting. This was a task that children of every age could perform. They would be responsible for the damage and destruction of homes and property as well as stealing the personal property of others like cattle or food crops. The final role was for the children who had not participated in the genocide in any of the three above roles but were connected with the Hutu militia. These children were orphans who performed work as guards or servants to in turn live with the soldiers and their families.
The Lord's Resistance Army began abducting children in 1987. The army is run by Ugandan Joseph Kony. This army began attacking civilians in Uganda in the 1980s. These attacks were incredibly violent and the army was also abducting civilians as well. In June of 1987, the Lord's Resistance Army abducted girls from a boarding school in Northern Uganda. One year later, the army returned again abducting eighty-eight girls. The girls who attended this boarding school were all students who excelled in academics and were very intelligent. In 1991, forty-three girls were abducted from this same school, two of them dying in the process. One of the girls that was abducted from this boarding school according to Briggs is, "reportedly became a leader in Kony's movement." In 1995, the Lord's Resistance Army successfully massacred one hundred and fifty-five people in a trading center in Uganda with machetes and rifles. The Lord's Resistance Army continued to invade towns and villages of Uganda for food and materials while abducting children. The girls who had been abducted by Kony and his army were now wives to Kony and his staff. It was estimated that Kony had anywhere from thirty to sixty wives. Briggs notes that, "It was unknown how many children he'd sired by these teenage girls, but some of them were soldiers in the Lord's Resistance Army." Joseph Kony and his officers have yet to be captured. However, warrants for his arrest have been issued since 2004. Joseph Kony himself, along with a dozen of his officers have been charged with war crimes, as well as the illegal use of children as soldiers.
Possibly the best account of a child soldier is that of the memoir, "A Long Way Gone" by Ishmael Beah. Beah lived in Sierra Leone and similar to Rwanda, there was a violent civil war which began in 1991. He became separated from his family after the rebels occupied his town and he was made to retreat. For many months, Beah was joined by a gang of other boys as they roamed orphaned. At the age of thirteen, Ishmael Beah was forced into the government army to fight the rebels and became a child soldier. For three years, Beah fought with the government army of Sierra Leone until he rescued by UNICEF. Later he escaped to New York City, where he attended the United Nations International School and went on to receive a degree in political science. The outcome for Ishmael Beah was a very successful one. Most child soldiers did not have the same opportunities as he had after his rescue.
Child soldiers are the new way of fighting war in the twenty-first century. According to Romeo Dallaire, the reason that children are being so widely used in warfare is because, "...they are considered to be expendable, plentiful, cheap to maintain and easily indoctrinated by the adults who recruit them." Individuals who are working towards finding solutions to end the use of children as soldiers, like Romeo Dallaire and Ishmael Beah, feel that children are very easy to manipulate and brainwash. Beah noted in his memoir that for him, he was very easily assimilated into the life of a soldier and dehumanized. However, he notes that once he was free, he struggled much more with coming back and living in society.
The recruitment and the use of children as soldiers is now against international law. However, according to the Romeo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative, children are still being used in militia throughout fifty state and non-state armed groups. Organizations worldwide have been working on developing rehabilitation and successful reintegration for children who have been involved in armed conflict, as well as the disarmament and demobilizing child soldiers. However, not much has been done to put an end to the recruitment of child soldiers. Without the prevention of child soldiers, there will continue to be children involved in armed conflict. Romeo Dallaire states that, "Decade after decade, the number of child soldiers around the world has failed to subside. To date, we have yet to find an effective way to interrupt the vicious cycle of recruitment or to address the root cause of child soldiery."
The use of children in warfare in the civil wars of Rwanda, Uganda, and Sierra Leone put a new face to what warfare looks like in the twenty-first century. Children high on drugs killing more people than they are able to remember. If these children make it out of captivity, they are forever scarred with the crimes they committed and witnessed against humanity, yet they are the individuals committing the crimes. Justice for these children is much more difficult than the justice faced by past criminals of war crimes. Rehabilitation and reintegration into society will not bring back their parents, siblings, or families. Because these children were committing crimes in their youth, they not only lost their right to a childhood but they will also have to live with their actions much longer than any other war criminal, as well as their experiences as a victim. Living with the harsh realities of having their innocence taken away from them so young, having to hurt those they loved and having to go on with living their lives, some not even knowing how many people they killed.
Sadly, the use of child soldiers continues to this day. Children involved in warfare continues to be a problem not just in Africa but throughout the world as well, yet it receives very little attention. It is estimated that over two hundred and fifty thousand children have been engaging in armed conflicts around the world. The Rwandan genocide brought the issue of child soldiers in warfare to light with Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire. His experience in Rwanda and working for the United Nations has seen the devastating effects experienced by child soldiers and the countries they live in. He is just one of many whose mission is to better the lives of children around the world who have been affected by war. Child soldiers are important to the topic of genocide and justice because many of these children have witnessed horrible acts of violence, and many have been forced to carry out violent acts against people they are close to like family, friends, and neighbors. Child soldiers consist of both boys and girls and are abused sexually, physically, and mentally, as well as drugged and maimed. It is important to study child soldiers because although they were at one time killers, these children are nonetheless victims of war and need rehabilitation. More effort needs to be made to eliminate the use of children involved in warfare around the world. When looking at genocide and justice, it is important to look at who was affected by the atrocities. Not just the victims, but also the killers and how these mass murders affected them. One must ask oneself, how the survivors of genocides like Rwanda, both the victims, the perpetrators, as well as those who stood by and did little to help? Through looking at the Rwandan genocide and the use of child soldiers in Rwanda, as well as in other parts of Africa like Sierra Leone and Uganda, one can see how child soldiers were a benefit to rebel groups but also destructive, due to the devastating effects that they had on these young victims.
The Rwandan genocide occurred in 1994. By the fall of that year, five hundred to eight hundred thousand people had been killed in Rwanda and two million were now refugees. The United Nations were in Rwanda in the spring of 1994. Known as UNAMIR the United Nations in Rwanda found themselves incredibly vulnerable when the plane of President Habyariman went down unexpectedly. The President's death left the five thousand UN peacekeepers, who were only carrying a small amount of weapons for protection, with the overwhelming atrocities performed by the Hutu extremists to exterminate the Tutsis and Hutu moderates. Michael Barnett, who was a political officer at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and was assigned to cover Rwanda, argues that the peacekeepers of UNAMIR, "... were instantly confronted by two increasingly untenable tasks: protecting the lives of civilians and defending themselves." UNAMIR's main goal in Rwanda was to implement the Arusha Accords. Barnett describes the Arusha Accords as, "the blueprint to end the civil war between the Tutsi-backed Rwandan Patriotic Forces and the Hutu-dominated Rwandan government." UNAMIR also aimed to establish a new government that would speak to all Rwandans and not just one dominant majority.
After the President's plane crash, the violence escalated and the United Nations were dealt another blow when ten Belgian peacekeepers, who were protecting moderate Hutu politicians, were killed by Hutu extremists. Clearly, the United Nations were unprepared for what was going to happen and by April 21, 1994 the Security Council made the decision to disengage the majority of the peacekeepers of UNAMIR as ..."there was a general recognition that peacekeepers, unprotected and exposed, could do little good and much harm both to themselves and the United Nation's reputation and future." With the majority of the peacekeepers gone, Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire was given the task of trying to negotiate a cease-fire arrangement between the two parties. The lack of bodies and supplies caused Dallaire's actions in Rwanda to be unsuccessful. The United Nations again were seen as negatively impacting Rwanda because they left with the majority of their troops, leaving the civilians of Rwanda to become victims of genocide as the Hutu extremists went on a killing spree. It was clear that an intervention was desperately needed, however, there were no countries willing to send troops. "It seemed that the daily reports of carnage and brutality only contributed to the belief that it was highly improbable that a modest-sized outside force could halt the terror."
The Hutu extremists that were in charge of constructing the plans for the genocide were "...a small tight group... who had conspired with the "Zero Network" killer squad in earlier smaller massacres, and shared a common ideology of radical Hutu domination over Rwanda." The killings developed with great speed in the capital of Kigali and highly centralized. The victims at first were those who were educated and posed a threat to the Hutu radicals like the civil rights activists, doctors, journalists, politicians, and teachers. Those who the Hutu extremists got to join them on their mass killing sprees had a similar obedience to their orders to those of the Nazis. This was the ideology that, "When the authorities in that state told you to do something you did it, even if it included killing."
In the novel, "Innocents Lost: When Child Soldiers Go to War," by Jimmie Briggs, there are examples of the children of Rwanda who were forced to kill. One of these examples is of a sixteen-year-old by the name of François Minani. Minani had given up school after finishing elementary to work on his parents farm. One morning he was approached by a band of youth about his age at his parents farm and they ordered him to come with them and to bring his four nephews with him. They brought them to a shallow pit, where they handed François a hoe to beat his nephews to death, as well as narcotics to help detach himself from the situation. François was forced to kill his nephews because his sister was engaged to their father who was a Tutsi. His nephews' parents had already been killed by the Hutus and François was forced to finish off his nephews. Sadly, there are thousands of stories like François. Innocent children forced to kill their own family members or friends. Eugenie was a Tutsi and just sixteen years old in April 1994 when she was abducted by the Rwandan Hutu soldiers and taken in as their wife. In an effort to escape from the soldiers, she was taken into the forest and repeatedly raped by boys and young men for over a week.
These are just two examples of how children were traumatized during the Rwandan genocide. There were four main roles that children played in the Rwandan genocide. The first was the role of militia. In Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, thousands of boys all around the ages of fifteen to eighteen were participating in the armed forces. From these thousands of boys under the age of eighteen, those who were interviewed claimed to have taken the lives of as many as ninety people while in the militia. The second role, was the informant. This was the most common role given to children involved in the armed conflict. Their role was to discover moderate Hutus and Tutsis who were in hiding from the military. The third role was looting. This was a task that children of every age could perform. They would be responsible for the damage and destruction of homes and property as well as stealing the personal property of others like cattle or food crops. The final role was for the children who had not participated in the genocide in any of the three above roles but were connected with the Hutu militia. These children were orphans who performed work as guards or servants to in turn live with the soldiers and their families.
The Lord's Resistance Army began abducting children in 1987. The army is run by Ugandan Joseph Kony. This army began attacking civilians in Uganda in the 1980s. These attacks were incredibly violent and the army was also abducting civilians as well. In June of 1987, the Lord's Resistance Army abducted girls from a boarding school in Northern Uganda. One year later, the army returned again abducting eighty-eight girls. The girls who attended this boarding school were all students who excelled in academics and were very intelligent. In 1991, forty-three girls were abducted from this same school, two of them dying in the process. One of the girls that was abducted from this boarding school according to Briggs is, "reportedly became a leader in Kony's movement." In 1995, the Lord's Resistance Army successfully massacred one hundred and fifty-five people in a trading center in Uganda with machetes and rifles. The Lord's Resistance Army continued to invade towns and villages of Uganda for food and materials while abducting children. The girls who had been abducted by Kony and his army were now wives to Kony and his staff. It was estimated that Kony had anywhere from thirty to sixty wives. Briggs notes that, "It was unknown how many children he'd sired by these teenage girls, but some of them were soldiers in the Lord's Resistance Army." Joseph Kony and his officers have yet to be captured. However, warrants for his arrest have been issued since 2004. Joseph Kony himself, along with a dozen of his officers have been charged with war crimes, as well as the illegal use of children as soldiers.
Possibly the best account of a child soldier is that of the memoir, "A Long Way Gone" by Ishmael Beah. Beah lived in Sierra Leone and similar to Rwanda, there was a violent civil war which began in 1991. He became separated from his family after the rebels occupied his town and he was made to retreat. For many months, Beah was joined by a gang of other boys as they roamed orphaned. At the age of thirteen, Ishmael Beah was forced into the government army to fight the rebels and became a child soldier. For three years, Beah fought with the government army of Sierra Leone until he rescued by UNICEF. Later he escaped to New York City, where he attended the United Nations International School and went on to receive a degree in political science. The outcome for Ishmael Beah was a very successful one. Most child soldiers did not have the same opportunities as he had after his rescue.
Child soldiers are the new way of fighting war in the twenty-first century. According to Romeo Dallaire, the reason that children are being so widely used in warfare is because, "...they are considered to be expendable, plentiful, cheap to maintain and easily indoctrinated by the adults who recruit them." Individuals who are working towards finding solutions to end the use of children as soldiers, like Romeo Dallaire and Ishmael Beah, feel that children are very easy to manipulate and brainwash. Beah noted in his memoir that for him, he was very easily assimilated into the life of a soldier and dehumanized. However, he notes that once he was free, he struggled much more with coming back and living in society.
The recruitment and the use of children as soldiers is now against international law. However, according to the Romeo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative, children are still being used in militia throughout fifty state and non-state armed groups. Organizations worldwide have been working on developing rehabilitation and successful reintegration for children who have been involved in armed conflict, as well as the disarmament and demobilizing child soldiers. However, not much has been done to put an end to the recruitment of child soldiers. Without the prevention of child soldiers, there will continue to be children involved in armed conflict. Romeo Dallaire states that, "Decade after decade, the number of child soldiers around the world has failed to subside. To date, we have yet to find an effective way to interrupt the vicious cycle of recruitment or to address the root cause of child soldiery."
The use of children in warfare in the civil wars of Rwanda, Uganda, and Sierra Leone put a new face to what warfare looks like in the twenty-first century. Children high on drugs killing more people than they are able to remember. If these children make it out of captivity, they are forever scarred with the crimes they committed and witnessed against humanity, yet they are the individuals committing the crimes. Justice for these children is much more difficult than the justice faced by past criminals of war crimes. Rehabilitation and reintegration into society will not bring back their parents, siblings, or families. Because these children were committing crimes in their youth, they not only lost their right to a childhood but they will also have to live with their actions much longer than any other war criminal, as well as their experiences as a victim. Living with the harsh realities of having their innocence taken away from them so young, having to hurt those they loved and having to go on with living their lives, some not even knowing how many people they killed.