How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/
EDITORIAL NOTE
This contribution documents a WMO Gathering held on 25 September 2021, the first conducted in Arabic. It records the substance of the discussion rather than advancing an argument of its own. The speakers are not named, and their institutions are not identified, at the discretion of this journal. The account of judicial practice given below reflects what was reported by the participants at that date and is not offered as a verified account of the position today.
ABSTRACT
This report documents the first WMO Gathering held in Arabic, on the situation of children recruited by armed groups in Iraq and the obstacles they face in building a life after the conflict. It sets out the pattern of recruitment described by the speakers, in which children were frequently sent by relatives for financial reasons rather than drawn by ideology, and records their observation that the population of the areas concerned largely rejected that ideology, with the consequence that families who gave up children are excluded by their own communities. The report then describes the difficulties former child recruits face in legal proceedings, and closes with the case for reintegration arrangements that a community will accept, noting a government programme that has enabled a limited number of families to relocate and begin again elsewhere.
KEYWORDS
Child soldiers, recruitment, reintegration, reconciliation, juvenile justice, stigma, community acceptance, family responsibility, livelihoods, post-conflict, children and armed conflict
INTRODUCTION
On September 25th, 2021, we had the pleasure to start with our WMO Gathering Series in the Arabic language. This, being the very first event in an alternative language to English, was chaired by Daniel Erdmann and moderated and partially translated by Yousra Hasona. The content was delivered by two speakers from Iraq, one from the academic field and one representing a foundation working on social questions.
Besides our speakers from Iraq, our event was blessed by an audience from India, France, Germany, Lebanon, Nigeria, Palestine, and Kenya. The central question or issue to analyze dealt with the challenge of understanding the difficulties that former child soldiers face, before and during the process of building a post-war life.
MAIN CORPUS
A different starting point
Having previously discussed the topic of child soldiers in African countries, we found out that many of these African children often were completely left alone, having no family that looked after them, and more often than not they join militant groups, in order to increase their means of livelihood. In the territories that were occupied in Iraq, this content has a different starting point. If children are not hired by fancy promises communicated by recruiters, their relatives often send them in order to maintain the families financially. Interestingly, that the ideology of such a group is often not of importance to child soldiers, but gains more motivational influence the older potential soldiers become.
To me, it is crucial to share once again what our speakers explained in detail, namely that the majority of people living in the occupied areas, reject the ideology of such a group, their targets, and their recruiting systems. This point gains importance when it comes to terms of dealing with children who left in order to become reintegrated into society. The fact that the majority of people and their communities do not follow such a group, drives people, who join it, into a status of exclusion, being rejected by their community and facing the consequences of the Criminal Law.
Law, crime, and the question of guilt
Talking about law, crime, and prosecution, we may reflect on the topic of guilt for a moment. The situation per se looks highly complicated as we do have recruiters and families, being active decision-makers, that make their children join for financial interests. Our speakers described proceedings in which the focus falls on the children rather than on the adults who delivered them, and in which little distinction is drawn between a child who was involved in active armed conflict and one who was engaged in non-armed activities like cooking. They also reported that the role of the adult within this setting, namely being a recruiter or a family that exchanges the child for financial income, is not generally taken into account.
Once a child went through the court procedures, there are mainly two options waiting for the young human being, namely detention or confinement in a camp. Both options exclude the possibility of a fruitful reintegration into society and non of these paths offer psychological support for the mental healing process of the children. But it is not only the child suffering the injustice of life, it is also the family itself that faces hard times. Once known by the public, that a family gave its child away, the family itself becomes excluded from the community and may suffer even more financial needs than before.
Towards reintegration
In order to handle this situation in a constructive way, we need a visionary project that targets social long-term healing. One of such steps was already taken by initiating a program that enables former child soldiers and their families to be moved to other places, to other communities, and to restart their lives without their critical past. Needless to say, that such programs may be available and practicable for only a few selected families.
What we need, at this point, are broadly accepted and widely practicable concepts of reintegration. Such concepts might have the purpose of dispersing the opposition towards any sort of reintegration. It seems to be highly necessary to make people commonly believe in the fact that a community can overcome such issues, and that the public can grow towards a stronger level of fellowship where such pitfalls are caused by financial needs, tricky recruiters, and fancy promises have no effect on the individual.
SUMMARY
The discussion establishes a distinction that determines everything else in it. Where children in the earlier Gathering on Africa joined armed groups because no one was looking after them, the children described here were handed over by the people whose protection they were entitled to, and for money. That difference does not alter what was done to the child, and it transforms the problem of what happens afterwards, because the household to which a child would ordinarily return is itself the party that gave them up, and because a community that rejected the group’s ideology has correspondingly little sympathy for families that supplied it. The second observation follows from the first: where responsibility for the recruitment lies with adults and the consequences fall on the child, reintegration begins from a position that is not only difficult but inverted.
CONCLUSION
Both sides need to do their own first steps towards common reconciliation. The child and its family need to understand the wrong that they committed, and the community needs to learn that by readmitting such a family to their middle, they all may become stronger in order to prevent such attacks on local peace in the future.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The questions raised in this discussion are among the most difficult in post-conflict practice, and the international framework that addresses them is well developed and worth setting out, because it offers a common reference point rather than a criticism of any particular jurisdiction.
The starting position is established in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and elaborated in the Paris Principles: children recruited or used by armed groups are primarily victims of the offence of recruitment, and should be dealt with through rehabilitative rather than punitive measures, with detention used only as a last resort and for the shortest appropriate period. Two elements follow from this and both are achievable without substantial resources. The first is a juvenile procedure adapted to age, with legal representation and an assessment conducted by people trained for it. The second is individual assessment that distinguishes between children by age at recruitment, by the role they actually performed, and by the degree of coercion involved, since a child who was handed over at eleven and worked in a kitchen stands in a different position from an older adolescent who joined and fought.
The question of guilt the report raises is the right one and the law answers it clearly. Where an adult delivers a child into an armed group for payment, the offence is the adult’s, and the recruitment and use of children under fifteen is a war crime under the Rome Statute. Directing accountability toward recruiters and intermediaries is both the correct allocation of responsibility and, on the evidence from other settings, the most effective form of prevention available, since it addresses the supply chain rather than its youngest end.
Two elements of the discussion deserve development. Relocation can protect a family and it carries a cost that should be acknowledged: a person who must move in order to live safely has lost their community, their networks and often their livelihood, and the arrangement treats stigma as immovable rather than as something that can be worked on. Community based reintegration is harder and, where it succeeds, more complete, and the evidence points consistently to two conditions. Programmes that serve all war affected children, rather than former recruits alone, avoid creating the very stigma they are meant to overcome; and community leaders and religious authorities carry acceptance in a way that no external agency can, which makes their early involvement decisive rather than supplementary.
The economic dimension the report identifies should not be lost in the discussion of law and reconciliation. Where families gave up children because they could not otherwise eat, reintegration that does not address household income leaves the mechanism intact and the next child exposed. Livelihood support, schooling with the costs covered, and vocational training for the young people themselves are not adjuncts to reintegration but constitutive of it.
Finally, the closing passage asks that both sides take the first steps, and that the child and family understand the wrong they committed. That formulation deserves care. For the family that gave up a child, it is apt. For the child, it is not: a person who was handed over at eleven or twelve did not commit the wrong, and asking them to acknowledge one risks completing the injustice rather than repairing it. Reconciliation in these settings works best where it is precise about who owes what to whom, and here what the child is owed considerably exceeds what they owe.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
REFERENCES
Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989, and the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, 2000.
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 1998, Articles 8(2)(b)(xxvi) and 8(2)(e)(vii) on the conscription, enlistment and use of children under the age of fifteen.
The Paris Principles: Principles and Guidelines on Children Associated with Armed Forces or Armed Groups, 2007.
Integrated Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Standards, United Nations, module 5.30 on children and disarmament, demobilization and reintegration.
United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1612 (2005), 2225 (2015) and 2427 (2018) on children and armed conflict.
Report of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict, annual editions, United Nations, New York.
Betancourt, T. S., Borisova, I., Williams, T. P., et al. (2013). Research Review: Psychosocial Adjustment and Mental Health in Former Child Soldiers. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 54(1), 17 to 36.
Wessells, M. (2006). Child Soldiers: From Violence to Protection. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
McMullen, J., O’Callaghan, P., Shannon, C., Black, A., & Eakin, J. (2013). Group Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioural Therapy with Former Child Soldiers and Other War-Affected Boys. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 54(11), 1231 to 1241.