In many armed conflicts around Africa, children under 18 are recruited and used in armed conflicts, either by the national armed forces or other armed groups in Africa. These children bear the pain and life’s scars on their tired shoulders.
Between 2005 and 2020, thousands of children were recruited and used by parties to the conflict.
These young boys and girls were denied their childhood and often suffered grave forms of exploitation and abuse to the extent of being used as fighters, cooks, porters, guards, spies, messengers, and more.
Additionally, they were used as combatants who fought on the front lines, forced to act as human shields or conduct executions, deployed as suicide bombers, or used to make or transport explosives.
Furthermore, girls became victims of sexual violence in armed conflicts around Africa.
It was believed that becoming a child soldier provided a sense of belonging to the community and the people they were fighting for, yet there were high risks and violence.
What you need to know
On February 12, 2002, 126 countries ratified the UN treaty prohibiting the forced recruitment or use of underage children in armed conflict.
Despite all this, child soldiers continued being used in some countries and territories that ratified the treaty.
Even after world leaders agreed to work together against the use of child soldiers, there were still child recruits in African countries, something that denied them childhood and other freedoms such as education, life, and safety which are basic human rights.
Many child recruits were conscripted, and others joined out of desperation and peer pressure. In their young minds, they believed that becoming a child soldier gave one the best opportunities for life.
Below are some African countries where children were and are still recruited and used in conflicts.
Central African Republic
During the latest conflict in the Central African Republic, thousands of children were used and recruited as child soldiers, combatants, guards, human shields, porters, messengers, spies, cooks, and for sexual purposes.
Children as young as the age of seven were predominantly used.
Hundreds and thousands of civilians were also uprooted by the conflict, with children who became vulnerable, hence laying grounds for their recruitment.
During this time, humanitarian supplies to the victims of the conflict were cut off by the ravaging widespread violence; there were continued attacks on aid convoys, leaving the victims in dire need.
The Central African Republic military battled rebels seeking to overthrow President Faustin-Archange Touadera.
The nation had since 2013 struggled to find stability.
In the people’s quest to find safety, it was always so devasting to find armed groups in some sites where thousands of displaced people were seeking refuge.
This brought greater risks to the displaced and aided the forced recruitment of children through attacks on schools and occupied these schools.
The situation of Central African children was worrying because these recruits were victims of sexual violence, malnutrition due to poor feeding, poor food, sanitation, and water supply, which exposed them to diseases, and not forgetting poor access to health and education services.
Central African Republic children who were separated from their families during the mass movement have remained a sad reminder to us.
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
The unrest in DRC from the First Congo War (1996–1997), the civil war, and the International military conflict had many refugees fleeing to Uganda and Sudan.
Then the Second Democratic Republic of Congo Civil War which was the second of two ethnopolitical civil conflicts in the Republic of the Congo, began in 1997 and continued until 1999 and served as a continuation of the civil war of 1993–1994 and involved militias representing three political candidates.
These conflicts, which took place in the DRC, had all sides involved in the war recruit child soldiers, who were known locally as ‘Kadogos’, a Swahili term meaning ‘little ones’.
The militia led by Thomas Lubanga Dyilo was 30 percent of children who were operating in armed groups.
Also, former president Laurent Kabila used children in the conflict from 1996 onwards when thousands of children served under him.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2011, thousands of child soldiers were recruited and used by several armed groups in the DRC, where the girls were subjected to sexual violence by the commanders who passed them down to the rest of the soldiers.
Northern Uganda
Child soldiers in Northern Uganda were recruited by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group led by Joseph Kony, who abducted young children and recruited them as child soldiers to fill out their ranks.
Children were usually abducted from their homes and sometimes on their way to school, church, playgrounds, or where they commonly congregated.
The LRA rebels did the abductions through violence and threats on the children.
Once abducted and recruited, the child soldiers were threatened and retained. They were later subjected to abuse, such as sexual partners to the combatants and other forms of human rights abuses.
Even in captivity, they suffered psychological, physical, mental, and other social problems, including rejection from their families, who considered them evil.
Sierra Leone
Between 1991 and 2002, a decade of conflict took place in Sierra Leone, where the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), state forces, and state-supported militias recruited children for combat.
This was not new in Sierra Leone, but in this case, thousands of children became part of the civil war.
Many children were forced to fight from the time the civil war began and served in the small boys unit.
However, about 30 percent of the child soldiers were girls, subjected to all forms of sexual violence during conflicts.
During the training of the child soldiers, there was the use of certain drugs by the RUF, which had numerous effects on the children, and the RUF was aware of that.
The RUF also trained the abducted children and forced them to be extremely brutal. They beheaded, maimed, and mutilated people, including sexual violence.
Nigeria
Boko Haram in Nigeria recruited children for use in battlefields across Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, and Chad. This was confirmed by military groups fighting the Boko Haram insurgency as a newly laid strategy to revive their influence in the region.
Boko Haram terrorists themselves further confirmed the atrocious abuse of children’s rights when they posted pictures of children dressed in military attires and holding assault rifles in a video released during a celebration of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha.
Further, Boko Haram has been actively engaged in the mass abduction of schoolgirls on whom sexual enslavement has been projected.
With their active presence, the children of Nigeria continued to suffer the atrocities by Boko Haram.
Between 2017 to 2019, there were thousands of children violated and recruited for use, mainly through abduction and forced to support other roles besides being in direct combat and as sexual slaves.
In 2014, hundreds of Chibok school girls were abducted by the Boko Haram militants. They were used as child suicide bombers in an attack on displaced people in Northern Cameroon.
Young children were strapped with explosives on their bodies and the small children who were used as suicide bombers had absolutely no idea of what was going on or going to happen.
South Sudan
In the north and the south, there was massive recruitment of child soldiers, mainly in the Western and Southern Upper Nile, the Nuba mountains, and the Eastern Equatoria region.
Some of the South Sudan children recruited as child soldiers were forced to defend the oil fields in the Western Upper Nile and were trained to attack the neighborhood communities and villages.
Thousands of children were recruited, including pupils in primary schools and students in secondary schools, and given military uniforms to replace their school uniforms.
In 2002 in Darfur, children as young as 14 were charged with murder and other crimes related to ethnic animosities who also took part in a raid on a village by an armed group in Darfur.
The Sudan People Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/SPLM) also continued to recruit children as child soldiers who were re-recruited, and the re-recruitment continued up to 2004 in the Equatoria region as the Western upper Nile.
They were trained to raid, kill and fight.
Somalia
The Al-Shabaab in Somalia recruited hundreds of child soldiers in 2016 in the Bay region.
The Somali National Army also recruited hundreds of children who it used for various tasks as allocated.
In this period, Somalia possessed a huge percentage of children who died during the wars.
Al-Shabaab defines itself as an independent militant group that broke away from the Union of Islamic Courts and demands teachers, elders, and rural communities to provide them with children eight years old and older to help them fight.
In this fight, they beat, raped, tortured, and killed people who refused to give their children.
Recruitment process
There are numerous factors, such as lack of education, forced displacement, sexual violence, and lack of food which have led many young children to be recruited as child soldiers both willingly and unwillingly.
According to various reports, a significant number of child soldiers recruit themselves voluntarily.
It should be noted that often, the children are tricked by the militant groups to believe that by becoming child soldiers, they’ll be serving their country.
This is a strategic way of abduction where the armed men reach out to places such as schools, churches, and other places where these children congregate in large numbers to trick them into joining or getting recruited as child soldiers.
Some children joined out of peer pressure and having no home or community at all anymore. Some children also joined voluntarily for vengeance after they lost everything in conflicts.
It should be noted that some Militant terrorist organizations, such as Al-Shabaab and Boko Haram, also contribute widely to recruiting child soldiers.
Terrorist groups fighting governments recruit child soldiers for various strategic reasons, such as serving as frontline fighters and being used as looters, spies, messengers, or informants.
The terrorist groups also take advantage of children’s physical weakness and use it to assault them sexually as sexual slaves.
Furthermore, these terrorist organizations promise children wages like monetary payments and rewards such as alcohol and drugs if they accept to be recruited as child soldiers.
Abduction
Abduction is the commonest method used to recruit child soldiers.
The Ugandan LRA used this method of abducting children from their homes and other places where they congregated.
In the two decades of conflict, they abducted thousands of children, who raided, killed civilians, and even burnt houses, forcing many parents to hide and protect their children from abductions.
Such situations laid bare plagues on children to be abducted and recruited since many children in these camps lacked protection.
International Law and Human Rights
Even though International Human Rights Law allows for the prosecution of children for war crimes, it also encourages states to promote their rehabilitation and reintegration into society, including after an armed conflict.
Conclusion
Children recruited as child soldiers are often intimidated by the use of force, threatened and retained, and tricked with tales of empty promises.
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In their young minds, they lack the maturity to express their consent and have no idea about the consequences of their actions because they’re trained by adult soldiers.
If children are recruited as child soldiers to carry life scars on their tired shoulders, who will then be the next generation’s pillars?
