To Condemn Youth

Juvenile Unlawful Combatants or ‘child soldiers’, are considered attractive assets to militia groups and rebel armies around the world. There are a number of reasons that children are recruited. The most obvious is that children are more impressionable than adults, and can therefore be moulded and shaped in the interests of a cause. In the arena of armed conflict this translates to intimidation, manipulation and sometimes being drugged by commanders in order to force the children to carry out some of the most heinous acts seen in modern warfare.

The kinds of roles child soldiers assume are widespread. Not only do they become front-line combatants, but mine sweepers, spies, cooks and sex-slaves can also be found through the ranks of both corrupt government and terrorist forces, with grave outcomes seen in all. Child suicide bombing, perhaps the most disturbing trend to date, is not unheard of either. Particularly pronounced in the Arab-Israeli conflict, terrorist leaders successfully tote the virtues (often via indoctrination) of martyrdom to fresh recruits, usually aged fourteen to fifteen years. If and when these children are arrested, it often emerges that their superiors frame them to appear as though they carried out the task wilfully. Photos of children with the Qur’an and weapons surface and some are even forced to write out a will. In these instances, the project of prosecuting the perpetrator is muddied by their dual role as both perpetrator and victim of a wider, starkly inhumane cultural phenomenon.

Although reports of child suicide bombing have decreased since the scaling down of the War on Terror, the prevalence of child combatants has remained. According to the United Nations, 300, 000 children of the world are currently embroiled in front-line conflict with another 500, 000 in indirect roles such as those mentioned above. By ‘children’, they do not just mean fifteen to seventeen-year-olds. Juvenile combatants are known to be as young as nine. In fact, with the development of lightweight weaponry such as the AK-47, young children are more primed than ever to be abducted by groups such as the infamous Lords Resistance Army. Founded by Joseph Kony, whose very name incites ripples of fear across the African continent, the LRA has abducted an estimated 66, 000 children in Uganda, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo since 1986.

While half of the world’s child soldiers are located in African countries, the problem is not uniquely ‘African’ in nature. Asia and the Middle East are responsible for many thousands of children enslaved into the armed forces with Myanmar providing a unique example. Children between the ages of twelve and eighteen provide one quarter of Myanmar’s military regime, making them the worst single-nation contributor. We should not hesitate to ‘name and shame’ the countries that hold children in their national armies. As of 2011 they also include: Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen.

The question that persists is whether or not it is morally abhorrent to prosecute children for the crimes they commit during war. Although the international community holds a different set of rules for children, nation-states continue to find juveniles guilty of war crimes, such as in the case of Omar Khadr. Perhaps the most controversial trial of a child soldier to date, in 2002, at the age of fifteen, Omar was detained in Guantanamo Bay detention camp by the U.S. government. His detention lasted for seven years before he was finally convicted of five charges including murder and material support for terrorism and jailed for an additional eight years.

To many, this outcome is less than ideal. But what alternatives exist? How do we bring retribution to the victims of violence at the hands of a child? There are two viable substitutions for criminal prosecution. The first is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TCR) and the second, Disarmament Demobilization Reintegration (DDR), both endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council. Although these may not be applicable in all cases, it is crucial that the international community acknowledge and give credence to other means of processing juvenile combatants.

The reasons that children are brought into war are varied. Some are abducted, others volunteer. Regardless of the degree of autonomy with which the child carries out the act, there must be a recognised process among nations through which to determine their guilt. The role of international bodies such as the UN is to deliver this framework. If this occurs, national governments will be empowered to distribute justice with special regard to the status of the child.