RIGHTS: UN Pushes Ahead to Protect Children from Conflict

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

MEXICO CITY, Sep 14 1999 (IPS) - Olara Otunni, the United Nations’ point man to protect children from armed conflict, faces an uphill battle to get rebel groups around the world to abide by UN resolutions on the issue of child soldiers.

“We are looking at various methods of applying pressure,” said a senior aide to Otunnu, the UN’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict. “No one operates in a vacuum, there are backers and, it is through them, that we hope to get such groups to agree.”

Even Jo Baker, leader of the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, acknowledges that Otunnu has a tough task ahead.

“Clearly it’s very difficult to stop recruitment by armed groups since they are much less vulnerable to international pressure, compared to governments,” she says.

According to latest reports, more than 300,000 children under the age of 18 years are currently fighting in 35 armed conflicts around the world.

To this number, can be added the thousands of child soldiers who are recruited to fight at short notice – the youngest being a mere seven years-old.

Governments lead the way in using children under the age of 18 to swell the ranks of their armed forces, according to all available studies.

Rebel groups, on the other hand, have acquired notoriety for drawing on children under 15 to strengthen their forces. Furthermore, in some countries, girl-soldiers are reported to account for close to 30 percent of rebel fighters.

Those monitoring the situation have declared the use of child soldiers has increased internationally in the last decade, due mainly to a change in the nature of current conflicts.

During this period there has been more ethnic strife and civil conflict than traditional warfare between states and, in these conflicts, guerrilla leaders recruit children as they pass through villages.

“They find children easier to manipulate and they cost little in ‘maintenance’,” according to Save the Children, an international non-governmental organization.

In a bulletin, Save the Children says that technology has made it easier for children to take up arms as the development of “light, automatic hand-guns has made it possible for children to handle and carry high-powered weapons.”

An aid worker, familiar with the situation, adds that the children gain the impression that their role as a child soldier gives them a certain level of protection and power and, therefore, they are not keen to leave the armed movements.

In June this year Ottunu urged the Security Council to publicly censure those who recruit children into their ranks.

“A message needs to go out that it cannot be ‘business-as-usual’ when you systematically commit atrocities and abuses against children.” he said.

Ottunu, a former Ugandan foreign minister, also used the occasion to remind the UN’s most powerful body about the 1940 Geneva Convention, the Additional Protocols of 1977 and, specifically, the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) which prohibits the recruitment of children under the age of 15 into armed forces.

Since then, Ottunu has made it known that he strongly supports current efforts to “raise the legal age for recruitment and participation in hostilities from 15 to 18.”

The adoption of an Optional Protocol to the CRC has been cited as a step in that direction. It was such thinking and more that guided Ottunu’s address to the Security Council in late August, when it met to take up a resolution calling for the protection of children in war.

Adopted unanimously, the resolution urged all warring parties to protect children and refrain from forcing them into warfare.

This resolution made special reference to the targeting, recruitment and abduction of children younger than 18, calling for its condemnation.

According to Jo Baker, the more attention to the problem of child soldiers is addressed by such bodies as the Security Council and other international forums, “the more difficult it will be for rebel groups to continue the practice (of conscripting children) while laying claim to legitimacy.”

It is essential, she says, “that there be strong efforts to address impunity, and bring those who recruit children to justice.”

Otunnu is attempting to create a culture that cares for children’s rights and bringing “moral pressure” and “pushing the right buttons” are some of the ways he hopes to fulfill his task, his senior aide said.

Based on past experience, however, Otunnu remains fully aware of the odds against getting rebel groups to conform.

In 1998, which marked the first full year of his three-year mandate, Ottunu visited Sri Lanka among his many field trips to rebel-held territories. He received a commitment from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LLTE) – which has long been waging a separatist war against the Sri Lankan government – that it would not use children aged under 18 years in combat, and would stop recruiting children younger than 17.

Since then, the “Tigers” have renegaded on their promise.

According to aid workers assisting the civilian population in the LTTE-held territory in northern Sri Lanka, the rebels have continued to “advertise and indulge in recruitment campaigns in all areas under their control, including schools.”

In addition, the LTTE has “become unhappy” over the issue of children’s rights being raised by aid organsations and have forced such organisations to suspend their humanitarian assistance.

Moreover, human rights monitors are aware about what a child has to endure if he or she expresses a desire to leave the fold of the rebels.

In “Child Soldiers: The Role of Children in Armed Conflict,” the authors state that the punishment for asking to quit the LTTE is “three months of digging bunkers on the front line while under heavy enemy shelling.”

Clearly, for groups like the LTTE, the “Lord’s Resistance Army” in northern Uganda and guerrilla groups in Colombia, immediate military gains do appear to matter more on their agenda than the language of international law.

Nevertheless, Ottunu is determined to make the issue of child soldiers a high-profile subject and he has stressed that “words on paper cannot save children in peril.”