Archive
from the April 15, 1998 edition
A Responsibility to the Children
Richard C. Hottelet
Since 1993, the UN Human Rights Commission has worked on ending one of the
worst abuses of modern times: the use of children in armed conflicts.
Boys and girls as young as 15 may be sent into battle without violating the almost
universally accepted Convention on the Rights of the Child. In reality, many aged 12
or even 8 have taken part in fighting, mainly in Africa and Asia. The work in hand is
to raise the minimum age to 18. There is, however, no consensus and when this year's
effort failed in March, some felt it better to skip a year and try again in 2000.
Among those opposed to setting the age limit at 18 is the US, which recruits boys and
girls as young as 17, with parental consent. The Pentagon wants to stay with 17, as do
the defense ministries of many other countries.
On the whole, the US has approached the issue of children's rights gingerly. It waited
years to sign the convention and hasn't yet ratified it - a position shared only with
Somalia, which has no government. But there are other obstacles to agreement. Some
states, like Kuwait and Cuba want no age limit on conscription in the event of
invasion. And there is growing recruitment by armed groups fighting under local
warlords or as part of resistance movements. Pakistan, for instance, supports Muslim
fighters in Kashmir and argues that a struggle for self determination supersedes all
age restrictions.
Meanwhile, more and more children have been pressed or lured into service as
soldiers or as spies, saboteurs, and transport mules. In the 40 or so armed conflicts
now in progress around the globe, aid organizations estimate that 250,000 children are
under arms, mostly in Africa.
The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimates that between 1987 and 1997:
* Two million children were killed in and by fighting.
* Four to five million were disabled by war-related injuries.
* 12 million were left homeless by war.
More than 1 million were orphaned or separated from their parents by war.
The psychological trauma of such experience burdens the future of those involved and
of the communities to which they belong.
Ambassdor Olara Otunnu of Ivory Coast, the UN Secretary-General's Special
Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, reports that children are specifically
targeted in today's internecine wars. The strategy, he says, is to eliminate the next
generation of potential adversaries. To the same end, children, girls in particular, are
subjected to sexual abuse and gender-based violence on a large scale.
Child soldiers are frighteningly dangerous in their lack of restraint in "total war"
scenarios arranged by adult leaders. The village has become the battlefield, and
civilian populations the primary target. Societies disintegrate and value systems
collapse. The abused grow up to be abusers. All cultures share an instinctive
obligation to protect children; but this can be overridden by force in the service of
greed and hate. The international community has built an impressive structure of
humanitarian law with solemn treaties to ensure human rights in peace and war. But
enforcement lags far behind formulation and is difficult to pursue in a world of
sovereign nation states.
Ambassador Otunnu believes that the value system that exists on paper can be backed
up with practical measures.
Most warlords, gang leaders, and dictators must get the weapons and money they
need from outside, by misrepresentation, and often through deals with ostensibly
respectable suppliers. Otunnu wants to see an aroused public terminate the impunity
they enjoy. Economic and political pressure could be applied from case to case by
governments, the UN, nongovernmental organizations, churches, business, and
outraged individuals.
What is happening to the children and to the future should move them to act.
* Richard C. Hottelet, a former CBS foreign correspondent, writes on world affairs.