Children and war
Child soldiers today
In the post-war world, international law strove to outlaw the use of child soldiers. In 1989, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child stated that the signatories should take ‘all feasible measures to ensure that persons who have not attained the age of 15 years do not take a direct part in hostilities’. And in 1999, UN Resolution 1261 condemned the ‘recruitment and use of children in armed conflicts in violation of international law’.
On the ground, however, these strictures have been repeatedly breached since 1945. In 2002, the New York Times estimated that there were at least 300,000 child soldiers worldwide.
Children’s toys
During the Vietnam War of the 1960s and ’70s, for instance, children were used by the Viet Cong to detonate explosives or throw hand grenades at US troops. This, in turn, provoked fierce reprisals, most notoriously at My Lai in 1968, where more than 300 unarmed civilians – primarily old men, women and children – were massacred by American soldiers.
In some conflicts, children have become the targets of military atrocity. During the Afghanistan War (1979-89) between the Soviet Union (with the support of the Soviet-backed Afghani government) and Afghani guerrilla opposition forces, Soviet aircraft dropped bomblets shaped like children’s toys. Picked up by an unwary toddler, the result was often a fearful maiming, usually involving amputation.
These weapons were not designed to kill, although many did, but to undermine civilian morale and exhaust scant medical resources. They also confined civilians to village areas, where they could be more easily subjected to government control or attack.
Suicide bombers
In recent years in the Middle East, children have been used in the Palestinian intifada against Israel. Schoolchildren and young people have regularly been seen throwing rocks and (more infrequently) Molotov cocktails at the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). In addition, according to the 2004 Global Report on the Use of Child Soldiers, between October 2000 and March 2004 there were at least nine documented suicide bomb attacks involving Palestinian minors. Children have also been employed as messengers and couriers during conflict against the IDF.
In Lebanon, very young boys have been forcibly conscripted into the South Lebanon Army (SLA), an auxiliary militia controlled by the IDF.
Little bees and little bells
The armed struggle between the Sri Lankan government and the minority Tamil Tigers raged for more than two decades until a ceasefire in February 2002. During that time, many boys and girls under the age of 18 were ‘recruited’ by the Tigers – some taken by force, others seemingly joining voluntarily after their parents had been threatened. And, according to the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission, 281 cases of child recruitment were certified in the first eight months after the ceasefire, with many, many more still to be investigated.
Many thousands of children are used as combatants, sex slaves, messengers and servants in simmering and newly erupting conflicts. In Colombia, over 11,000 children are employed by guerrilla armies in a continuing civil conflict. They are called abejitas – ‘little bees’ – because they are able to sting before their targets realise they are under attack. Paramilitary forces have also dubbed them ‘little bells’, referring to their use as an early-warning system.
Shocking
One of the most shocking use of child soldiers has occurred in Uganda, where more than 10,000 boys and girls have been abducted to fight in the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army. They are drugged and frequently compelled to kill family members so that they cannot go home. A similar number of child soldiers were deployed by both opposition and government forces in the closing years of the Angolan civil war, which ended in 2002.
There are reputed to be more child soldiers in Burma than any other country in the world, some of them as young as 11. The overwhelming number have been forced into the country’s national army, the Tatmadaw Kyi, and their training consists of systematic bouts of beating and humiliation.
