The stories of Ishmael Beah of Sierra Leone and Emmanuel Jah of Sudan have helped to shed light on the plight of the world’s 300 000 child soldiers.
There may, however, be a gap in the child protection strategies of those working to rehabilitate and reintegrate children who have been rescued. For instance, since the start of the long-running civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, of the 6 000 children rescued, less than 1 300 of them have been girls. Girls, while sometimes used as combatants, are usually kept as “bush wives” or sex slaves. UNICEF officials have lamented that fact that girls are less likely to be freed than boys; they continue to suffer systematic and repeated rape. Today, less than 20% of the former child soldiers under the care of UNICEF are girls.
The conflict in the DRC has merged somewhat with the spillover of the Rwandan civil war and 1994 Genocide in which over 800 000 people died over the course of the spring. Rape continues to be used as a weapon of war with which to defeat community morale. In the DRC, over 8 000 women and girls are raped each year.
Unfortunately, the use of child soldiers is both a historical and contemporary problem. In many counties, the practice has been around since the advent of the civil wars following independence. The cyclic effects of war, poverty, ethnic tensions and the struggle for political power have perpetuated circumstances that sustain the vulnerabilities of children to kidnapping and conscription into armed groups. Child soldiers have been a continual issue in many African countries, including Uganda, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Angola and Chad. In South Asia, Sri Lanka and Nepal continue to work towards the eradication of child soldiers.
Moreover, speaking with regard to Yemen’s child soldiers, Radhika Coomaraswamy (the UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict) said, “We [the United Nations] hope the Yemeni authorities will prosecute those who recruit children. 600 children die in conflict in Yemen annually, and children between the ages of 14 and 15 comprise up to 40% of the soldiers fighting in the Amran province.
There have been continued international efforts to combat the use of child soldiers, which contravenes article 38 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Article 38 prohibits the recruitment or children under the age of fifteen from participation in armed hostilities. An optional protocol further extends protection to children that are not yet eighteen years old. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, which last year enjoyed its 20th anniversary, constitutes a piece of internationally-binding law, for it has been ratified by every UN Member State, save Somalia and the United States. It is the foremost document protecting children everywhere and sets the international standards for child welfare, the best interests of the child, and child protection.