Children are often caught in crossfire of modern warfare. Not only witnesses and indirect victims of war in suffering poverty, malnutrition, diseases, lack of education etc., they are also forcibly coerced into fighting in armed conflicts first hand. The shocking brutality of the apartheid and the civil conflict in African nations has left open wounds in the collective memory of the society which only sensitive reconciliatory processes can heal over time. Healing is a traditional method, based in cultural and communal beliefs, which tries to release the child from the burden of community’s accusation for having participated in armed conflict. In this paper, I have wished to look at, first, how these children became involved as child soldiers, their experiences and means to cope with the past. Truth and Reconciliation committees set up various African nations in the past decade have tried to involve children in the truth-collection process and give a voice to their experiences.
UNICEF defines a ‘child soldier’ as any boy or girl under the age of 18, who is part of any armed force or armed group in any capacity. This includes, but is not limited to, cooks, porters, spies and messengers. It includes girls and boys recruited for forced sexual purposes and/or forced marriage. In 2016, armed groups in seven African countries and state armed forces in three used child soldiers. Child Soldiers World Index shows that 48 countries still continue to enlist youth below 18 in the armed forces. While countries like Australia, USA, France and Germany allow enlistment from 17 years of age, UK and Canada go even lower at 16. It is noteworthy that at a time when most African countries have now set 18 as the age for enlistment in the armed forces, states that still allow child soldiers are wealthier than average. Societies mistreating their children, though it is universally agreed that children represent the future, is not new. The involvement of almost 82 percent German youth in official organisations in Hitler’s Germany, thousands of whom committed suicide or were killed in the Gotterdammerung and thousands of Palestinian children who waged an intifada against Israeli occupation are examples from not very far back in history. Youth involvement in African Civil Wars in which a huge number of combatants were as young as seven or eight resulted from their survival drive.( Elliot, 9)
Various studies have tried to theorise why armed groups encourage adolescents to enlist. Children themselves often cite poverty and lack of any foreseeable resources as the reason for abandoning family life and joining the militia. However, most recruitments in African nations were not voluntary. Why, then, are children encouraged to join militia by the rebel leaders? Children carry certain disadvantages in warfare. They aren’t as strong as their adult counterparts, rural insurgency involves travelling over large distances bearing a lot of weight for which adults are most suitable, children can not make informed decisions in emergency situations as they lack the ability to assess danger. Scholars have tried to explain the extreme use of children in the war. Possible reasons cited are overpopulation in poor countries of Africa which has made children a cheap and limitless resource, and children being expendable and easy to maintain in that they are easier to threaten with lies, pain, death or other such cheap punishment. Ease of psychological manipulation relative to adults also makes them easier to control, deceive and indoctrinate. The worldwide proliferation of light automatic weapons, like cheap and lightweight AK-47s which children as young as 10 can handle easily has also resulted in their increased involvement in warfare. Another important factor is the difference, perceived or actual, in the outside opportunities for children and adults in terms of vocational studies, education or employment. Children find it harder to leave because of misinformation fed at the time of indoctrination. Uganda’s public announcements of amnesty on radio to everyone but the top leaders from 2000 to 2004 came very late but helped children sieve out misinformation fed by rebel leaders.The greater willingness of children to fight for non-monetary incentives such as honor, revenge, a certain duty a sense of duty or safety make them more loyal soldiers. Testimonies from rebel officers attest to children’s bravery and stealth in covert operations. Though children are proven to be disadvantaged in mortal combacts as can be seen from LRA’s treatment of child soldiers, they serve as great look outs and spies.
Beber and Blattman in “The Logic of Child Soldiering and Coercion” (2013) use the rebel group Lord’s Resistance Army’s recruitment of adolescents in Northern Uganda as a case study to understand why the rebel forces targeted this group, the recruitment process and the methods employed to keep them within the armed group. Lord’s Resistance Army waged a guerrilla war against the state of Uganda. Bugun in 1988, it lasted through the greater part of the first decade of the 21st century. The rebels, led by Joseph Kony, a spirit medium of the Acholi tribe, sought a spiritual cleansing of the country and a return to the political dominance of the northern tribes two decades following independence. The LRA has been held up as the archetypal barbaric, apolitical rebel force of Africa’s so-called new wars. The rebel group did not get strong civilian support even at the time of its inception. The leaders raided the homes of their fellow Acholi for sustenance and medical aid. The government of Sudan, in 1994, began providing the LRA with arms and territory to build their bases. Following this, several thousands of Ugandan youth, mainly adolescent males, were abducted. Young girls were also kidnapped to become soldiers, servants, or wives of the rebel leaders. The LRA raiding parties commonly abducted all able-bodied members of a household to carry looted goods, but were under instructions from Kony to release children under eleven and adults older than their mid twenties, when the delivery was completed. Three times as many fourteen- year-olds were abducted as compared to nine-year-olds or twenty-three-year-olds.
Initiation of abductees involved forced violence. 26 percent of adolescents were forced to harm or kill an innocent civilian while 23 percent were forced to mutilated dead bodies (a deeply held taboo in the African society). An abductee for two-years explained “During training, 22 of us were told to beat a man to death. But after hitting him twice each, we were told to leave him. He was almost dead. Later,… we were all told to pinch the ear of the dead man and skip over him.” In the most brutal cases, the victims of these initiation rites were not strangers but a family member or close friend. Such extreme violence served to break down abductees’ psychological defenses and desensitize them to violence. Youth forced to kill were told that they would be exiled from their home communities. A spiritual initiation ceremony, featuring anointing with oil and prayers, was reported by the vast majority of those abducted for longer than two weeks. “We were cleansed with water. This cleansing was meant to make you one of the group members. After cleansing it’s believed that your relationship with anyone from your family was no more, such that when you meet them, and you are asked to kill them, you must do it because you are now someone new and have no relatives” Through the perceived power of the spirits Kony was thought to be omnipresent and able to track down escapees by the smell of the holy oil. “In the bush, there is something that confused people. There is a certain type of holy oil which they put on you. It confused you and you could never think of home.” Real and threatened death and injury were among the primary means of discouraging escape and enhancing performance. Along with spiritual messages, political propaganda was also used to motivate loyalty. The importance of overthrowing the government, incitement over crimes committed by Museveni, promises of government positions etc. motivated the recruits’ efforts. Such indoctrination, misinformation, and identity manipulation has been widely remarked upon in social psychology and military sociology in the fundamentally altered beliefs and values of recruits.
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The civil war in Sierra Leone, especially from 1991 to 1996, has the worst record of recruitment of child soldiers. Similar to the torture children faced at the hands of LRA in Northern Uganda, adolescents were abducted and “trained” by the People’s Army (or RUF/SL) to overthrow the Momoh government. The troops sent to reign in the rebels were themselves radicalled because of non- payment or drug addiction. The former government troops rebelled and formed their own armies using the youth originally working under the rebel leaders. Though a few underage boys joined voluntarily to avenge the deaths of close ones, the non-abducted ones who found themselves working for the warlords were socially and economically pressurized by hunger, sickness or lost family. Underage males and females were greatly preferred by the officers. Most females recruited by the RUF/SL reported rape both by comrades as well as the enemy. The girls were forced to live as wives of the officers and those who refused were beaten and often killed, by the leaders or the recruits themselves. Younger boys worked in the capacity of spies or porters. Keeping oneself surrounded by children provided one amnesty in case of an ambush. In jobs pertaining to check posts, young boys, and sometimes girls, were put in the front to bear the first bullets. Money was rarely given, even to officers, however such rewards were promised upon victory. Many long-term recruits were convinced of these future gains. The gradual realization that no gains would come lead many to abandon the group later. Violence and the threat of punishment were the main instruments of control.
“Transitional justice refers to the set of judicial and non-judicial measures that have been implemented by different countries in order to redress the legacies of massive human rights abuses. These measures include criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, reparation programs, and various kinds of institutional reforms.” It encompasses a growing social movement to institutionalize peaceful approaches to harm, problem-solving and violations of legal and human rights.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission is a peace making tribunal court based on social accountability and redress for victims of stark violations of human rights. The TRCs of Burundi, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Liberia assembled the African society- both the perpetrators and the victims- and attempted to offer both sides restorative justice. In the TRC process, apartheid perpetrators were offered conditional amnesty in exchange of disclosure of their violations, usuallu during public hearings. They had to file an individual application for amnesty and convince that the violations of human rights for which they sought amnesty were only politically motivated.
The TRC was comprised three committees: The Human Rights Violations Committee (investigated human rights abuses from 1960 to 1994), the Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee (formulated proposals to assist rehabilitation) and the Amnesty Committee (considered Amnesty applications).
pros having TRC
the rehabilitation process which happens after the child has come out of the army. Truth commissions can increase awareness about the situation of child soldiers and facilitate reintegration into society.
Gade- exemplify the idea that whereas the post-apartheid TRC did not offer retributive justice, it did promote another kind of justice, namely RJ.
The TRC received 7,112 amnesty applications and granted amnesty to 849 perpetrators.
Richard Bell writes that ‘It is in the correlation between ubuntu, rooted in whatever forms of “communalism” may survive in South Africa (moderate or otherwise), and the kind of justice referred to as “restorative justice”, that we find the foundation stones for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and a possibility for a moral and spiritual renaissance’ (Bell, 90)
The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) considered inviting child victims and witnesses to testify, but because of the potential emotional and physical risks,the commission decided against it. Instead adults from NGOs and other professionals working with children were asked to testify on their behalf. TheTRC organized a series of special hearings for children. The Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2002–2004) was the first to include children in its mandate in recognition of the serious impact the armed conflict had on children. It was decided that children could not be categorized as victims, witnesses or alleged perpetrators. Instead, all children were seen as only victims and witnesses. It worked with child protection agencies and established norms for child witnesses. Children actively participated in statement-taking and in closed and thematic hearings. “I want to tell [the] Government to reach out to those children, like myself, who have suffered; some have even suffered more.They should open a centre because some children are rejected when they go to their people; they are called rebels. I want them to help us with our education.”
With the help of child protection agencies, children participated in preparing the first-ever child-friendly chapter of a TC report.
the Liberian TRC went further than the Sierra Leone commission, systematically including children in all its activities in the capital, Freetown, as well as throughout the country. In Liberia, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) formalized the collaboration between theTruth Commission and the National Child Protection Network (CPN)TRCTask Force, and served as the basis for innovative strategies to protect the rights of children involved in statement-taking and in regional and institutional children’s hearings.
The LiberianTRC was mandated to recommend “prosecutions in particular cases as theTRC deems appropriate”.72 However, with regard to children, theTRC recommended that “all children be excluded from any form of criminal prosecution” and further noted that granting amnesty to children would not be appropriate as it would imply criminal responsibility for international crimes.
While initially the goal of the TRC was an attempt at reconciliation between the perpetrators and the victims, by the end of the process there was a collective realisation that the TRC was only the beginning of a much larger process. William Kentridge, the director of Ubu and the Truth Commission, wrote that "A full confession can bring amnesty and immunity from prosecution or civil procedures for the crimes committed. Therein lies the central irony of the Commission. As people give more and more evidence of the things they have done they get closer and closer to amnesty and it gets more and more intolerable that these people should be given amnesty." (Kentridge, p. viii) Though there is a lot of criticism of the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions of various nations as a whole, this paper would like to stay focused on the effect of the TRC on child soldiers. It was felt by a lot of attendees that justice was sacrificed when TRCs offered conditional amnesty to perpetrators because they often became immune from prosecution. In the foreword of the TRC Report, Desmond Tutu, the chairman of the South African TRC explains that it as not so: “Those who have cared about the future of our country have been worried that the amnesty provision might, amongst other things, encourage impunity because it seemed to sacrifice justice. We believe this view to be incorrect. The amnesty applicant has to admit responsibility for the act for which amnesty is being sought, thus dealing with the matter of impunity. Furthermore, apart from the most exceptional circumstances, the application is dealt with in a public hearing. The applicant must therefore make his admission in the full glare of publicity. Let us imagine what this means. Often this is the first time that an ap- plicant’s family and community learn that an apparently decent man was, for instance, a callous torturer or a member of a ruthless death squad that assassi nated many opponents of the previous regime. There is, therefore, a price to be paid”
An examination of Sierra Leone’s Truth and Reoncilliation Commission more than a decade after its completion shows varying degree of success. Although the child’s process of the TRC was successful for direct child participants, it was largely unsuccessful in promoting individual intrapersonal reconciliation for children who did not participate in the reconciliation process directly. Those who did not participate in the TRC processes have misgivings about the peace process or have yet to be convinced of the TRC’s success in promoting reconciliation. The TRC’s directive was to permeate society beyond the participants of the TRC, through initiatives that included education and public discourse. An important difference is that while the TRC has created educational tools for subsequent school curriculums, these efforts have had little impact on those who were unable to return to school after the conflict. The Sierra Leone TRC has also failed to work equally among the child “victims” and the child “perpetrators”. While the “victims” had positive feeling about the reconciliation process, those who participated in armed groups as children suffer from stigmatisation and familial abandonment. There is a need to continue reconciliation process with special focus on child “perpetrators”.
There still is a great lack of research
The changing and overlapping roles that children play in armed conflicts- as victims, witnesses or perpetrators- must all be taken into account in research and documentation. Special care needs to be taken when investigating the complexity of their situation. Disaggegation my age, race, ethnic group and gender is very important to study the effects of the violence and formulate effective reconciliation and reintegration programmes. Special child-friendly chapters of Truth Commissions helped analyse and classify different kinds of violations of child rights. Children have no place in war. Deprived of a childhood and victims of war brutality, their involvement creates a cycle of perpetuated violence and conflict.