I am praying for forgiveness so that more fruitful things can come our way, praying that God will help us to become good people.
—Z., age fourteen1
There used to be no need to formally prohibit the use of children as soldiers. To send children into battle was once not only unconscionable but also unthinkable. However, this practice is now one of the dreadful realities of modern warfare. It is a new doctrine adhered to by a wide-ranging set of conflict groups spread out across the globe. Indeed, the conflicts that have not seen children serving as fighters are now the rarity. A number of these wars fought by children are, in fact, even sustained by their very presence.
As we look to the future, perhaps most worrisome is that the underlying forces that led to the rise of this practice appear likely to stay in place if no action is taken to amend them. World order remains in a state of constant flux, with little end in sight to the panoply of wars and smoldering conflicts that cover the international system. Diseases, famine, mass poverty, and so on continue to darken the once hopeful seeds of globalization. The result is that a generation of estranged and isolated children is growing up without educational and economic opportunities, and without any hope of prospering. They make up the core of the child soldier recruiting pool in the present and future.
In turn, the predominant weapons of war remain cheap, widespread, and easily available to any would-be warring party with even an iota of initiative. Their accessibility allows the conversion of mass numbers of vulnerable, disconnected children into low-cost and expendable soldiers. They are abducted or recruited, quickly indoctrinated and trained, and then set loose on the battlefield.
Such is the new doctrine of child soldiers that has emerged over the last decades. It is taken advantage of by an increasing cast of unscrupulous warlords and power mongers. All they require is an opportunity and incentive; the mass breakdown in good governance and the potential for profits and power from war provide both. These leaders only need the willingness to transgress moral norms, which is made easier by the lack of any consequences.
Sadly, none of these factors will go away of their own accord and the consequences are quite dangerous. Children’s recruitment and use in battle not only violates acceptable practices of war, but also makes conflicts both more likely and more bloody. It results in higher levels of human rights violations and atrocities committed against civilians and the child soldiers themselves. It also can lead to a virtual proliferation of conflict groups and warring parties. Almost any group is able to fight better and longer, for a wider variety of causes, many of them personalized, unpopular, or downright incoherent. Finally, the use of children as soldiers steals their very childhood, laying the groundwork for further strife.
So far, the response by the international community to this phenomenon has been limited in its effectiveness. While certainly directed by the right motives, the movement against child soldiering has made little headway if the standard for success is to end the present and future use of children on the battlefield. Activists have raised awareness and made great efforts to re-establish certain prohibitory regimes. But these regimes have remained fairly toothless. In turn, governments and the United Nations have been unhurried in implementing changes that might prevent, deter, or even mitigate the consequences. Political and military analysts share equal blame, as they have been slow to recognize the changes in warfare that child soldiers portend.
While the task of changing this path is daunting, it is not without hope. Making an effort to end the practice of child soldiers is a necessary one. It will not only alleviate some of the worst aspects of modern violence, but is also a means to reclaiming part of our lost humanity.
If there is any hope of halting the trend, the exploitation of children as weapons of war must be faced down in each of its stages: before, during, and after. Such global challenges as the spread of disease, mass poverty, the lack of human opportunity, and the global trade in cheap weaponry to various warring parties are important not only on their own merits, but because they carry a greater cost for us all. They lead to wider risks of war, enable terrorism, and sustain child soldier groups; each provides an even further imperative for serious action.
More direct preventative measures must also be taken to end child soldiering. Rather than relying on an unlikely or ephemeral change of heart among leaders who abuse children to do their bidding, we must set up realistic systems of punishment and deterrence. Such measures include the use of sanctions against child soldier leaders, supporters, and enablers, and the wider application of war crimes tribunals and labor laws.
These steps may not fully deter the use of the child soldier doctrine, and certainly will not end the practice at the very start. They will, however, at least take away some of its advantages and, most importantly, connect the practice of recruiting and using child soldiers with some form of realistic penalty. Thus, the decision calculus of those weighing whether or not to use children as soldiers will be altered. Moral norms will be finally backed with action.
Unfortunately, we cannot always choose our opponents or their behavior. If children are a new feature of contemporary war, then our professional militaries must be prepared for them. Grounding preparation and training in this reality is the only way to minimize the child soldier doctrine’s harms and remove some of the benefits that opponents may gain in using it. Possible actions to take in response include developing intelligence profiles of child soldier opponents; building an effective counter-doctrine that incorporates new rules of engagement, use of psychological operations, employment of non-lethal weapons, and educated targeting; welcoming child soldier escapees and POWs; and managing the new stresses of public affairs.
Finally, post-conflict efforts can provide far better attention and support to the growing pool of children who have served as soldiers. If we do so successfully, they will be less likely to serve as soldiers again, and thus end a terrible cycle. Peace treaties and post-conflict planning must recognize who is now actually at war and the unique challenges that the widening use of the child soldier doctrine presents. Greater support must also be given to the difficult but important tasks of child soldier demobilization, rehabilitation, and reintegration. Former child soldiers must be treated as the victims they are. They require sustained and systematic support to allow them to regain the childhood and opportunities that were stolen from them.
Countless doctrines and modes of warfare have come and gone over the long march of history. War has been viewed as everything from a noble affair of feudal ideals, in which armored knights would test their honor and manliness, to an imperial burden, in which nations sought to prove their worth by seizing colonies in distant lands. In turn, allowable practices in battle have included everything from the right to keep captured soldiers as personal slaves to the release of poison gases designed to kill thousands at a time.
The child soldier doctrine will hopefully someday soon join these many other practices of war that have vanished. Perhaps, history will look back upon this period of child soldiers as an aberration, a short phase when the moral norms broke down but were quickly restored. It has been a long-held conviction that children have no place in war. To make it a reality once more, we need only to match the will of those who do evil with our own will to do good.