This is a fairly broad ranged diary but I think all of the parts will tie together well. In 17 conflicts spanning the globe there are children who are more than simple victims of war. These children are forced to be active participants in war. They are forced to fight and forced to kill. These children are taken from their homes and their families to fight in these horrific conflicts. Sometimes they are pressed into service after the worst of disasters. I choose to highlight this now because the use of child soldiers has political relevance in this primary and because it is illustrative of the difference between Barack Obama and John McCain. This topic is something that needs to be addressed as a human rights issue and only one candidate for president has a record that stands out on this topic. The issue of child soldiers also highlight the dangers of disaster capitalism in a rather horrid way.
The experiences of child soldiers are horrific. The NYT chronicled the life experiences of one child soldier seeking political asylum in the United States. The young man, Salifou Yankene, was 15 when he was forcibly conscripted into Mouvement Patriotique in 2004. The Mouvement Patriotique is a rebel group that controlled the north of Ivory Coast at that point in time.
The story of how he came to be conscripted is, like many such stories, horribly tragic. It began with the assassination of his father and sister. After the assassination of his father and sister, he fled with his mother and siblings. For three years, they lived in a roving camp for the displaced. The camp was raided in search of "recruits".
Those who would recruit child soldiers are not above any acts. This is clearly demonstrated with their recruitment procedures. When Salifou Yankene’s mother objected to having her sons taken from her her punishment was to watch one of them sever Salifou’s brother Abdul’s hand with a machete. Salifou was thrown in the back of a truck with other boys and began two years as an unwilling child soldier.
Salifou was able to escape unlike the over 300,000 others estimated to serve as child soldiers around the globe. They serve in Colombia and Ivory Coast. They serve in Burundi and the Congo and Somalia. Of special consideration may be that children are used as soldiers and weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan. Myanmar, recently devastated by the cyclone, has one of the world’s highest rates of recruitment of child soldiers. Every where the practice is abhorrent and in all these places it relies on the same thing. The recruitment of child soldiers relies on the vulnerability of the children and the seeming invulnerability of the perpetrators.
Salifou was stolen from a refugee camp. Temporary camps that house refugee’s or disaster victims are entirely composed of the vulnerable. Fear of increases in recruitment and impress has arisen in the wake of the cyclone crisis in Myanmar. Myanmar is considered one of the worst offender when it comes to recruiting child soldiers according to The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. In a report issued by the group, they tell of the recruiting practices used in Myanmar:
Both military and civilian recruiters seized or coerced street children and children at bus and train stations and other public places. A system of incentives and punishments was in place to encourage recruiters to fill their quotas. Some local authorities were reportedly pressured by the military to produce a certain number of recruits per village, some of them children. Some children were threatened with jail if they did not agree to join the army.
The danger here is clear. These people recruit children for war and other nefarious purposes and will have no qualms about stealing victims of the cyclone. The total destruction of Myanmar has made it even easier for these people to access the children. The Times notes that 85 percent of all the schools in Myanmar are in ruins. The children have been cut off from family and any social stability making them easy prey. Already, two brokers were arrested as they attempted to recruit children at a shelter.
In addition, there is apparently no program for reuniting lost children with their families. This creates an added burden as it stretches already thin resources. The projected number of children adversely affected by the disaster is staggering. Unicef claims that as many as 40 percent of those affected were children and that "there may be as many as one million children in urgent need of assistance" source. With such large numbers in danger it is not difficult to see how many children may end up pressed into the ranks of the Burmese military or other dissident groups. As in disaster capitalism, in the wake of catastrophe, certain groups seek to exploit chaos and profit.
Why though? Why use children to fight in these wars? The answers given in the Coalition report are several but this is the most often quoted on the web and the most succinct
"Child soldiers are ideal because they don't complain, they don't expect to be paid and if you tell them to kill, they kill," Chad Military Officer
A fuller explanation is given by Jo Becker, who has interviewed former child soldiers in Sri Lanka, Nepal, Uganda and Myanmar for Human Rights Watch.
They are easy to manipulate and will do the unspeakable without question or protest, partly because their morals and value systems are not yet fully formed, she said. In some cultures, child soldiers -- 40 percent of whom can be girls -- are considered expendable "cannon fodder," she said. Source
Source
The disasters like drought, earthquakes, and cyclones only add to the already inherent vulnerability of the children. They need adults and authority figures to rely upon and they are betrayed, forced to kill in the most horrific of ways.
An indictment against Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga Dyilo asserts that one of his commanders threatened to shoot a 13-year-old girl unless she tied the testicles of a prisoner with wire. She complied and the captive died.
In Myanmar -- formerly known as Burma -- a boy who was 11 when he was recruited to the national army, had to watch as older soldiers gunned down mothers and then killed their babies. "They swung them by their legs and smashed them against a rock. I saw it," Kim Muang Than told Human Rights Watch. Source
If you think the United States is too good or morally superior to be involved with child soldiers you would be wrong. We have, in a sense created child soldiers. We treat children who are involved in conflicts against us just as we treat adults who are our enemies. The Coalition report notes that:
In its "war on terror", the United States of America (USA) has designated a number of children, some as young as 13, as "enemy combatants" – a status, as used by the USA, that is unrecognized in international law. Several under-18-year-olds were transferred from US custody in Afghanistan to indefinite military detention in the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.
One such individual is Omar Khadr, a Canadian national shot and captured in a firefight with US forces in Afghanistan in 2002. He has alleged that he was ill treated in US custody in Afghanistan and Guantánamo. Six years on he is facing trial before a military commission for offences allegedly committed in 2002 when he was 15. In its case against him, the prosecution suggested that Khadr had become involved with al-Qaeda when he was just 10 years old. (18-19).
I do not think that we should be shipping any one off to Gitmo much less children. Kids captured need to be treated as someone victimized by a group in authority. This is not to say that they should not be punished or held accountable for their crimes but to simply treat them as criminals ignores the truth that they were unlikely to have understood the entirety of their actions. Does a ten year old really understand the theological or sociological factors that drive Al-Queda? I doubt it.
Happily, the United States is not bankrupt on this issue. We have stepped up to bring some serious offenders to justice. This is where Sen. Obama has played a minor role. If you go to his website and look under the foreign policy tab there is a section on Africa. In this section Sen. Obama states that
On July 19, 2005, Obama passed a bipartisan amendment, along with Senators Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Judd Gregg (R-NH) to provide $13 million for the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Signed into law in November 2005, the Obama amendment provides critical funding to keep the Court up and running and dramatically enhances efforts to bring Charles Taylor to justice.
The court this paragraph is referring to is one that has already led to the indictment of 13 alleged war criminals, of whom five have been convicted. Funded mostly by international donations, the court is targeting not those who actually cut off people's hands, but those who bore, in the language of the court, "greatest responsibility." The court goes after those who are the leaders of the forces. In my mind, it allows some people to maintain the excuse that they were just following orders but it is better than nothing. In a Washington Post article on the court the idea of going after the top tier leaders gets mixed reviews.
"In the outside world, you can think of Charles Taylor as the link," said Jabati Mambu, 24, secretary of the Amputee Association of Sierra Leone. "But here there are actual perpetrators. The actual people need to be punished. Source" Source
The second thing Obama has done on the issue of child soldiers is sign his name to S.1175. S. 1175, The Child Soldier Prevention Act, prohibits the government of the United States of America from providing military aid to any foreign government that uses child soldiers in its military, paramilitary forces, or other official or sanctioned armed groups. The Child Soldier Prevention Act also requires the Executive Branch to research and publish reports on the use of child soldiers around the world.
The bill has not gone very far as it has only 35 cosponsors and is still in Committee on the Judiciary. However, the bill has some bi-partisan support with Senators like Sen Coburn, Sen Cochran, Sen Brownback, and Sen Martinez. Even Larry "wide stance" Craig is onboard. One man who is not though is Sen. John McCain.
This is not truly surprising as McCain keeps company with people more likely to be on the Myanmar side of the issue. Doug Goodyear who was chosen to run the Republican National Convention this summer resigned his post after a magazine reported that his firm had lobbied for the military junta that runs Myanmar. I cannot say that John McCain has said that child soldiers are good or acceptable.
McCain wrote with Senator Mitch McConnell for The Wall Street Journal in 2005:
"The junta routinely jails democracy activists, sometimes resorting to torture and murder," the article said. "The Burmese military employs rape as a weapon of war, destroying the lives of innocent ethnic minority women and girls. Child soldiers are pressed into the military’s rank and file. Narcotics production remains a profitable business, with illegal drugs flowing across Burma’s borders into neighboring countries. Source" Source
It is clear from the context that child soldiers are bad. Yet, once again this is an issue where McCain and his deeds are not linking up with McCain and his rhetoric. It would seem that this is a non-partisan issue. I hope that we can look forward to Sen. McCain getting behind The Child Soldier Prevention Act in a way he never got behind the new G.I. Bill.
I do not want to leave the impression that nothing is being done about child soldiers. There has been some progress in reducing the number of governments using child soldiers due to international pressure. The U.N. has been very active in this arena and numerous international treaties and laws have been created to address the issue. The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict has now been ratified by 120 states, up from 77 in mid-2004.
The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 25 May 2000 and entered into force on 12 February 2002. The protocol sets 18 as the minimum age for direct participation in hostilities, for recruitment into armed groups, and for compulsory recruitment by governments. States may accept volunteers from the age of 16 but must deposit a binding declaration at the time of ratification or accession, setting out their minimum voluntary recruitment age and outlining certain safeguards for such recruitment.
In addition, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal establishes a permanent court to try persons charged with committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. In its definition of war crimes, the statute includes "conscripting or enlisting children under the age of fifteen years into national armed forces or using them to participate actively in hostilities" (Article 8.b.xxvi).
The UN Security Council has also passed a series of resolutions condemning the recruitment and use of children in hostilities. These are resolutions 1261 (1999), 1314 (2000) 1379 (2001), 1460 (2003), 1539 (2004) and 1612 (2005) on children and armed conflict.
One of the biggest issues though is that these efforts are usually signed and done by governments. It is hard to get the non-governmental actors to go along with the international efforts. The Coalition report states explicitly that the majority of childreninvolved in conlicts do so in the non-state actors. However, they also make clear the size of the task still at hand.
The military recruitment of children (under-18s) and their use in hostilities is a much larger phenomenon, that still takes place in one form or another in at least 86 countries and territories worldwide. This includes unlawful recruitment by armed groups, forcible recruitment by government forces, recruitment or use of children into militias or other groups associated with armed forces, their use as spies, as well as legal recruitment into peacetime armies.
As what is currently occurring in Mynamar makes clear, the task of protecting children and ending child soldiery is nowhere near complete. Despite a rising international profile more needs to be done. There are many factors necessary to reduce and eliminate the number of child soldiers. There needs to be a more explicit recognition of child soldiers on the agendas of those involved in a whole range of initiatives, from conflict prevention, peacemaking and mediation through to peace-building and longer-term development. Success requires an even greater commitment in terms of resources, political will, and accountability. The practice of recruiting child soldiers is abhorrent and it needs to be ended.
A final story from a child soldier:
I had a friend, Juanita, who got into trouble for sleeping around. We had been friends in civilian life and we shared a tent together. The commander said that it didn’t matter that she was my friend. She had committed an error and had to be killed. I closed my eyes and fired the gun, but I didn’t hit her. So I shot again. The grave was right nearby. I had to bury her and put dirt on top of her. The commander said,"You did very well. Even though you started to cry, you did well. You’ll have to do this again many more times, and you’ll have to learn not to cry.""
- Angela, joined the FARC-EP in Colombia at age twelve
For more information visit:
Human Rights Watch: http://www.hrw.org/...
Coalition to Stop Child Soldiers: The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers
Sources:
Coalition Report: http://www.childsoldiersglobalreport... (Warning: Large PDF)
Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
http://www.nytimes.com/...
http://www.nytimes.com/...
CNN
http://www.cnn.com/...
S. 1175, The Child Soldier Prevention Act
http://thomas.loc.gov/...