Child Soldiers in the Age of Fractured States

Notes

255 introduction 1. We do not differentiate between cooks, drivers, and those who carry weapons. 2. See Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted and opened for signature, ratification, and accession by the United Nations General Assembly resolution 44/25 of 20 November 1989, entry into force 2 September 1990, in accordance with Article 49. 3. The most important international documents related to recruitment of children in armed conflicts are the following: Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Additional Protocol I or API, Geneva, June 8, 1977), especially Article 77(2) (relating to international armed conflicts); Protocol II Additional to the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of NonInternational Armed Conflicts (Additional Protocol II or APII, Geneva, June 8, 1977), especially Article 4(3)c (relating to non-international armed conflicts); Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Article 38; Rome Statute for an International Criminal Court (ICC), 17 July 1998, 2187 U.N.T.S. 90, entered into force 1 July 2002, Article 8 (on War Crimes), section 2b (xxvi); Article 4(1) and (2) of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (OP-CRC-CAC), 25 May 2000, entered into force 12 February 2002, in accordance with Article 10 (1); and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC), OAU Doc. CAB/LEG/24.9/49 (1990), entered into force 29 November 1999. 4. See Jo Becker’s chapter in this volume. Her information comes from Human Rights Watch (2002). 5. Among the signatories were Burundi, Chad, Colombia, Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nepal, Somalia, Sudan, Sri Lanka, and Uganda, which are on a UN blacklist of countries that recruit child soldiers. 6. This is not to say that governments do not recruit children. They do, but just not to the same extent as nongovernmental groups. More important, few if any governments recruit young adolescents (twelve or thirteen years old), while rebel and militia groups do. 7. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo is the president of the Union des Patriotes Congolais noTeS (UPC) and was the commander in chief of its former military wing, the Forces Patriotiques pour la Libération du Congo (FPLC). 8. Nora Boustany, Washington Post, 3 July 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ wpdyn/content/article/2008/07/02/AR2008070202893.html. 9. Uganda is described in the literature as “a war fought by children on children,” where “minors make up almost 90% of the Lord’s Resistance Army’s soldiers.” “Since the rebellion began in the 1980s, some 30,000 children have been abducted to work as child soldiers and porters, or to serve as ‘wives’ of rebels and bear their children” (“Uganda: Child Soldiers at Centre of Mounting Humanitarian Crisis,” Ten Stories the World Should Hear More About, http://www.un.org/events/tenstories/story.asp?story ID=100). “UNICEF estimated that 8,400 children were abducted between June 2002 and May 2003. In July 2003 more than 20,000 child ‘night commuters’ were estimated to seek safety each night in Gulu, Pader and Kitgum towns, to reduce the risk of abduction” (CSUCS 2004a, 106). 10. For example, see BBC News (2004), IRIN (2006b). 11. For examples, see CNN.com (2005), IRIN (2003a). 12. See, for example, BBC News (2007). 13. See, as examples, Peter Singer (this volume); BBC News (2004); Associated Press (2005); IRIN (2006b). 14. See Hegre and Sambanis (2006, 508–535). Pooling all quantitative analyses of civil conflict, Hegre and Sambanis conducted a sensitivity analysis. They determined that nine factors (large population, low income, slow economic growth, recent political instability, illiberal democratic political institutions, small military, rough terrain, nondemocratic neighbors, and neighbors at war) were robustly associated with the onset of civil conflict. Ethnic differences were robustly linked to only low-intensity conflicts, not large-scale civil war. 15. A recent study by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers amply demonstrates that the 300,000 figure is wrong (CSUCS 2008). 16. In the interest of full disclosure, we should note that Simon Reich made reference to that figure (albeit somewhat ironically) in his coauthored chapter reprinted in this volume. chapter1:methodologicalProblemsintheStudyofchildSoldiers 1. Notable among single-country studies of ex-combatants in general in Colombia is Arjona (2006). 2. The group known as SWAY (Survey of War...