New Report on Children and Armed Conflict — The Use of Child Soldiers
CLC’s Sydney Greenberger
July 23, 2024
By Sydney Greenberger, CLC
A 16-year-old is forced to join an armed group on his walk to school. Girls are kidnapped into being “wives” for soldiers. Children are visited by recruiters at schools and pressured to join the war effort. Otherwise, they are regarded as unpatriotic.
On June 3, 2024, the UN Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC) released its annual report. This disturbing report details the terrible treatment of children who are forced into either fighting themselves in wars or being forced to support their governments in various ways when they are at war.
On June 26, the UN Security Council held its annual open debate on children and armed conflict in New York. There, the council discussed the CAAC and heard the personal testimony of a former child soldier from the Democratic Republic of Congo. He explained that some children were forced to join armed groups, and others were abducted to hold their families to ransom. The head of the UN Security Council needs to protect children affected by conflict, helping them gain access to education and healthcare, and protecting them from living in environments where their rights are violated.
February 2002 marked the release of the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child which aims to eliminate the recruitment and use of children in war. The Optional Protocol requires that governments ensure children under the age of 18 are not forcibly recruited to the armed forces and requires them to prevent children from taking a direct part in the hostilities of war. The protocol has been ratified by 173 countries, including the United States.
Some governments in violation of the treaty were forced to demobilize their child soldiers, prosecute officers who recruited children, and change their deployment practices. Although the treaty has been in effect for over two decades, child soldier recruitment and engagement in conflict continues to occur in many places around the world.
The 2008 Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA) allows the U.S. government to restrict arms sales and military assistance to countries whose security forces or government-supported armed groups recruited or used child soldiers in the previous year. Since the U.S. is the top arms exporter in the world, the CSPA creates an incentive for countries to put an end to the recruitment and use of child soldiers if they want American assistance.
Between 2005 and 2022, more than 105,000 children were verified as recruited by armed groups in their communities, with some being as young as 8 years old. The actual number is believed to be much higher. Yearly, thousands of children are used as soldiers, cooks, and spies, among other roles, in armed conflict around the globe.
There are a variety of reasons why children might become part of an armed group. Limited educational or employment opportunities and poverty can increase the pool of available children and motivate them to volunteer for armed groups. Children might be abducted, threatened, coerced, or manipulated by a member of the group. Children may believe they must associate with an armed group to survive. Children who come from impoverished families may join armed groups to generate income. Regardless of why a child becomes a member of an armed group, the recruitment and use of children by armed forces is a violation of child rights and international humanitarian law.
Children forced to become soldiers suffer PTSD, endure distressing training and initiations, perform hazardous jobs and face dangerous armed conflict. They often witness, suffer from, or are forced to take part in torture and killings. Being a member of an armed group does permanent damage to families and communities and deprives them of nutrition and healthy living conditions.
Sadly, children attract less suspicion, so they are used by armed groups as “human bombs.” Groups may view children as an easy target for manipulation and loyalty. Children can be useful in resource extraction.
Although Russia is one of the 173 signatories of the UN Optional Protocol on Armed Conflict, the conflict in Ukraine has seen Russia employing child soldiers. Children as young as 14 no longer need the approval of a guardian or social service agency to get a job in Russia. Previously, employers were required to pay for medical exams for minors wishing to be employed. Those requirements have also been waived.
In parts of Siberia, teens are tasked with sewing items and preparing care packages for Russian troops in Ukraine. City administrators in Krasnoyarsk have sent representatives to schools to recruit children. While administrators claimed that students were recruited on a volunteer basis, some children reported feeling pressure that refusing participation could have negative consequences for future education and employment opportunities.
Krasnoyarsk is not the only Russian city where children have been put to work for the war effort. In Mamadysh, children have been finishing stabilizing fins for drone-dropped bombs that are used in Ukraine. In Bakan, children with hearing disabilities are being recruited to produce “trench candles,” which is hazardous work for a 9-year-old. Students as young as 15 have been used to assemble Iranian-produced attack drones. Parents report children working long hours without breaks or meals.
Similarly, Yemen ratified the Optional Protocol in 2007, but the UN has verified at least 1,800 cases of child recruitment or use of child soldiers by the Houthi armed group in Yemen since 2010. Activists report that Houthis have recruited children as young as 13 years old. They are taken from schools to Houthi culture centers, where they are lectured about the Jihad, and then sent to military camps or the front lines. In response to the food insecurity in Yemen, Houthis may incentivize children to join their cause by promising food baskets to them and their families if they become soldiers.
Although both countries have signed the Optional Protocol, armed groups in Yemen and Russia continue to recruit and employ child soldiers and are not held accountable. Unfortunately, the CSPA has had serious implementation issues. Since the law took effect, the State Department has declined to acknowledge reports that certain countries have used or recruited child soldiers. Even as countries have been called out for their use of children in war efforts, presidents have waived restrictions, pointing to the supposed “national interest” of the U.S. Because of this, over $6 billion in arms and assistance have gone to governments using child soldiers since the CSPA went into effect.
This past year, the Biden administration named 17 governments in the recruitment or use of child soldiers, the most since the CSPA’s inception. Still, large sums of U.S. funding got through to countries like Egypt, a government that is suspected of recruiting and using children in conflict.
The U.S. must hold both its allies and adversaries accountable for their role in the recruitment and use of child soldiers. By doing so, a powerful message is sent: governments will not receive U.S. arms and assistance if they fail to address the issue of child soldiers.
Sources
UN hears testimony from former child soldier on brutal reality of war
