The Use of Children as Soldiers in Africa report The Use of Children as Soldiers in Africa A country analysis of child recruitment and participation in armed conflict Preface The purpose of this report is to document and assess the extent of the military recruitment of African children and their use as soldiers in armed conflict. In particular, the report provides details of national legislation governing recruitment into the armed forces, national recruitment practice (which, sadly, does not always conform to the prevailing legislation), and, where armed conflict is ongoing, the extent of child participation in hostilities, whether as part of government armed forces, government-sponsored armed groups or militia, or non-governmental armed groups or militia. It also includes basic demographic data and information on the estimated size of governmental armed forces and non-governmental armed groups. An attempt has been made to include relevant and accurate information on the situation in each African country. Every effort has been made to ensure that the information contained in the report is correct as at the end of February 1999. In a small number of cases information has proved impossible to obtain. Requests for information were sent to each of the States referred to in this report via their Embassies in Europe or their Permanent Missions to the United Nations in Geneva or New York. Where responses were received, these have been reflected in the report. This report is being presented as a background document to the African Conference on the Use of Children as Soldiers, which is taking place in Maputo, Mozambique, from 19-22 April 1999. The Conference, which is being hosted by the Mozambican government, is being organised jointly by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers and the Save the Children Alliance. The information contained in the report will subsequently be revised and updated based on discussions at the Conference and the results integrated into a worldwide report on child recruitment and participation in armed conflict to be published by the Coalition at the end of 1999. Similar research is being conducted into the military recruitment of children and their use as soldiers in armed conflict in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Research for the report was coordinated by Joël Mermet, Researcher for the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers and the report was produced by Françoise Jaffré, Communication Officer of the Coalition. The Coalition actively seeks comments on the information contained herein and welcomes any additional information, including when confidentiality is requested by the source. Information received anonymously, however, will not be taken into consideration. Stuart Maslen, Coordinator of the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers http://www.reliefweb.int/library/documents/chilsold.htm (1 of 109)3/22/2011 7:34:43 PM The Use of Children as Soldiers in Africa report The Use of Child Soldiers in Africa: An Overview Child Participation in Armed Conflict in Africa The scope of the problem Based on the information contained in this report, the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers believes that more than 120,000 children under 18 years of age are currently participating in armed conflicts across Africa. Some of these children are no more than 7 or 8 years of age. The countries most affected by this problem are: Algeria, Angola, Burundi, Congo-Brazzaville, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan and Uganda. Furthermore, Ethiopian government forces engaged in an armed conflict against Eritrea, and the clans in Somalia, have both included an unknown, though probably not substantial, number of under-18s in their ranks. In internal armed conflicts in the Comoros, Guinea-Bissau, and Senegal, on the other hand, there has been little or no recorded use of under-18s by government or armed opposition forces, and there are almost certainly no under-15s participating in hostilities in these three situations.1 The risks to children of participation in armed conflict In addition to the obvious risks to children of participation in armed conflict — which apply equally to adults — children are often at an added disadvantage as combatants. Their immaturity may lead them to take excessive risks — according to one rebel commander in the Democratic Republic of Congo, "[children] make good fighters because they’re young and want to show off. They think it’s all a game, so they’re fearless." Moreover, and as a result of being widely perceived to be dispensable commodities, they tend to receive little or no training before being thrust into the front line. Reports from Burundi and Congo-Brazzaville suggest that they are often massacred in combat as a result. Children may begin participating in conflict from as young as the age of seven. Some start as porters (carrying food or ammunition) or messengers, others as spies. One rebel commander declared that: "They’re very good at getting information. You can send them across enemy lines and nobody suspects them [because] they’re so young." And as soon as they are strong enough to handle an assault rifle or a semi- automatic weapon (normally at 10 years of age), children are used as soldiers. One former child soldier from Burundi stated that: "We spent sleepless nights watching for the enemy. My first role was to carry a torch for grown-up rebels. Later I was shown how to use hand grenades. Barely within a month or so, I was carrying an AK-47 rifle or even a G3." When they are not actively engaged in combat, they can often be seen manning checkpoints; adult soldiers can normally be seen standing a further 15 metres behind the barrier so that if bullets start flying, it is the children who are the first victims. And in any given conflict when even a few children are involved as soldiers, all children, civilian or combatant, come under suspicion. A recent military sweep in Congo- Brazzaville, for instance, killed all "rebels who had attained the ‘age of bearing arms’." http://www.reliefweb.int/library/documents/chilsold.htm (2 of 109)3/22/2011 7:34:43 PM The Use of Children as Soldiers in Africa report Girls too are used as soldiers, though generally in much smaller numbers than boys. In Liberia, "[a]bout one per cent of the demobilised child soldiers [in 1996-7] were girls or young women. But many more took part in one form or another in the war. Like many males, females joined one of the factions for their own protection. (Un)willingly, they became the girlfriends or wives of rebel leaders or members: ‘wartime women’ is the term they themselves use." Concy A., a 14-year old girl, was abducted from Kitgum in Uganda and taken to Sudan by the LRA. "In Sudan we were distributed to men and I was given to a man who had just killed his woman. I was not given a gun, but I helped in the abductions and grabbing of food from villagers. Girls who refused to become LRA wives were killed in front of us to serve as a warning to the rest of us." The risks to these girls of sexually transmitted diseases or unwanted pregnancies are enormous. Grace A. gave birth on open ground to a girl fathered by one of her [LRA] rebel abductors. Then she was forced to continue fighting. "I picked up a gun and strapped the baby on my back," the emaciated, now adult, 18-year-old recalled while nursing her scrawny baby. "But we were defeated by government forces, and I found a way to escape." Girls are also the victims of child soldiers. In Algeria, a young woman from one of the villages where massacres had taken place said that all of the killers were boys under 17. Some boys who looked to be around 12 decapitated a 15-year-old girl and played ‘catch’ with the head. The consequences for society Atrocities have all too frequently been committed by child soldiers, sometimes under the influence of drugs or alcohol which they may be forced to take. In Sierra Leone, for example, a journalist from the French newspaper Le Figaro claimed that most of the rebels are children not older than 14, who are under the effect of drugs and alcohol. He reported what one of them told him about torture they inflict on their victims: "at 2 p.m., they gouge out two eyes, at 3 p.m., they cut off one hand, at 4 p.m., they cut off two hands, at 5 p.m., they cut off one foot and ... at 7 p.m. it is the death which falls down." But drugs alone do not account for the atrocities committed by children. It is their systematic abuse by adults, combined with a pervasive culture of violence that is ultimately responsible. In March 1998, at the trial of a 13-year-old DRC soldier who had shot and killed a local Red Cross volunteer in Kinshasa after a dispute on a football pitch, even the prosecution declared that the lack of control of boy soldiers was as much the fault of their older commanders and constituted extenuating circumstances. The boy was nonetheless condemned to death, although President Kabila later commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. The Recruitment of Children by Governmental Armed Forces National Legislation The overwhelming majority of African States set 18 as the minimum age for recruitment, whether voluntary or through conscription. Indeed South Africa is in the process of increasing its minimum age for voluntary recruitment to 18 (conscription has already been abolished) and Mauritania may also be raising its minimum age from 16 to 18.