The Use of Child Soldiers in Africa: An OverviewChild Participation in Armed Conflict in AfricaThe 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’."
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.
Child Participation in Armed Conflict in Africa
The Recruitment of Children by Governmental Armed Forces:
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. In Angola, however, a country severely affected by the phenomenon of child soldiers, the government recently reduced the age of conscription to 17 years. Given the lack of systematic birth registration, even younger children are inevitably recruited even if the will to prevent underage recruitment existed. Moreover, reducing the minimum age of conscription to 17 is currently lawful since international law sets 15 as the international minimum age.
Burundi and Rwanda have the lowest legal recruitment ages on the African continent, seemingly 15 or 16 years for volunteers, although Uganda has formerly claimed to accept children with the apparent age of 13 to be enrolled with parental consent. In Chad, parental consent appears to allow the minimum age of 18 to be effectively reduced. Concerns also exist as to legislation in Botswana, Kenya, and Zambia where children with the ‘apparent age of 18’ can lawfully be recruited. Libya appears to accept volunteers at 17 years, if not younger. In South Africa, in a state of emergency, children of 15 years of age or above can be used directly in armed conflict by virtue of the Constitution. Finally, legislation in Mozambique, a country whose past has seen widespread use of child soldiers, specifically allows the armed forces to change the minimum conscription age — 18 — in time of war.
National Practice:
If only domestic legislation were always respected in practice, the problem of child soldiers in Africa would be significantly reduced. Many African States — Benin, Cameroon, Mali and Tunisia to name but a few — appear to follow appropriate recruitment procedures that prevent underage troops being recruited into the army. However, in Angola, Burundi, Congo-Brazzaville, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan, and Uganda, children, some no more than seven or eight years of age, are recruited by government armed forces almost as a matter of course. Some children do volunteer to join the armed forces (though the true number will vary depending on how one interprets the word volunteer). In the DRC, for example, between 4,000 and 5,000 adolescents responded to a radio broadcast calling (in clear violation of international law) for 12-20 year olds to enrol to defend their country; most were street children.
Yet tens of thousands of children are forced to join up, sometimes at gunpoint. In Angola, forced recruitment of youth (‘Rusgas’) continues in some of the suburbs around the capital and throughout the country, especially in rural areas. It has been claimed that military commanders have paid police officers to find new recruits and Namibia has collaborated with Angola in catching Angolans who have fled to Namibia to avoid conscription. In Eritrea, a 17-year-old Ethiopian prisoner of war, Dowit Admas, interviewed by a British journalist claimed that he was playing football in Gondar High School when Ethiopian government soldiers rounded up 60 boys and sent them to a military training camp. In Uganda, there have been persistent reports that street children in Kampala have been approached by soldiers and forced to join the army in order to be sent to the Democratic Republic of Congo, and in November 1998, parents protested against the forced recruitment by the Uganda People’s Defence Forces of 500 youths in Hoima.
Government-supported Militia Forces:In Sudan, although the minimum legal age of recruitment is 18 years, recruitment into the Popular defense Forces can start lawfully at 16 years. Even in armed forces that otherwise appear to respect recruitment procedure, the creation of government-sponsored militia forces tends to open the floodgates to child recruitment. In Algeria, for instance, so-called ‘Legitimate Defence Groups’ and ‘communal guards’ seem to operate beyond the law, without effective regulation or control.
In Burundi, in addition to widespread recruitment into regular armed forces, Tutsi armed groups, made up of youth aged from 12 to 25, have been formed with the encouragement of government authorities in order to defend the Tutsi minority. These groups recruited people from sport and school groups and were armed by politicians, businessmen and serving and retired members of the armed forces. Meanwhile, government militia in Congo-Brazzaville, which have been widely credited with egregious human rights abuses, include many teenage children among their ranks.
Military Schools:
In a number of African countries military schools serve to give children an education, not just as a back door form of underage recruitment. In Benin, for example, the Centre National d’Instruction des Forces Armées educates children from the age of 13 and the Prytanée militaire of Bembereke selects children of high ability from the 6th grade. Children in these schools are not members of the armed forces and they are encouraged, but not forced, to pursue a military career after graduation, which usually occurs when they are about 19 or 20 years of age. In other countries, such as Burundi and Rwanda, military schools appear to serve as back door recruitment into the armed forces of tens of thousands of children.
Armed Opposition Groups:
In situations of armed conflict, wherever governments have recruited and used children as soldiers, so have armed opposition groups, and just as certain African governments have chosen to violate national laws, so opposition groups have flouted public declarations and pledges not to recruit and use children in combat.2 For instance, UNITA’s draft 1990 Constitution sets 18 as the minimum age for recruitment, yet, in 1998, the Inter-African Network for Human Rights and Development (Afronet) and Human Rights Watch alleged that UNITA was abducting children and young men and women between 13 years of age and their early 30s living in border towns of Cazombo and Lumbala Nguimbo.
More often, however, no such declaration has been made. The Hutu opposition in Burundi has systematically recruited boys and girls under 15 years of age into its armed groups; and a number of different sources have stated that the Front for the Liberation of the Cabinda Enclave (FLEC-FAC) in Angola also recruited children into their forces. The FLEC-FAC was reported to have children as young as eight years of age among its ranks and an estimated 30-40 per cent of them were girls. In Sierra Leone, reports have clearly detailed the fact that rebel forces recruit children below 18 years of age and demonstrate that children as young as five are enrolled.
In Uganda, the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) systematically abducts children from their schools, communities and homes. Children who attempt to escape, resist, cannot keep up, or become ill are killed. Generally, the rebels take their captives across the border to an LRA camp in Sudan. There, these children are tortured, threatened and sexually abused. Latest reports suggest that the LRA has now turned to selling abducted children into slavery in exchange for arms.
Children enrolled by force into armed opposition groups often have little choice but to remain and fight. In Uganda, for example, if children abducted by the LRA do manage to escape or surrender, they may face the wrath of the Government. Despite claims made on Ugandan television by the armed forces that they are "rescuing these children daily", and "handing them to charity organizations for care", in January 1999, the Ugandan army executed, in circumstances to be clarified, five teenage boys between the ages of 14 and 17 suspected of being rebel soldiers. Moreover, in April 1998, 25 boys were charged with treason and are still awaiting trial. All these boys face the death sentence even though they were abducted by rebels and used as child soldiers by them. The children are charged with failing to release information about rebel soldiers or are said to have fought with the rebels. If the death penalty were carried out against these youths, this would be a manifest violation of the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols and of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. These international treaties, to which Uganda is a party, clearly prohibit capital punishment for those under 18 years of age at the time of the commission of the offense.
But even some of those armed opposition groups who use children as soldiers recognize the dangers. "It’s true they can hold a gun and fight, but you spoil the education of a child," Songolo [a rebel commander in the Democratic Republic of Congo] said, adding that he is against the practice but has seen many child soldiers in the country. "Their minds go bad...they become criminals if they leave". (This of course applies as much to volunteers as it does to conscripts.) Indeed there are reports that the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), which have used many thousands of children in their struggle against the regime in Khartoum, is finally realizing that they have created a generation of children who cannot read or write and know only the respect that is earned by the barrel of a gun. It remains to be seen whether they are truly willing to stop recruiting children and to demobilize those that are currently serving in their ranks.
Concluding remarks
Many African countries effectively protect children against military recruitment and use as soldiers. Sadly, others do not, failing to meet the standards they themselves have set. It is hoped that the abuses and violations that are identified in this report will be acted upon positively: the use of children as soldiers is the result of deliberate action, or at least in some cases, deliberate inaction. Even armed opposition groups are not always beyond the reach of the law, and many are sustained by governments.
In a statement to the United Nations Security Council on 12 February 1999, Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of UNICEF, declared that "[W]e would be derelict if we did not reiterate, in the strongest possible terms, that until the minimum age of recruitment is universally set at 18, the ruthless exploitation of children as soldiers will continue." The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers wholeheartedly endorses this statement and would only add that African countries can play a leading role in ensuring this standard is adopted; of even more importance, they can help to ensure that this standard is respected in practice.
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