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Applying the ABC Conflict Triangle to the Protection of Children’s Human
Rights and the Fulfillment of their Basic eeds: A Case Study Approach
A Thesis Submitted by
Magdalena Anna Czyz
E-mail: magdalena.czyz@gmail.com
To the European University Centre for Peace Studies
Stadtschlaining/Burg, Austria
In partial fulfillment of the requirements
for a Master of Arts degree in Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies
November 2006
Readers:
Mr. Robert J. Rivers, MA
Dr. S.P. Udayakumar, PhD
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TABLE OF COTETS
Introduction
Chapter 1: Method- The ABC Conflict Triangle
Chapter 2: Case Study #1: The Abuse of Street Children in India by the Police
1. Introduction
2. The Current Situation
3. Root Causes of Police Abuse of Street Children
4. What Has Been Done Before?
5. Recommendations: Applying the ABC Conflict Triangle
6. Conclusion
Chapter 3: Case Study #2: The Trafficking of Albanian Girls for Prostitution in
Italy
1. Introduction
2. A Brief History of the Emergence of Trafficking
3. The Current Situation and Practice in Italy
4. Recruitment
5. Root Causes of Trafficking
5.1 Demand-Side Causes
5.2 Supply-Side Causes
5.3 Poverty and a General Loss of Hope
5.4 Dysfunctional Families and Domestic Violence
5.5 Lack of Educational Opportunities
5.6 Parents’ Low Education Level
5.7 Attitudes Towards Girls and the Cultural Context
5.8 Inadequate Laws and Corruption of Authorities
6. What Has Been Done Before?
6.1 The Legal Framework and National Policies
6.2 Current Program Interventions
6.2.1 Prevention
6.2.2 Protection
6.2.3 Withdrawal and Repatriation
6.2.4 Reintegration
7. Difficulties in Implementation
7.1 Difficulties in Prevention
7.2 Difficulties in Protection
7.3 Difficulties in Withdrawal and Repatriation
7.4 Difficulties in Reintegration
8. Recommendations: Applying the ABC Conflict Triangle
8.1 Recommendations in Prevention
8.2 Public Awareness and Education Programs
8.3 Protection
8.4 Withdrawal and Repatriation
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8.5 Reintegration
9. Conclusion
Chapter 4: Case Study #3: Stopping the Use of Child Soldiers- A Global Perspective
1. Introduction
2. The Current Situation
3. Root Causes of Children Being Used as Soldiers
4. Recruitment Styles
4.1 Forced Recruitment
4.2 Voluntary Recruitment
5. Personal and Societal Factors Affecting Children’s Decision to Enlist
5.1 Degree of Militarization
5.2 Personal Experience of Violence
5.3 Social and Economic Disparity
5.4 Perceptions of Reality
5.5 Peer Pressure
5.6 Feelings of Hope and Empowerment
6. Consequences of Participation
7. The Positive Side of Military Participation
8. Challenges Facing Demobilization Efforts
9. Stopping the Use of Child Soldiers: Applying the ABC Conflict Triangle
9.1`Preventing the Use of Child Soldiers
9.2`Interventions Aimed at Demobilizing and Reintegrating Child Soldiers
10. Conclusion
Chapter 5: Comparing the Case Studies in Relation to the ABC Conflict Triangle
Chapter 6: Summary of the Three Case Studies in Light of the ABC Triangle
1. Case Study #1: The Abuse of Street Children in India by the Police
2. Case Study #2: The Trafficking of Albanian Girls for Prostitution in Italy
3. Case Study #3: Stopping the Use of Child Soldiers- A Global Perspective
Conclusion
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"I would like you to give a message. Please do your best to tell the world what is
happening to us, the children, so that other children don't have to pass through this
violence.” (Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, 2004)
The above is an excerpt from Amnesty International’s interview with a 15-year-old girl,
who was forcefully abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), an armed opposition
group to the Ugandan Government. Upon her abduction, she was forced to kill a boy who
tried to run away. She witnessed another boy being slashed to death for not reporting his
friend’s escape. She was tortured and beaten when she accidentally dropped a water
container. She underwent 35 days of military training and was appointed to fight against
her own government.
Introduction
While the 21st century is bringing about many positive changes and the world is, in some
ways, “advancing” economically, politically and socially, millions of children around the
globe are suffering more than ever. They are being denied their basic human rights,
including access to vital physical needs such as food, clothing, shelter, and medical care.
Many are lacking in proper education and social development. They are being refused the
fundamental rights promised to them in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Some
of these include the right to security and identity, freedom of expression and religion,
freedom from discrimination as well as protection from abuse, neglect, detention and
kidnapping. (Amnesty International USA, 2006)
Many in the “developed” world thrive and have immediate access to an abundance of
material items as well as infinite opportunities. But this is not the case for countless
innocent boys and girls in other parts of the world, particularly those living in developing
countries, where violence tends to be widespread. Economically fortunate people in the
developed world have two choices in terms of responding to this great wealth that has
been given to them, sometimes, through no merit of their own. They can either sit back,
relax and enjoy the riches they have been born into, while living in their own oblivious
bubble of bliss or they can use this wealth for the benefit and happiness of others. In this
particular case, for improving the lives and futures of children living in dire
circumstances; children whose suffering is so grave that labeling them “under-privileged”
would be a gross understatement. While the first option may initially seem more
appealing and undoubtedly requires less effort, the latter is necessary, considering it is
our duty as members of a single humanity to help and serve one another. As
interdependent beings, assisting those in need brings meaning to our own lives in the
context of the world at large. We are responsible for the well-being of those who have
less, simply because we have been provided with more. Our task is to do everything in
our might to ensure that the plight of children around the world will cease. We must help
them regain their right to a dignified life, while never forgetting to learn from their
experiences with an open heart and mind so that- together- we can prevent future
tragedies.
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The purpose of this paper is to address the increasingly desperate state of the world’s
children and propose viable solutions, drawing upon concrete examples and experiences.
The main point of this thesis is that the ABC Conflict Triangle, a method used in the
Transcend approach to peace-building, is an appropriate and valuable tool for
understanding how to protect children’s human rights and fulfilling their basic needs. The
Transcend approach defines peace as “the capacity to handle conflicts with creativity,
non-violence and empathy.” (Johan Galtung) According to the Transcend method,
conflicts are inevitable. However, they can be handled creatively or “transcended” so as
to fulfill the needs of all parties. Furthermore, in order for a solution to withstand time, it
must be both acceptable to all parties and sustainable. ‘
As mentioned, the solutions proposed in each conflict will be based on the concepts of
the ABC triangle. The paper will focus on three distinct case studies to demonstrate both
the different forms of direct, structural and cultural violence and the equal applicability of
the ABC model for conflict resolution. This will be achieved by first performing an indepth assessment of each conflict. The first two case studies focus on issues particular to
the chosen areas, while the last one provides a global perspective on an issue. The
conflicts to be discussed include:
1. The abuse of street children by the police in India
2. The trafficking of Albanian girls for prostitution in Italy
3. The use of child soldiers worldwide
The proposed idea is that the ABC Conflict Triangle can be applied to region-specific and
global issues alike affecting children’s rights. As such, the paper deems the model a
valuable tool in striving to improve the lives of children inhabiting violent societies.
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Chapter 2: Method- The ABC Conflict Triangle
In the 1960s, the Norwegian peace-researcher Johan Galtung formulated the ABC
Conflict Triangle in which he describes the key aspects within a conflict as: (A) attitudes,
(B) behaviors and (C) contradictions are the key aspects within a conflict. The model was
originally meant to be applied to war situations, in which there are distinct conflicting
parties. However, it can also be used to transcend other conflicts, such as family violence,
racial discrimination and children’s human rights abuses. In general, the method is used
to deal with destructive or violent conflicts. In the model:
A) Attitudes
B) Behaviour
C) Contradiction
(Johan Galtung, 1969)
Attitudes refer to assumptions, cognitions and emotions that one party may have about the
other. A common attitude in conflicts is one of superiority and self-righteousness,
refusing to put oneself in the shoes of the other. In other words, it is failing to make an
effort to take the other parties’ views into account. Such an attitude contributes to the
growing rift in the relationship. In this case, the peaceful option is to work with the
attitudes of the parties and their relationships with each other. This entails encouraging
the different “sides” to take on an attitude of empathy by creating constructive dialogue
between them. This can be done by building on common interests and identities so as to
humanize the parties in each others’ eyes and to guide them out of a state in which they
perceive each other as “enemies” incapable of dialogue.
Behaviors refer to the mental, verbal or physical expressions put forth in a conflict. In
other terms, they are the thoughts, words and actions demonstrated when a conflict
occurs. Violent behaviors include anything that reveals hatred, or a lack of respect toward
the opposing party. This may come in the form of verbal insults, physical abuse or the
outright denial of people’s basic human rights. Behavior is the only feature of the triangle
that is visible, as it includes overt actions. This is not to say that behaviour cannot be
covert as well, for example, in the case of implicit racism. Violent behaviour is not
limited to acts of commission. Acts of omission, such as failing to help someone in need,
are also violent and may result in serious consequences. The main focus of the peaceful
approach is to stop violent behavior by creating nonviolent thoughts, words and actions in
order to achieve a lasting solution to the conflict.
Contradictions are the perceived incompatibility or clashing of goals between two or
more parties. The contradiction is the root of the conflict. It is the core issue that is
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causing the violent attitudes and behaviors. A conflict of interests (both within oneself
and between parties) can cause repression of feelings, leading to frustration, stress, and
other violent outcomes. Peaceful approaches to contradictions include taking a step back
and figuring out what the conflict is actually about. Namely, asking the question: “What
are the underlying root causes that are fueling the disparity in goals and points of view?”
By first understanding the conflict on a deeper level, parties can then proceed to come up
with creative solutions to transcend it. One of the main problems is that contradictions are
often overlooked. Recognizing them and handling them with flexibility and creativity is
quite possibly the core of transforming conflicts.
As illustrated in the above definitions, each of the features triggering a conflict (attitudes,
behaviors and contradictions) can also serve as possible gateways to influence the
conflict peacefully and work toward a resolution. The above also suggests that each of
these elements influence one another. While attitudes influence both behaviors and
contradictions, the opposite can occur, with behaviors and contradictions affecting
attitudes, and also each other. Because of the interconnectedness among these three
aspects of conflict, it is important to address each one in order to reach a sustainable
solution. Addressing attitudes is important as it helps people become aware of and better
understand the contradictions. The more profoundly a contradiction is understood, the
easier it is to come up with creative solutions to overcome it. Addressing both attitudes
and contradictions, in turn, influences changing behaviors. Finally, behaviors also affect
attitudes. More concretely, the behaviours of people working toward positive change
influence the attitudes of those whom they are trying to reach out to and can determine
how successful they are in doing so. It is important to note, however, that in the
beginning stages of conflict analysis, it may be most important to address contradictions,
as they inform attitudes, which in turn, create the behaviour. The reason being that there
is no hope for truly transforming conflict unless the contradictions are handled properly.
After this, the three features may begin to positively feed off each other.
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Chapter 3: The Abuse of Street Children in India by the Police
K-3 Police Station, Madras - September 1995: Shiva was sixteen and he had been on
the street since 1992. He comes from the outskirts of Madras. He came to the street
because he had no father, his mother was a drug-addict, and his twelve-year-old sister
became pregnant. He decided to work as a ragpicker to help his sister and earns twenty to
thirty rupees a day ($0.57 to $0.86).
He told Human Rights Watch that he was picked up by the police in September 1995
because they wanted information on a friend. He was taken to the K-3 police station and
questioned about the whereabouts of his friend. The younger police officer started to beat
him with a lathi [a police baton], yelled at him, and asked him where his friend was.
When he said he did not know and that he was an "NGO kid," an older officer said, "Do
not beat NGO kids," and the younger officer stopped. (Human Rights Watch, 1996)
1. Introduction: Definition and Background Information
Poverty, exploitation and sickness: this is the tragic reality of well over 18 million street
children in India. This wondrous, yet poverty-stricken country has the highest population of
children either living or working on the streets under deplorable conditions. Their lives are
plagued by a sense of fear, instability and hopelessness. Contributing to these feelings is
the widespread abuse that they experience from the Indian police force, which is the very
authority that should be coming to their aid. The violence inflicted on street children by
police, as well as ways of overcoming it are the topics that will be discussed in this chapter.
But in order to explore the issue further, one must first become familiar with UNICEF’s
(United Nation’s Children’s Fund) definition of a street child, which will be used
throughout the chapter and is cited as the following:
Street children are those for whom the street (in the widest sense of the word, i.e.:
unoccupied dwellings, wasteland, etc.) more than their family has become
their real home, a situation in which there is no protection, supervision, or
direction from responsible adults. (NOIDA: Government of India, 1992,
p.2).
This definition encompasses three distinct categories of street children:
1. Children on the street- the largest of all categories, these children have homes to
return to after a day on the streets and are in contact with their families.
2. Children of the street- these children live on the streets permanently, where they
seek shelter and companionship from other street dwellers. While they do not
have a house to live in, they still have some contact with their family members
(usually the mother or siblings).
3. Abandoned children- these children have broken all ties with their families and
are completely alone in terms of material and psychological survival. They may
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have been forced out onto the streets due to family problems or may have,
themselves, chosen to leave the home as a way of evading incessant abuse.
Children who have run away from home can be additionally divided into two categories.
The first group is those children that have left as a means of escaping a traumatic home
environment (which may consist of alcoholism, physical and/or sexual child abuse,
unloving stepparents, unemployment and poverty). They are no longer capable of dealing
with the difficult circumstances in the home and have, therefore, decided to leave. The
second group consists of those who have run away in hopes of finding work or going to
school, but have failed in their attempts. Instead, they have fallen prey to the excitements of
city life as it is glamorized in the media.
Another reason for which children end up on the streets is because of displacement.
Children may be displaced as a consequence of development projects such as the
Subarnarekha Irrigation Project funded by the World Bank that was implemented in 1982.
The aim of the project was to introduce irrigation systems to various industrial sectors of
West Bengal, Orissa and Bihar through the creation of dams, barrages and canals. While
the World Bank calculated that the project would result in the displacement of around 60
000 people, NGOs estimated that this number would be closer to 120 000. A report issued
in 1991 stated that massive amounts of people have been displaced by the project, which
had disastrous effects on the development of the aforementioned areas. Instead of resulting
in positive changes, the project impoverished massive numbers of people and caused the
displacement of thousands of children, who were forced unto the streets of large cities like
New Delhi, becoming forced laborers. (Human Rights Watch, 1996)
While Most street children are able to find work it is also very common for them to lose
their jobs. This forces them to constantly shift from one type of labor to another, resulting
in a very unstable and insecure way of life. The following are the most common activities
and occupations taken on by street children in order to survive:
• Selling food products such as tea, water, sweets, and pastries.
• Selling newspapers, flowers and handmade crafts (such as flower garlands)
• Working as car mechanics in rundown auto shops
• Cleaning cars and other street vehicles
• Begging, stealing, and pick pocketing
• Working as porters at railway stations
• Working in small hotels (i.e.: washing dishes in the kitchen)
• Working as rag pickers (scourging through garbages in search of usable materials
that may be sold to local buyers)
All this work may be done for as little as twenty rupees ($0.57) a day. (Human Rights
Watch, 1996)
It is not surprising that, due to the extreme poverty they live in, street children are generally
in very poor physical health. Such chronic diseases as tuberculosis, leprosy, typhoid,
malaria, jaundice as well as liver and kidney disorders are rampant among children of
India’s urban centers. Many also suffer from scabies, gangrene, broken limbs, and epilepsy.
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Finally, as is the situation in many parts of the world today, HIV and AIDS cases have been
on the rise. In addition to suffering from particular diseases, street children are regularly
exposed to many kinds of environmental hazards such as dirt, smoke, rain, and intense heat
and cold.
While the government is technically supposed to provide “free” access to municipal
hospitals in all cities, street children are virtually denied access to health care. This is due
to the necessity to pay a bribe for admittance as well as the ill treatment they receive from
the medical staff.
In terms of the gender distribution, the majority (over 80%) of street children are boys.
While (in terms of numbers) more boys are affected, girls are the most vulnerable
population. This is because they are generally weaker physically and are more likely to fall
victim to sexual exploitation.
As regards to age, statistics reveal the following distribution of street children in India:
33% are between six and ten years of age; 40% between 11 and 15 and 27% are 16 and
older. (Human Rights Watch, 1996)
2. The Current Situation With Regards to Police Brutality
One of the greatest problems faced by the innocent, frightened and utterly alone street
children of India is the terrible abuses imposed on them by the police, government officials
and private security forces. Too often, children as young as six years old are detained
illegally, beaten, tortured, and even murdered by law enforcement authorities. Many are
rounded up or kidnapped to serve as soldiers in the army. It is not uncommon for them to
be forced into bonded labor or prostitution, working under inhumane and degrading
conditions. Orphaned children may be collected and thrown into appalling housing
institutions where they are neglected, discriminated against and often left to die. Children
are constantly being arrested for involvement in such crimes as petty theft, prostitution, and
drug trafficking and many are jailed for working in small businesses that are considered
illegal. But many are also charged with arbitrary offenses like vagrancy and loitering or
simply as a result of being “in need of protection or discipline.” Jailing children on such
grounds results in children’s poverty and homelessness (and even their social status as a
child) being viewed as a crime in itself. (Human Rights Watch, 2004)
Quite often street children are arrested based on the police force’s suspicion that they may
possess some valuable inside information related to crimes in the area. Crimes may
sometimes also be attributed directly to the children living in the investigated area,
regardless of their actual involvement in the criminal act. No matter the offense, street
children who are arrested and sent to jail are often detained for prolonged periods of time
(from days to weeks) and are subject to horrendous living conditions (some even being
locked up in jails with adults). While already in the prisons, they may be beaten by police
or forced to pay bribes in order to be freed. Girls are sometimes raped or coerced into
performing sexual acts as a form of payment for release. From the prisons, children may be
transported to more permanent correctional institutions euphemistically termed “homes” or
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“schools” where they may remain for years, disappearing from the face of society. (Human
Rights Watch, 2004)
3. Root Causes of Police Abuse of Street Children
There are several major underlying causes for the abuse of street children by police in
India. One such cause is the rapidly increasing population of street children, which
surpasses the police force’s capabilities to control them. Another is the police’s as well as
the general public’s negative perceptions of street children that are engrained in the deep
culture of Indian society. The deep culture is that which deals with the feelings and
attitudes that members of society learn by belonging to a particular group. It is the
collection of cognitions, beliefs, values, and interpersonal interactions as expressed in overt
behaviors on a daily basis. Deep culture, otherwise known as the “collective subconscious”,
explains much of what is directly observed (i.e. the words and actions) within a society.
(Galtung, 2004) In this particular case, a culture of violence in the form of patriarchy and
discrimination against the young and weak has lead to the formation of negative attitudes
toward abandoned children. Street children are almost always viewed as vagrants or
criminals, lacking in social skills and being a deterrent to tourist activity as well as
economic development. Because street children are viewed as a social blight, the
government (supported by its civilians) is willing to place all its efforts toward eradicating
them, rather than offering them care and protection. This extremely negative mentality
towards street children causes the public to view them with suspicion and fear, which
results in a huge desire to simply get rid of this “problematic” population by any means
necessary.
Another major cause of child abuse in India is the widespread governmental corruption and
a culture of police violence. Too often, police aggressively arrest children due to financial
incentives. It is also an effortless way in which they can attain their daily-required “quota”
of arrests. Children report having been beaten solely because the police wanted their
money. (Human Rights Watch, 1996) Street children (or their families) would naturally
prefer to pay the police a certain sum rather than have to face brutal detention in jails or
other forms of physical and psychological abuse.
Police also abuse children for the mere fact that they are easy targets. Street children are
young, poor, small and ignorant of their human rights. In addition, they often have no
family members or any other authorities that can advocate for them in their defense. Even
if they do have familial relations, children’s parents are rarely informed of their arrest and
detention. Because of street children’s vulnerability, it requires little effort from the police
to beat them in order to extract confessions or money. As a result, children are naturally
fearful of and intimidated by the police that should actually be helping them.
The lack of proper implementations and regulations of the law in India also contributes to
the ill treatment of street children. The Indian Penal Code considers anyone over the age of
12 an adult. Because of the law’s vague mandates, children as young as seven may end up
being treated as adults in legal settings. The law does not include any safeguards against
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detaining children in police stations or prisons. While the Juvenile Justice Act of 1986
(which applies to all Indian states except Jammu and Kashmir) contains provisions that
prohibit the detention of “neglected” or “delinquent” juveniles, it has been widely ignored
by police, in part because officials are unaware of the contents of the Act. Furthermore,
Indian law fails to distinguish “neglected” from “delinquent” children. Consequently, an
innocent six-year-old street orphan and a 15-year-old delinquent who has committed an
atrocious crime may be treated the same way under the law. (Human Rights Watch, 2004).
This is a clear example of institutionalized or structural violence, which refers to the
imposition of harm on others through rigid social systems, tailored to satisfy the needs of
those who invented them. Such inflexible regimes, which do not take into account personal
differences, often prevent individuals from achieving their full potential and being treated
according to their needs.
Finally, another important root cause regarding the issue of child abuse is that law
enforcement officials rarely suffer any punishment for having disobeyed the law. The
Indian government has been fully aware of the brutalities undergone by street children at
least since 1979, when the National Police Commission issued a disturbing report of police
lawlessness. 20 years later, none of its proposals have been implemented and police
continue to mistreat children without the fear of facing legal repercussions. (Human Rights
Watch, 1996)
4. What has Been Done Before?
Traditionally, children’s humanitarian groups have attempted to help street children by
focusing primarily on their economic and social situation (such as poverty, lack of shelter
and education, prostitution, AIDS and drug abuse). While various efforts have been placed
in development projects for children, little attention has been given to addressing the issue
of police violence and lawlessness as well as the unfair treatment of children within the
justice system. In other words, little has been done towards addressing the root causes of
structural violence. Civil and political rights violations inflicted on children have not been
taken into account, as children’s human liberties as a whole have been grossly overlooked.
One of the reasons for this is that humanitarian organizations could not risk provoking local
governments through the introduction of children’s human rights. Consequently, such
groups have paid most attention to the rights of adults. Finally, since the human rights
movement arose in response to concern for political dissidents, it has tended to overlook
those whose discrimination has nothing to do with their political views.
On Nov 1 1989, children’s rights have been introduced into the global agenda with the
adoption of the CRC (Convention on the Rights of the Child) by the UNs (United Nation’s)
General Assembly. The convention promises children worldwide the following rights:
The right to life; to be free from discrimination; to be protected in armed
conflicts; to be protected from torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading
treatment or punishment; to be free from arbitrary deprivation of liberty;
to special treatment within the justice system; and the rights to education,
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health care and adequate standard of living, and freedom from economic
exploitation and other abuse. (Human Rights Watch, 1999).
Currently, the convention is the most widely ratified treaty in the world (having been
ratified by all countries but Somalia and the United States). Nonetheless, this does not
prevent the continued denial of children’s basic human rights. (Human Rights Watch,
1996)
A major problem in addressing the issue of child abuse in India is that there is no
legislature that denotes the term “street children” in the judiciary. Even the Juvenile
Justice Act, which pertains to the care and rights of street children, fails to mention the
term specifically. The juvenile justice act is:
An act to provide for the care, protection, treatment, development and
rehabilitation of neglected or delinquent juveniles and for the adjudication
of certain matters relating to, and disposition of, delinquent juveniles.
(Human Rights Watch, 1996).
It was founded on the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of
Juvenile Justice (Beijing Rules). As mentioned earlier, the Act prohibits the detention of
children in police lock-ups and jails for more than 24 hours. According to the act,
“neglected” and “delinquent” juveniles must be registered and returned to their
parents/guardians or to a remand home upon being identified by the police. (Human
Rights Watch, 1996) The concern is that it is the corrupt and violent police force that is
entitled to this responsibility. They abuse this authority and subsequently continue in
arbitrarily arresting, detaining and extorting street children. Another major problem with
the act is that it views children working in such areas as the railway station as “delinquent
juveniles” causing them to fall victim to police “round ups”, which consists of chasing
down masses of children, beating them and sending them to jail. Also, juvenile boards,
which are responsible for dealing with cases of neglected children, put pressure on the
police to fill empty remand homes. Since the purpose of such shelters is to provide care
for neglected and delinquent juveniles, vacant spots may suggest that the juvenile boards
and courts as well as the police force were not doing their duty. In sum, as a result of the
Act, police have been accustomed to perceiving street children as criminals and have
used round-ups as the quickest method of catching and interrogating them and,
subsequently, fulfilling their duty.
Because street children have few, if any, advocates to intervene on their behalf (be it a
family member, a guardian or a lawyer), NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have
found it necessary to come to their rescue. Due to the prevalence of police abuse of street
children, humanitarian organizations have focused on strictly monitoring the police to
ensure its obedience to the law. This has been done using various strategies. One such
method consists of NGOs directly intervening at police stations when they receive notice
of a child being in custody. This is done by issuing ID cards (signed by a senior police
officer) to specific NGO representatives. The representatives can use these cards to gain
easy access to police stations in order to protect and release a detained child. In certain
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situations, the ID cards are used to identify NGO workers as a child’s legal guardian.
While some high-ranking police officials have agreed to sign the ID cards, many police
stations do not recognize them, as they often doubt the validity of the signature on the
card. Despite this, even if an NGO worker does gain access to a police station, the
intervention may be futile. NGO workers have reported to Human Rights Watch that the
police often deny having detained a child. More frequently, however, NGO
representatives are denied access to the station in the first place. They also report being
demanded bribes for a child’s release. Many suffer verbal abuse and others are even
beaten and end up being detained with the children.
Another form of intervention carried out by NGOs consists of issuing special
identification cards to street children who are affiliated with the NGOs. When a child is
detained, he/she can present the ID card to the police, who are then responsible for
contacting the appropriate NGO to inform it of the child’s whereabouts. The ID cards
also function to alert police that a street child is in contact with a specific NGO. As such,
police know that if they were to illegally detain or abuse a child possessing an ID card, a
humanitarian organization would intervene on that child’s behalf. Unfortunately, the
strategy has not reached its full potential, as NGOs have not been successful in
convincing police to officially accept the ID card system. As a result, some police may
either not know about the system or may simply refuse to follow it. Another problem
with this is that children often lose the ID cards (Global Rights Solutions Centre, 2003).
While the use of ID cards through NGO interventions has somewhat helped in preventing
police abuses of street children, it still has a long way to go, as it does not guarantee that
police will stop detaining children. Also, there are not enough NGO workers to be able to
intervene on behalf of every child in need. Finally, NGO interventions can only work
with the cooperation of the Indian police, and they do not have the power to hold police
officers institutionally accountable for their abusive behavior.
5. Recommendations: Applying the ABC Conflict Triangle
In order to decrease and eventually eliminate police mistreatment of street children in
India, one must look at the root causes of the problem (the contradictions). A starting
point to this is focusing on changing the deep culture of the police, which consists of
violence in many different forms, including extremely negative perceptions of street
children (i.e. violent attitudes). As long as the police view street children as sub-human
pests that must be exterminated by any means possible, any changes proposed within the
system will be greeted with great resistance. Elaborate efforts must be made to train the
police force to change its attitudes before attempting to change its behaviors. According
to the ABC triangle, once the attitudes are changed, the behavioral changes will ensue.
To modify these negative attitudes, the police must be exposed to the humane side of
street children. This can be done through incorporating mandatory workshops into police
training sessions that deal with humanizing street children and presenting them as
vulnerable persons who are in dire need of help and protection. Educating the police on
the various causes for which children end up on the street is also important. This may
encourage police to realize that many children end up on the streets through no fault of
15
their own and that only through the police force’s cooperation will the widespread
prevalence of street children diminish. This would also empower police officers by
showing that they hold significant power in being able to work for positive change.
Perhaps incentives could also be offered to police who choose to follow these
recommendations, discouraging them from taking bribes from children. If they are to be
rewarded for respecting children, they will be less interested in abusing them. As
predicted by the ABC model, this change in attitude will result in a change in behavior,
preventing further violence from occurring. Once the police start approaching children
with more peace and understanding, the children, in turn, will eventually become less
intimidated and fearful of the authorities and will be more open to turning to them for
help. In other words, the police force’s change in attitudes will have a positive impact on
children’s attitudes toward them.
Not only must police officials change their negative attitudes toward street children, but
they must also alter the way in which they perceive themselves. They must shift from
viewing themselves as “enemies” and “punishers” of children to “protectors” and
“guardians” of abandoned youth. As evidenced, the ABC model is versatile as it can be
applied to changing the attitudes of different actors toward both others and themselves.
Changing the deeply engrained cultural values of violence within the police force is
crucial. However, it is a long and complicated process that will not take place overnight.
In the meantime, immediate and direct actions must be taken to prevent the brutalities
that are daily occurring against street children.
As a step toward stopping violent behaviors, the Indian government should strictly
implement the reforms proposed by the National Police Commission, especially those
that call for “a mandatory judicial inquiry in cases of alleged rape, death, or grievous
injury of people in police custody and the establishment of investigative bodies whose
members would include civilians as well as police and judicial authorities” (Human
Rights Watch, 1996). Recommendations that forbid the detention and torture of street
children in police lock-ups should be vigorously enforced and a civilian review board
should be set up to monitor the stations. The board would consist of adequately trained
former police officials, NGO members, as well as lawyers and judges.
An agency that has a close rapport with street children should be established in order to
investigate complaints against law-enforcement officials. The agency’s offices should be
set up in strategic locations where they would be easily accessible to street children. They
should also be widely advertised to inform street children, civilians and government
officials alike of their existence. In case of discovering an abomination of the law, the
agency should promptly prosecute the wrongdoer and arrange a trial, wherein the child
would be provided with an advocate. The agency could be supported by the United
Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, which would help with the investigation
of abuses and killings of street children by police. The agency would only function,
however, if the Indian state governments would agree to cooperate with the NGOs
implementing it and if the federal government would monitor these local powers to
ensure they are performing accordingly. This could be done if the international
community would introduce more transparency into the government and work towards
16
ending widespread corruption (through the implementation of a truth commission, for
instance). Another recommendation is to rectify the retributive justice system by
introducing elements of restorative justice into it. For instance, police officers accused of
brutalities could be sent to institutions where they would be educated on the root causes
of child homelessness. They could also be obliged to perform some sort of community
work that would enable them to positively participate in eradicating the problem of street
children. For instance, under strict supervision, they could contribute to the maintenance
of children’s shelters. This would expose them to the situations faced by these poor
children and hopefully lead to increasing their levels of empathy towards them.
All laws contributing to the problem should be revised and reinforced, in particular the
Juvenile Justice Act, which should be implemented in all states of India. This Act, as well
as laws relating to child labor should be amended in such a way as to not criminalize
children who are forced into working on the streets. The terms of the laws should be
stated in such a way that a human face would be given to the children suffering on the
streets. This would be one form of helping homeless children regain their dignity. The
international community could play a role in this by ensuring that the provisions included
in the Convention on the Rights of the Child would actually be acknowledged and
respected, with failure to do so resulting in severe repercussions. The Indian Penal Code
should also be revised by increasing the age at which a child is to be considered an adult.
The terms of the code should be restated in a clearer fashion so that children younger than
12 years of age (sometimes as young as seven or eights years old) will not be treated as
adults in legal trials.
Existing National Indian organizations as well as international bodies should call on the
government to ratify and implement all previously proposed reforms relating to
children’s human, judicial and custodial rights as well as investigative procedures. The
international community should hold the Indian government responsible for strictly
implementing any laws concerning the safety and protection of children that are currently
being ignored. It should also call on the government to enforce laws that deal with
financially compensating those people that have been victims of custodial abuse.
The mass media could play a role in eliminating the abuse of street children by
advocating children’s rights and propagating financial projects and institutions aimed at
rescuing the children. These institutions would include both governmental and nongovernmental organizations. The more public awareness that is created around helping
street children (through the advocacy of humanitarian agencies), the more help the
children will actually receive (be it financial, social or moral support). In order to be
effective, media coverage of the issue must be present at all levels of society, ranging
from the local community to the international level.
In order for the above actions to last, the contradictions present in the conflict must be
uprooted. Some of the key factors fueling the problem include poverty, domestic
violence, a lack of educational opportunities and discrimination (based on social status
and false assumptions).
17
Diminishing the prevalence of poverty can be successfully carried out by the work of
NGOs and other aid organizations, be they religious or secular. Agencies can be set up to
provide assistance in seeking safe forms of employment, for both adults and children (in
the case that they actually have no means of attending school, and their only other option
is work). The associations could also offer income-generating activities of their own. To
decrease unemployment, skills training could be provided for specific trades. Rather than
bringing in experts from abroad, however, Indian citizens who are already proficient in
their trades could be identified and recruited by NGOs. The organizations would simply
empower these people with some tools to enable them to eventually conduct training
sessions of their own, independent of the NGOs. The international community could be
of assistance by providing the necessary initial funds to enable training sessions to take
place and perhaps to build a few technical schools, relevant to the economy of the
location. The key is to involve Indian citizens in all development efforts so that they will
gain a sense of autonomy and feel responsible for their own success. This sense of
“owning” their achievements would increase the chances that development efforts would
be sustainable.
In further efforts to eliminate poverty and tackle discrimination, NGOs could work
together with the government to increase the standard of living among the poorest of the
poor. Mandatory provisions of basic social services could be established. In addition,
extra protection could be granted to poorer, lower caste children who are at particular risk
of ending up on the streets and being discriminated against by the police. This could be
enforced by the government through laws and promoted by the works of NGOs.
In order to deal with domestic violence, a major factor related to poverty and
homelessness, NGOs and the state could set up extensive family counseling services.
Such services should be free for those who cannot afford to pay. Not only would these
organizations provide guidance, but they would also promote family values and advocate
for the strengthening of both immediate and extended family relations. Addressing this
contradiction would hopefully lead to more peaceful behaviors in the home, which would
result in less children having to flee their domestic environments.
6. Conclusion
As evidenced throughout this paper, the illegal detention, extortion, torture and overall
mistreatment of street children by police in India has culminated into a nation-wide
epidemic. The appalling abuses suffered by street children are largely an expression of
the profoundly engrained violence within the deep culture of the police force and other
law-enforcement institutions in India. Torture and other forms of physical abuse have
long been a widely observed phenomenon in police investigations, which include the
arrest and detention of poor, innocent, and socially rejected street children. While these
clear disobediences of the law have been recognized by the Indian government and civil
society for nearly two decades, not much has been done in addressing the problem. Many
traditional humanitarian and non-governmental organizations aimed at bringing about
positive change have focused primarily on dealing with the economic and social plight of
18
street children, rather than attempting to change the deep structural and cultural violence
that still exists in Indian society, particularly among law-enforcement authorities. While
some efforts have made progress in restoring street children’s basic human needs (at least
to a certain degree), many have been rather unsuccessful due to the lack of cooperation
on the part of the Indian government. The future recommendations included in this
chapter are meant to bring about noticeable and permanent positive changes by
transforming the root causes of the issue at stake. They deal with changing the negative
attitudes of society towards street children, modifying the behaviors of law-enforcement
officials from violent to peaceful ones and, ultimately, transforming the conflict at hand.
Through the persistent and pervasive efforts aimed at implementing the above
recommendations, there exists hope for a brighter, safer and more dignified future for the
street children of India.
Chapter 3: The Trafficking of Albanian Girls for Prostitution in Italy
In December 1998, a fifteen-year-old school girl, Marjana, from the north of Albania
fell in love with Xh.G. He promised to marry her and take her to Italy to start a new
life. Although she did not want to go, he and his older brother persuaded her and
another girl from Shkodra to take a speedboat to Italy. When they arrived they were
told that the marriage plans were over. Instead both of them were forced to become
prostitutes. Meanwhile her sister Klodeta, who is a few years older, was abducted by
neighbours and taken to become a prostitute in Belgium.
Their elder sister Marta, 35, went to the police and reported the names of her sisters’
two traffickers. Word got back to the criminals who confronted the sisters' 12 year old
handicapped brother, Tonin. He was told that if the family persisted in pursuing the
matter with the authorities, Marta would be taken as well.
1ot long after, on May 31, 2000, the girl’s father, Gjin returned home to find the walls
splattered with blood and no sign of Marta. The next day her dismembered body was
found in bags in the nearby river. Gjin alleges that there was no forensic evidence
gathered at the crime scene and there was no autopsy.
Both traffickers were arrested the following day. While they were charged with
trafficking and drug offences, there have been no murder charges.
“The Albanian State and the police have ignored this crime and I fear that these
wealthy men will get off. There is a lot of pressure and money to set them free” said
Gjin.
His younger daughter is now being sheltered by a religious order in Italy. She has
written to her father and wants to come home, but she is traumatised and too
frightened of the traffickers to return.
(Renton, 2001)
19
This true story is but one example of the reality faced by thousands of Albanian girls who
have fallen prey to child trafficking in their country.
1. Introduction
On November 15, 2000, the UN General Assembly adopted the following definition of
Trafficking:
Trafficking in persons means the recruitment, transportation, harbouring or
receipt of persons either by threat or use of kidnapping, force, fraud,
deception or coercion or by the giving or receiving of unlawful payments or
benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another
person for the purposes of sexual exploitation or forced labour. (Renton,
2001)
Since the disintegration of communism in 1991, Albania has surfaced as a major source
as well as transit country for the trafficking of both women and children. In March 2001,
Save the Children Norway estimated some 30 000 prostitutes to be working abroad,
mainly in Western European countries, including Italy, Greece, Belgium, France,
Switzerland, Germany and the U.K. While trafficking became a major problem in the
early 1990’s, it wasn’t until 1997 that the Albanian government admitted this to be an
issue in urgent need of being addressed. The number of girls trafficked from Albania
continued to be on the rise since 1991 and peaked between 1996 and 1998. While it has
gradually began to decline since then, it continues to be a high priority on the political
agenda and requires much international attention. (Renton, 2001)
Because very little research has been done on the trafficking of girls in particular, both in
Albania and in host countries, there is a severe lack of any reliable data on the issue. This
is also due to the general public’s as well as the government’s indifference towards the
matter. To date, there has been no serious effort to gather, systematize or evaluate data.
Collection of information is challenging as it is difficult to establish who leaves the
country as a victim of trafficking and who goes voluntarily. In addition, people are
unwilling to report incidents because of fear or social repercussions and victims are
reluctant to speak out against their pimps. Due to all these obstacles in the gathering of
information, the fate of thousands of girls has been generally ignored. Trafficking for the
purpose of sexual exploitation continues to occur on a daily basis and its risks remain
high, especially for girls living in poor conditions and with little or no educational
background. This paper will focus on the trafficking of Albanian girls to Italy for sexual
exploitation. At present, there are approximately 6000 Albanian girls in Italy enslaved by
the sex industry. (Renton, 2001)
20
2. A Brief History of the Emergence of Trafficking
The fall of communism in Albania brought about many socio-economic and political
changes that led to the sudden eruption of child trafficking. It was this transition from a
centralized economy of the communist regime to a free-market environment
characterized by supply and demand that required the country to make structural changes
far beyond its capacities. Poverty, unemployment, decreased access to basic social
services, a drastic increase in emigration, the opening of international borders and the
country’s emergence from isolation were key contributors to the origins of female child
trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation.
In the beginning of the 1990’s, Albania’s southern city of Berat surfaced as the hub of
trafficking, due in part to its powerful government connections. At the same time, the
port city of Vlora on the Adriatic coast became the center of speedboat operations, which
transport girls across the 70-mile sea channel to Italy, where they are exploited. Very
quickly, trafficking gangs spread across the country, entering cities like Fier, Tirana,
Lezha and Shkodra. Before long, all of Albania’s major cities became active centers for
child trafficking activity. (Renton, 2001)
Over the years, there has been a shift in trafficking girls from both cities and rural areas
to predominantly recruiting them from the country side. In the first half of the decade,
awareness of trafficking was so low that it was easy to recruit girls from any part of
Albania. Many people desired to travel abroad and it was not difficult to convince girls
that a better life awaited them in Italy. Because of the widespread ignorance, even welleducated university graduates were easily coaxed into being trafficked. Today, however,
public awareness, particularly in urban areas, is much higher. As such, it is far more
difficult for traffickers to recruit educated city dwellers. Instead, they have turned
towards preying mostly on poor, ill-educated girls from the rural parts of the country.
Italian NGOs have confirmed this trend, noting that whereas in the past it was common to
encounter highly educated Albanian prostitutes, now the majority comes from the
countryside and possesses very low education levels, with some even being illiterate.
(Renton, 2001)
From 1990 to 1995, most girls were trafficked either from major cities or from the
southern parts of the country. The north was more sheltered because of its widespread
devotion to the teachings of the Kunan: a long-established medieval law, which
communism attempted to repress, yet which managed to resurface in the remote areas of
the mountainous north during the transition phase. The Kunan places strong emphasis on
family relations, honor and revenge. As such, it was more difficult and dangerous for
traffickers to infiltrate the law-abiding areas of the north in search of potential victims.
However, by the second half of the decade, an improvement in technology and
transportation networks brought about a vast and unexpected trend in migration. The
increased mobility, both within and outside the country, and predominantly of the male
population, made it virtually impossible to rely on the traditional lifestyle for the
protection of girls. Tens of thousands of boys and men left the country in search of work,
rendering it easier for traffickers to recruit abandoned young females in the secluded
21
communities of the north. As a result, trafficking spread across all areas of Albania: from
the north to the south, affecting rural and urban communities alike. (Renton, 2001)
As mentioned above, the large-scale migration that began in 1995 was abrupt and
uncontrolled, leading to a severe social and economic crisis. This vast and spontaneous
movement of people disturbed the urban and environmental balance and placed a huge
burden on the public service sector, surpassing its ability to meet the needs of the shifting
population. Consequently, people’s access to basic social services drastically decreased,
leading to some of the main root causes of child trafficking, including poverty,
unemployment, and the desire for a better life abroad.
3. The Current Situation and Practice in Italy
Albanian girls trafficked to Italy are among the youngest and most numerous working on
the streets. While most victims are between the ages of 13 and 18, some as young as five
are also known to be recruited. The age of victims, however, varies according to the
region. For example, in 2000, the NGO Vlora Women’s Hearth met with 219 Albanian
prostitutes, 70% of whom were children between 14 and 17 years. Of that percentage,
68% of girls were raised in rural areas. An Italian NGO estimated that roughly 40% of
the 15 000 Albanian females working as sex-slaves in Italy are children. (Renton, 2001)
Most girls being trafficked are burdened with a history of domestic violence and hold low
economic and social status. It is not uncommon for them to be afflicted with
developmental problems, resulting in physical, emotional or mental delays. Many possess
little or no education, having either abandoned school or never attended in the first place.
This is either due to lack of access or fear of being recruited on the way. As such, they
have not received any form of sexual education, making them prime victims for pimps.
Since such girls have virtually no knowledge of the risks associated with unprotected sex,
they are more likely to consent to it: even its violent forms. In the early 1990’s, Albanian
girls were especially popular recruits, as they were believed to be HIV-free.
Because of the Albanian pimp’s reputation of extreme ruthlessness, Albanian girls are
exposed to some of the worst forms of violence and sexual exploitation. They are often
tortured, beaten, raped and terrorized by threats against their families. Some are even
murdered. In the year 2000, 168 prostitutes were killed in Italy, the majority of whom
were Albanian and Nigerian girls brutally murdered by their pimps. As expected, the
girls’ living conditions are atrocious. Although they are promised a fair wage at the time
of recruitment, the majority end up working for free, becoming slaves to the sex industry.
In the rare cases that they do get paid, any little money earned is automatically sent to the
girls’ parents to avoid conflict with the pimps. The girls wear old, torn, inadequate
clothing and obtain minimal food, often starving between meals. Upon arrival in Italy,
their passports are usually confiscated by the pimps, leaving them with little to no
freedom, and ridding them of the legal means to return home. This also renders
intervention on behalf of welfare officers very difficult. (Renton, 2001)
22
Due to their illegal immigrant status and the risks associated with their work, Albanian
girls are denied access to medical care. This is a tremendous problem, as many suffer
from severe illnesses, including sexually transmitted diseases, hepatitis A and B as well
as gynecological problems resulting from genital trauma. Not surprisingly, most also
experience psychological distress and drug addictions. Abortions are also very common.
Italian NGOs have reported some girls to have gone through as many as 12 abortions.
Oftentimes, because of their impatience with the length of recovery time, pimps may
force girls back unto the streets just days following an abortion. This not only causes the
girls to suffer intense psychological trauma, but also results in them contracting lifethreatening infections (Renton, 2001).
Albanian girls trafficked to Italy are exposed to some of the most dangerous forms of
prostitution and working conditions, lingering on the streets from late hours of the night
until dawn. They are either supervised by their pimps or female guardians or else stay in
contact by mobile phone. Female guardians are often ex-prostitutes that may be married
to or somehow affiliated with a trafficker. They help the trafficker by recruiting
vulnerable girls whom they deceive into agreeing to go abroad.
These days, a growing problem is the trade in babies born to trafficked girls. Many pimps
encourage their prostitutes to go through with their pregnancies, promising that they
would then purchase their baby from them. Wanting nothing more than to escape their
situations, the girls are quick to agree, in hopes of using the money to return home. The
fate of countless babies born into such circumstances remains unknown. It is a tragedy
that would not exist without the presence of trafficking.
One reason for which girls are trafficked to Italy, rather than other neighbouring countries
like Greece, is because of the nation’s enormous potential for profit in the sex business.
When a girl is trafficked across the Albanian-Italian border her value automatically
doubles. To a pimp, a girl is normally worth 2500 USD, although many are sold for as
much as 4000 USD. A virgin may be worth up to 10 000 USD. Likewise, Italy is a more
strategic transit place for the re-sale of girls to subsequent Western European countries.
Due to the lucrative sex-trade in Italy, girls are under particular pressure to bring in
extremely large sums of money for their wealth-hungry pimps. Many young prostitutes
are expected to earn an equivalent of 250USD to 500USD a night and a failure to meet
these requirements results in punishment. (Renton, 2001)
Because of their fear of the consequences, very few Albanian prostitutes actually testify
against their pimps. Those that are arrested and interviewed by police frequently refute
the exploitative relationship with their pimp. This is because of the extreme violence and
intimidation tactics used by the traffickers to instill a permanent sense of fear in their
victims. It is also a result of the girls’ social upbringing, which promotes dependency on
males. This state of male reliance translates into the strong affection that some girls feel
towards their pimps. Even after having been physically and emotionally violated, the
traumatized and confused girls falsely continue to believe their pimps will eventually
marry them and begin to act like loving husbands.
23
The majority of girls trafficked from Albania to Italy are transported by speedboat across
the Otronto channel. While the speedboats are primarily operated by Vlora gangs, they
depart from various Albanian coastal towns and cities. They often also carry drugs and
weapons that are smuggled across the border. Sadly, girls who are trafficked frequently
become carriers for these illegal and dangerous objects. Speedboats arriving in Italy drop
the girls off at three main points. In the south, they are either debarked in the Puglia
region or along the Calabrian Coast. In the north, they are dropped off along the coast of
Abruzzo. Clandestine deals between the Italian Mafia and Albanian gangs facilitate the
illegal entry of girls along these points. For instance, Albanian mobs are allowed to freely
move around Puglia in exchange for not interfering with Italian cigarette smugglers
traveling across the Adriatic. (Renton, 2001)
While the Italian mafia may turn a blind eye to the illegal movement of girls in the
country, the Italian police is slower to let such occurrences slip by. In many cases, when a
young trafficked Albanian girl is caught by the Italian police, she is immediately and
involuntarily deported as an illegal migrant. This is in accordance with law enforcement
policies and the re-admission agreement operating between Albania and Italy. While
protection and aid is, in fact, guaranteed to victims in Article 18 of the Alien Law, most
girls do not benefit from this right, as they are too ashamed or scared to report their
traffickers to authorities. Also, distinctions are rarely made between girls that are
trafficked and those who are actually illegal migrants. Deportation of Albanian girls
occurs almost daily via ferry from Italy to the port cities of Vlora and Durres. One day in
January 2001, 34 women and girls were reportedly transported from Italy to Durres.
Likewise, in October of 2000, a Caritas trafficking investigator calculated 70 women and
girls to be returned home on a ferry from Italy to Vlora. (Renton, 2001)
A most worrisome consequence of trafficking is the alarming decline in school
attendance of girls. The Albania National Women Report (UNDP, 1999) revealed that
since the collapse of communism, the number of rural girls attending high school has
plummeted. In larger cities, 52% of girls who complete primary school continue on to
high school, while in less industrialized communities, only 28% of girls do the same.
This is in stark contrast to the 78% of rural-dwelling boys who finish high school. Until
now, this drastic drop was mainly attributed to cultural and economic factors (ie:
traditions and poverty). Today, however, the primary source of declined school
attendance is fear and lack of security. In fact, the fear of trafficking is so high that it led
to the closing down of countless rural schools. The Albanian Human Development
Report (2000) disclosed that between 1995 and 1999, the number of high schools in
Albania dropped from 472 to a mere 394. The closing of schools only exacerbates the
fear. It sometimes leads to girls having to walk to school for over an hour from their
village to the nearest urban centre. Parents perceive the security risks to be too high and,
thus, prefer to keep their girls at home, rather than sending them on the dangerous trek to
school.
Today, the danger is perceived to be so grave that in some rural areas, north and south
alike, as many as 90% of girls do not pursue high school. Such is the case in the village
of Mucaj, where out of the 60 girls over the age of 14, only 6 attend school. This is
24
because going to school involves a trek along a national road, where the chances of
recruitment are simply too high. In contrast, in Gramsh, where there is a greater overall
sense of safety, girls comprise over half of the 900 students enrolled in high school. In the
surrounding area of Shkodra, in Bushat, Fshat i Ri (population 1000), only two girls have
gone to school over the last ten years. In comparison, in Barballush, where a high school
is operating, 70% of the town’s girls attend. (Renton, 2001)
4. Recruitment
Many actors may be involved in different stages of the recruitment process, including
trafficking recruiters, intermediaries, counterfeiters, transporters, employers, border
officials, brothel operators and most frequently, family and friends. There are also
various ways of recruitment, ranging from youth voluntarily going abroad to children
being forced, coerced, persuaded and abducted by the ruthless, money-driven traffickers
and their accomplices.
A common component of recruitment and cross-border trafficking is alien-smuggling.
The smugglers themselves are not always considered to be traffickers if they are not
involved in exploiting the child in the transfer process. The same goes for illegal
migration, which involves actors who may or may not subject the girls to violence. These
include recruiting agents who assist the young female in obtaining false documents used
to work and travel abroad. For example, they may provide 15 year-old girls with
passports that state they are over 18, or work permits that enable them to be employed as
“dancers”. Other actors may include employers of the agricultural, industrial and service
sectors who hire under-aged girls and either forge or simply fail to present employment
reports. Cross-border smuggling also involves corrupt migration, custom or police
officers who allow the children to illegally enter or exit a country. Not only are these
officials violating migration laws, but they may also be engaging in fraud, counterfeiting
or labour-law infringement. If at any point they are purposely deceiving or exploiting the
child, they are deemed to be involved in trafficking. (Boonpala & Kane, 2002)
Albanian pimps engaged in trafficking have extensive networks of contacts in the country
who are appointed as recruiters to identify and approach suitable victims. The most
prevalent form of approach is a false marriage or job offer, either as a dancer or waitress
abroad. In both cases, the trafficker promises that he will arrange the girl’s travel
documents, working visa as well as accommodation in the host country, none of which is
ever actually realized.
To increase its credibility, a trafficker may supplement a false marriage offer with the
presentation of phoney parents to the girl’s family. He may sometimes spend months
persuading a girl to get engaged or married, while convincing the family that they, too,
will benefit from the union as they will receive money earned abroad by the couple.
Many incidents have been reported in which the traffickers claim they will take the girl to
Greece, when in fact they end up forcing her unto a speedboat on the way to prostitution
in Italy. (Renton, 2001)
25
Ironically, the people involved in the initial stages of the recruitment process are often
close friends or even relatives of the family, who convince the girl’s parents to send her
abroad. In almost all cases, this is accompanied by a financial agreement in which the
parents are promised to be paid either a lump sum of money or in intervals. However,
rarely are these payments actually received. In a study published by INSTAT, Tirana and
the International Labor Organization (2003), 90% of the girls were trafficked as a result
of an informal contract between the recruiter and the parents. Traffickers may also hire
female clients, many of whom are ex-prostitutes and trafficking victims themselves, to
recruit girls in Albania, either directly or through talking with the family. This rather
simple persuasion of parents to send their children abroad is a result of the family’s
extremely poor living conditions and its desperation for any bit of money just to survive.
Regardless if they are encouraged by others or not, parents play a key role in the sale and
exploitation of their own children. In most instances, the child’s wishes are completely
ignored and the parents’ consent is the main facilitator in the initial stages of recruitment.
Over the last decade, there have been many cases of girls being directly sold by their
parents or relatives. Even if parents do not explicitly sell their daughter, they are
frequently supportive of a relative who offers to take her abroad to work. Oftentimes,
they view the sending away of their children as the easiest way out of a miserable
financial situation: it often appears to be the “only option”.
Below is a summary of the major actors involved in trafficking and their respective roles:
Actor
Trafficking recruiter
Role
Entices the girl to go abroad by approaching both her and her
family and proposing a false marriage or job offer.
Pimp
Exploits the girl; contracts her out; procures prostitutes and reaps
the financial benefits of her services.
Family (usually parents) Encourage the girl to go abroad in hopes of improving the
and friends
family’s financial situation and creating future opportunities for
their daughter.
Intermediary
Serves as a medium for enabling the girl to be trafficked (e.g.:
may assist the girl in obtaining false work and travel
documents).
Counterfeiter
Directly forges the girl’s documents.
Allows girls to illegally enter/exit a country (which usually
Border official:
involves the permission to enter Italy from Albania).
Corrupt migration,
custom or police officer
Smuggler
Accompanies the girl on various stages of her journey (including
within Albania, across the border and around Italy)
Transporter (e.g.:
Transports the girls, usually by ferry, boat or taxi.
speedboat owner)
Employer
Hires under-age girls; forges or fails to present employment
records.
Brothel operator
Makes girls available for those seeking a prostitute.
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Although it is usually the family that supports the child’s working abroad, sometimes the
girl herself may willingly choose to migrate in the hopes of escaping a bleak future at
home, earning a sufficient income or supporting her struggling family. In these instances,
they may even be aware of going to work in the sex industry, deeming it an acceptable
short-term solution to their desperate situation. Unfortunately, they do not take into
account the brutal reality of what is to come. They are rarely informed of the extremity of
the work that will be expected of them, the difficult conditions in which they will be
living and the long-term consequences of their actions, including psychological trauma,
reproductive illnesses and alienation from society. The same can be said for the victim’s
parents and their lack of understanding of the true nature of the situation. They
undermine the long-term implications of trafficking in exchange for short –term relief,
which usually does not become reality anyways, as it comes in the form of a promise that
is broken.
While many times children go voluntarily with their recruiters, abductions are also a
recurring problem. Kidnappings were most frequent in the 1990s and peaked during the
political instability of 1997. Between 1993 and 1998, the Albanian INTERPOL office
allegedly handled 103 female abductions, in which only 44 of the victims were found
alive. In 2000, the number of noted kidnappings declined to 12 (Renton, 2001).
However, a great number of cases go unreported due to fear, humiliation and lack of trust
in the authorities. These unreported cases are common in the north of Albania, where
families of abducted girls often deny the incidence. Rather than admitting to the
kidnapping, they say their daughter got married to the recruiter, in order to avoid being
scandalized. The community only learns the truth when the abductor returns to Albania.
(Renton, 2001)
5. Root Causes of Trafficking
The root causes of trafficking can be divided into “supply” and “demand” factors. While
there are many underlying reasons for the existence of child trafficking, it occurs first and
foremost because there is a free market economy for children in the sex trade. The
demand for cheap sex in countries like Italy is complemented by the abundant supply of
girls in Albania who are easily exploitable for the purpose of making a profit, both
because of their vulnerability and poor living conditions. Exacerbating the forces of
supply and demand underlying child trafficking are the growing infrastructures and
trends associated with globalization. These include the same issues that contributed to the
emergence of trafficking in the first place, such as the opening of international borders,
improved transport and technology as well as increased migration. Globalization has
provided momentum for both those who want to migrate and those involved in
trafficking. In the year 2000, a United Nations poll reported some 13 million people, or 2
percent of the world population to be migrating at any given time. (INSTAT, 2003)
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5.1 Demand-Side Causes
Demand side causes of child trafficking relate primarily to a country’s economic growth,
which often leads to an increased demand for cheap migrant labour. An obvious cause of
a rising “need” for prostituting girls abroad is expansion of the sex industry, both on the
national and international levels. While most people who seek out commercial sex do not
normally turn to under-age girls, research shows that areas like Albania and Italy are
breeding ground for factors that contribute to the demand for younger sex providers.
These include ignorance surrounding the topic of HIV/AIDS transmission as well as fear
of contracting the disease, a general sexualization of youth in society and a growing
indifference towards the repercussions of child sexual abuse. The rise in tourism also
lures young girls into high-risk situations, as they seek to benefit from the industry.
5.2 Supply-Side Causes
Supply-side causes of child trafficking for prostitution relate to factors that render girls
most vulnerable and, therefore, increase the supply of unsuspecting victims, either
through force or voluntary recruitment. Some of the most common sources of child
trafficking in Albania include: widespread poverty and a loss of hope in the future,
unemployment, lack of education and access to schools, low education level of parents,
dysfunctional families (including domestic violence), lack of basic social services,
prostitution in neighboring countries, lack of laws and regulations surrounding border
control, corruption of police and government officials, and negative social and cultural
attitudes towards children and girls, in particular. The following section will address
some of the main causes of trafficking in more detail. (INSTAT, 2003)
5.3 Poverty and a General Loss of Hope
While some may assume that the fall of communism decreased poverty by bringing with
it new economic opportunities, the very opposite occurred. In fact, in many Eastern
European countries, the socio-economic situation has weakened significantly, affecting
countless children. According to Terre des Hommes, “Living conditions for the majority
of the approximately 150 million children in the East European states and the Soviet
Union have worsened since 1989.” (Tyler, 2003) These days, the desire to earn a living
and escape a bleak economic future is one of the principal reasons behind child
trafficking. Parents interviewed by INSTAT (2003) in the state of Elbasan confessed that
the main contributor to their daughters’ going abroad is an outright inability to meet their
basic survival needs. This extreme poverty is closely related to widespread
unemployment. Most parents of trafficked children are jobless and are living in dire
financial circumstances. They have little or no income and have no outside support. As
such, their housing conditions are inadequate. In fact, many families of trafficked
children live in cardboard houses, without water, electricity or even a toilet.
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These deplorable living conditions are accompanied by a general loss of hope within the
country, which stemmed from the drastic changes that have been taking place since 1990.
Most Albanians who have witnessed these hard times view emigration as the easiest
alternative to the current situation. As such, they encourage their children to go to
neighbouring countries, such as Italy, since they are close by and are least expensive to
travel to. Albanians hold a firm, yet often false, belief that life abroad is easier, as typified
by the following perception many hold of Italy that it is: “A nice country to live, [has] an
abundance of goods, [and is] a society where women are respected and have the
opportunity of an independent life.”(Renton, 2001)
5.4 Dysfunctional Families and Domestic Violence
Many children leave home as a way of escaping family abuse, violence or neglect. Most
families of trafficked children experience severe social problems, many of which stem
directly from poverty. In a study published by Save the Children, most families of
trafficked girls included divorced parents, step-siblings, half-siblings, as well as extended
relatives living together in adverse economic conditions and in constant interpersonal
conflict. Alcoholic fathers were also a common factor across families in the study.
Emotional, verbal or physical violence are identified as the main cause of children
wanting to leave home. An 18-year old boy rescued from trafficking described his home
situation as the following: “I could not stand my father anymore. Every night he came
back home drunk. After that he beat everybody at home. I just wanted to leave from
there.” (Renton, 2001) The same scenario is experienced by countless girls across the
country. Not only do children from violent families want to leave home, but they are also
afraid of ever returning.
5.5 Lack of Educational Opportunities
Children who have limited or no access to schools are often left with no other option but
to begin work at a young age. As such, they usually end up working on the streets, where
the risk of recruitment is extremely high. Even if schools are accessible, they are
inadequate and, therefore, discourage parents from sending their children there. Some of
the problems faced by Albania’s educational system include poor infrastructure, low
quality of teaching, a shortage of qualified educators, a failure of teachers to regularly
show up for class, overly strict classroom rules, student abuse and a lack of learning
materials. Because of this, school attendance is extremely low, increasing children’s risk
of being exploited.
5.6 Parents’ Low Education Level
Most parents interviewed in the afore-mentioned study were both under-educated and
unemployed. Many had not attended school themselves. They had limited knowledge
about parenting and did not see the importance of sending their children to school. The
29
parents’ main concern was the lack of job opportunities. During interviews in Korca,
some parents regarded the country’s widespread unemployment as “the main obstacle to
the improvement of the family situation”. Females, particularly, suffer as a result. During
an interview with Save the Children, one woman from the Berat district described her
pitiful situation: “There is nothing to do. No jobs, no work. I spend most of the day in the
house. Even the dog lives a better life than us women.”(Renton, 2001)
5.7 Attitudes Towards Girls and the Cultural Context
A key contributor to the trafficking of girls is the low status of women in Albania, which
is rooted in deeply ingrained traditions. In rural areas, the custom of underage marriages
(many below the legal age of 16) is still widespread. This is because life in the country is
so strenuous that women feel they must marry young before they lose their physical
beauty. In addition, particularly in the north, an unmarried woman still living at home can
be a potential source of humiliation to her family if she were to lose her virginity outside
of marriage. A young woman from the Shkodra district expresses this sense of urgency to
marry young:
“In my village there are 50 women who are unmarried and over the age of 18. You have
to get married as soon as you can.”
Another woman from the same district gives further evidence of the pressure to marry
young:
“There are Albanian men in their thirties who come from abroad looking for a wife.
They want young girls, sixteen years olds, not older women. If the girl is older than 19
there is little probability of her getting married.” (Renton, 2001)
Unequal treatment of girls and boys can sometimes be the result of religious beliefs, as
seen in the case of an Albanian father. During an interview, he asserted that his religious
values supported his decision to send his two boys to school, but not his four daughters.
Traditionally, girls in Albania are seen as expendable and are thus provided less
protection than their male counterparts. Girls are expected to sacrifice both their
education and safety to take on extra responsibilities that benefit the entire family. Young
females are also deemed to be a “poor investment” for the family, as they will eventually
get married and leave, ceasing to generate an income for the home. Consequently,
sending them away to work or selling them to traffickers seems to be a practical option.
Girls belonging to ethnic minorities, such as Roma or Gypsy groups are especially at risk
for trafficking due to the discriminatory attitude towards these people. (INSTAT, 2003)
The general attitude of the public towards trafficked children is that of hostility and
indifference, largely because of a lack of information on the issue. Although they have
little to base this on, Albanians feel more sympathy toward forcefully trafficked victims
than those who go voluntarily. This is evidenced by a girl in a discussion group who
revealed:
“No one would ever stop a prostitute being in a village, but those that are forced deserve
help.” (Zadrima)
Others have a harsher view:
30
“My family would never help even a forced prostitute. Even if it was my sister- it is too
shameful”. (Renton, 2001) This kind of opinion stems from the extremely negative social
stigma attached to girls who return, and which renders the reintegration process very
difficult. If reintegration is not successful, the chances of a girl being re-trafficked remain
high.
The manner in which trafficked children are depicted in the Albanian media also strongly
ties into the negative attitude of the public toward victims. As a powerful source of
information, the media plays a very important role in its dissemination and, thus, in
influencing the views of the audience. Sadly, the Albanian media uses twisted
information, labeling and a prejudice attitude towards victims of trafficking. It largely
penalizes children who are trafficked, prejudging and discriminating them in a most
humiliating way. The terminology used in newspapers is a perfect example of this.
Trafficked girls are often labeled “prostitutes”, while the traffickers are depicted as
“protectors”, “tutors” or “exploiters”, but never “traffickers”. Defining victimized
children as “prostitutes” carries with it a spiteful and derogatory connotation. Not only
does this choice of words diminish the gravity of the crime, defending the perpetrator, but
it also blames the child, rather than demonstrating her helplessness and need for help. A
headline of a daily newspaper published on April 7th, 2002 read “Arrives at Durres the
‘Ferry of Love’ with 130 Prostitutes Aboard”. Another article title stated “VIP Prostitutes
are Repatriated”. The Albanian media often breaches the law by disrespecting trafficked
girls’ right to remain anonymous. Sometimes journalists may unlawfully publish girls’
names in the titles of their articles, as in “Here is the Story of Eriona”. (Renton, 2001)
The damage caused to children by newspapers, TV and radio is immense. The impact of
the media is so strong that it often dictates how readers and viewers perceive the problem
of trafficking and, consequently, how they react to its victims.
5.8 Inadequate Laws and Corruption of Authorities: Structural Causes
Trafficking exists largely because of the failure of the government and other legal
authorities to tackle the issue. The shortage of trafficking-specific laws as well as open
border controls which facilitate international movement are key contributors to
trafficking in Albania. While the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE) considers current Albanian policies adequate for combating trafficking, other
organizations disagree, arguing for the need to create new laws that deal with child
trafficking more specifically. Regardless of which view is correct, it is not so much the
law itself, but rather, its lack of implementation that is the problem. Even when the law is
applied, the current judicial system is set up in such a way that it punishes the victim for
prostitution rather than trying the pimp. The OSCE maintains that “there is no
coordinated effort to prosecute criminals and no disaggregated figures to demonstrate
prosecutions”. (Renton, 2001) Because of Albania’s lenient, or rather, unimplemented,
laws and under-funded regulatory systems, key authorities such as the police, border
guards and the judiciary are corrupt. They are apathetic to the situation due to lack of
motivation in their work, which is further exacerbated by bribes offered by traffickers.
They have more financial incentives cooperating with the perpetrators of crime than they
31
do abiding by the law. As such, while the police may make some arrests, prosecutions are
rare, making it very difficult to tackle the issue.
Speedboat operators also greatly contribute to the problem, paying the Albanian police to
turn a blind eye, as they thrive financially in the lucrative business. In 2001, a 31-year-old
speedboat owner in Vlora was interviewed by Save the Children. He claimed that on a
good night, he could earn up to 10,000USD in profit. He revealed that “in the Vlora
district alone there are 10-15 speedboats that leave nightly when the weather is good. On
average they carry between 30-40 passengers.” (Renton, 2001) Considering the huge
amount of money involved, it is extremely difficult for speedboat owners to walk away
from their jobs.
6. What Has Been Done Before?
Currently, the Albanian government as well as international and local organizations are
responding to the urgent need of combating child trafficking in the country. Various
initiatives have been undertaken to remedy the symptoms of trafficking by beginning to
tackle the root causes of the problem. As it stands, the Albanian Constitution provides a
general legal framework sufficient to deal with issues put forth by the Convention on the
Rights of the Child. As such, it includes terms for protecting children in need. Whether
the law is implemented and followed for the benefit of the child is a whole other issue.
The following section describes the measures taken in the country to deal with the
trafficking of girls from Albania.
6.1 The Legal Framework and 1ational Policies
In recent years, the Albanian government has set the fight against child trafficking high
on its political agenda. As a member of the United Nations since 1955, the country has
ratified most international laws and conventions which, either directly or indirectly, call
for action against the abuse and trafficking of children. Some of the most important ones
include:
• The ILO Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention, 1999 (No.182)
• The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1990 (CRC)
• The United Nations Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution
and Child Pornography, 2000. Some key provisions include: Article 34, on
protection against sexual exploitation; Article 35, on protection from abduction,
sale and trafficking of children for any purpose; Article 36, on protection against
all forms of exploitation prejudicial to any aspects of the child’s welfare.
• The United Nations Convention on the Protection of All Migrants and their
Families (1990).
• The United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in
Persons, Especially Women and Children, 2000, supplementing the United
Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime.
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(INSTAT, 2003)
As a major step towards eliminating the trafficking of human beings (children, in
particular), the government of Albania has approved two important nation-wide
programs: The 1ational Strategy to Combat Trafficking in Human Beings (2001) and the
1ational Strategy for Children (2001-2005). Drafted by the Ministry of Public Order, the
three main goals of the 1ational Strategy to Combat Trafficking in Human Beings are to:
- Increase public awareness about human trafficking
- Improve legislation to maximize the prevention of trafficking
- Provide direct assistance to trafficking victims.
A key element of the strategy is a 1ational Plan of Action and Coordination, which
outlines the program’s specific objectives and actions as well as the institutions
responsible for them.
The 1ational Strategy for Children defines the strategic objectives of the Albanian policy
for children and the main areas of action for organizations involved in child protection
and development. It supports:
- Raising awareness on child trafficking
- Establishing municipal and community-based institutions for treating children at
risk
- Improving the legal framework pertaining to children’s rights
- Coordinating the activities of local and central governments and both national and
international NGOs in combating child trafficking.
(INSTAT, 2003)
6.2 Current Program Interventions
The international community as well as various local organizations in Albania have
begun working both independently, and in collaboration with each another to address the
factors fueling trafficking. Various programs across the country have made some
progress in alleviating some of the problems linked to trafficking, while re-affirming the
urgent need for enhancing and expanding existing and new interventions. The following
section describes actions taken to assist in the prevention, protection, withdrawal and
repatriation as well as reintegration of trafficked girls.
6.2.1 Prevention
Prevention is key in bringing an end to child trafficking as it addresses the root causes of
the problem. As long as the underlying causes of trafficking continue to exist, eliminating
the problem through “band-aid” solutions that focus on the treatment of the problem
rather than its prevention will remain very costly, time-consuming and ineffective. As
such, eradicating the factors that contribute to trafficking, including poverty,
33
unemployment, and open borders, while tackling the problem from other angles, is vital
in bringing about a sustainable solution. Preventative measures include the following
three components:
- Raising awareness in affected areas and mobilizing the community as a means to
instill a shared sense of responsibility for protecting potential victims.
- Providing educational and vocational training opportunities to girls, especially
because they are highly discriminated against and are the first to fall prey to
trafficking.
- Offering direct support to girls at risk and their families through financial aid,
skills training and employment opportunities. These efforts aim to help parents
meet their family’s basic survival needs and to prevent children from dropping out
of school.
(Moreno-Fontes Chammartin, 2003)
Described below are some of the most recent and most effective programs that have been
implemented in Albania as a means of child-trafficking prevention.
The OSCE has been a key supporter of The Women’s Rights and Anti-Trafficking
Education project (WRATE) established in November 2000. The program raises
awareness about women’s rights in Albania according to international and domestic laws
and conventions. It involves developing curriculums as well as educating trainers of
various humanitarian organizations. The OSCE has also contributed to coordinating antitrafficking activities carried out by different international organizations, and is a main
supporter of smaller, local NGOs through capacity building actions.
With support from UNICEF and Albanian authorities, The NGO Terre des Hommes
(TDH) established a prevention program called PRAEVE (Prevention, Reintegration and
Assistance for Child Victims of Exile). The project aims to reduce the risks of exile by
educating 3000 children of the Elbasan and Corca regions on trafficking. With the
support of parents and schools, it has also implemented a system which records and
detects children at risk and directly intervenes in cases involving those at high-risk.
Awareness raising activities of the program include creating and distributing booklets,
posters and videos. In addition, a photo identification file is being created for each of the
3000 children. Teaching materials concerning school drop-out and the risks of life on the
street are being made available to teachers in the two regions. (Kane, 2005)
Another successful program is the one directed by the International Organization for
Migration (IOM), which is heading up a project on “Prevention of women’s and girls’
trafficking through awareness raising and institutional capacity building”. Its main focus
is spreading awareness using the media such as radio and television. It also informs
society about trafficking through public statements, poster distribution and the
dissemination of school materials on gender and domestic violence as they relate to
trafficking.
34
International Social Service (ISS) is also working on child-trafficking prevention by
locating families with high-risk children and offering them vocational training. ISS has
provided over 50 young people in Tirana with six-month training courses in such trades
as hairdressing, tailoring, mechanics, electrical services and plumbing. (INSTAT, 2003)
6.2.2 Protection
Programs intended to protect children include many sorts of activities. These range from
cooperating with the government to enforce laws, to more local actions such as training
social workers, assisting children with psychosocial and physical needs through the
provision of shelter and counselling centres, finding foster families for girls at risk and
legally protecting them in court.
The IOM as well as the Legal Clinic for Minors are involving the judiciary, as well as
prosecutors and teachers of law enforcement in capacity building activities to help them
comprehend the mechanisms behind trafficking, prosecute traffickers and their
accomplices, decrease the criminalization of victims, and contribute to protection.
(INSTAT, 2003)
6.2.3 Withdrawal and Repatriation
Withdrawal and repartition consists of intervening once a child has already been
trafficked. It includes identifying and locating trafficked girls, assessing their needs,
protecting them from further exploitation and abuse and releasing them from the firm
grip of their traffickers. Some of the means for successfully withdrawing children and
returning them home include:
- The cooperation of legal authorities to treat children with respect, guard them
against traffickers, and enable them to safely return to Albania
- The creation of transit centres which meet the immediate needs of children
returning home
- The introduction of program geared toward sensitizing, training and empowering
national partners
- Bilateral and regional collaboration to harmonize anti-trafficking efforts, with the
goals of speeding up the repatriation of children and facilitating the prosecution of
traffickers.
(Moreno-Fontes Chammartin, 2003).
In conjunction with ISS Italy, ISS Albania is hosting a project to support unaccompanied
children. The organization deals with problems related to abandoned children exposed to
trafficking. Between 1992 and 2002, ISS intervened in 4, 457 cases, facilitating the return
of children and reintegrating them into society where possible. (Kane, 2005)
35
Terre des Hommes has been working on a repatriation pilot project, called the RSA.
Starting in 2001, the NGO set up a program for children and families benefiting from its
services. It involves registering and photographing children and their families to facilitate
tracing in the case of disappearance. (INSTAT, 2003)
The joint Italian/Albanian anti-trafficking effort “Operation Eagle” has become
increasingly more successful over the years due to international pressure. Its purpose is to
stop speedboats traveling across the channel from Albania to Italy and rescue trafficked
girls on board. More concretely, the operation has made it more difficult for speedboat
owners attempting to transport girls in and around Vlora Bay. (Renton, 2001)
6.2.4 Reintegration
Effective reintegration programs are at the core of anti-trafficking tactics as they
contribute to the protection of children by helping them rebuild safer lives at home. As
such, they reduce youngsters’ risks of being re-recruited and provide them with the
opportunity to live healthier and safer lives than they did even prior to being trafficked.
Reintegration plans take on two general forms. The first involves social reintegration and
deals with anything from reintegrating children into their original families, to introducing
them to foster families, to integrating them into shelters, orphanages and other housing
institutions. The second involves economic reintegration, which refers to granting
financial assistance to families of trafficked children. This may be done directly through
support payments or indirectly by assisting parents in finding employment. The goal is to
improve the family context that contributed to the child being trafficked in the first place,
through actions that either generate or increase the family’s income. This way, the child’s
vulnerability to trafficking can be decreased.
Other reintegration activities include support services for children returning home. These
consist of medical care, psychosocial rehabilitation assistance, legal and psychological
counseling, formal or informal education and vocational training. If at all possible, very
young children are reintegrated into their original families, provided they will be safe
there. Successful reintegration programs are long-term efforts and require regular
monitoring as well as follow-up of each child who has left the program (Moreno-Fontes
Chammartin, 2003).
IOM has led two reintegration projects. One is “Voluntary return and reintegration of
illegal migrants and victims of trafficking stranded in Albania”. The second is
“Reintegration assistance to Albanian victims of trafficking through capacity building of
national reintegration support network”. In February 2002, a Reintegration Centre began
operating in Albania. It offers child victims of trafficking transitory protection, medical
and psychosocial support, as well as assistance in returning home and reintegrating into
society. IOM has also, in coordination with the International Catholic Migration
Committee (ICMC), implemented the IARS project (“Inter-Agency Referral System for
Return and Reintegration Assistance to Victims of Trafficking”). The ICMC runs a
shelter for trafficking victims who are seeking aid from the IOM to return home. The
36
centre admits victims who volunteer to come back home and offers them medical and
social help granted by the IOM.
In 2001, Save the Children assisted The Hearth, an Albanian NGO, in setting up the first
shelter for trafficked women and girls in Vlora. Save the Children is also partaking in a
witness protection program which helps at-risk women who are seeking protection from
their traffickers. The organization has also helped establish youth activity centres in the
towns of Cerrick and Kucova. The institutions each have a library, as well as sports and
music facilities, including table-tennis, fitness equipment, computers, sound systems, and
musical instruments.
While there are various international NGOs working in the country, much of the
assistance continues to be provided by different religious orders based in Catholic centres
in cities like Fier, Elbasan, Korca, Kucova, Tirana and Lezha. Generally, they offer
services involving family tracing, vocational training and temporary shelter, but only on a
case-by-case basis. In other words, there is no coordinated effort among these different
religious organizations to establish more sustainable, long term programs. (Renton, 2001)
7. Difficulties in Implementation
While there are many different programs in place aimed at reducing the prevalence of
trafficking, they cannot function to their fullest potential until the government
demonstrates its support through the implementation of appropriate laws. Despite having
made progress, the majority of these programs have faced obstacles during their
implementation and many continue to struggle. One of the major needs pending to be
addressed is solid collaboration among these different organizations. The following
sections discuss obstacles encountered by programs at different levels of intervention and
with different goals including prevention, protection, withdrawal & repatriation and
reintegration.
7.1 Difficulties in Prevention
Prevention programs face a general lack of follow-up procedures for direct support given
to children at risk (mainly in the form of income-generating activities). This means that
government officials are not ensuring that children are receiving aid on a continuous
basis. As such, assistance may be received initially but may quickly dwindle if not
properly followed-up on. This leads to another shortcoming of many programs which is
that existing institutional structures seldom actively participate in implementation
procedures. Consequently, they are not overly interested in the success or failure of
projects and do not contribute to helping programs thrive. A major obstacle to trafficking
prevention is the continued apathy of the general Albanian public toward the problem.
Because the majority of people still fail to acknowledge the severity and complexity of
child trafficking, they tend to ignore it and avoid getting involved in prevention
programs, including something as simple as awareness-raising campaigns. Having said
37
this, some degree of awareness has been achieved in urban centres. However, in the more
remote, rural areas of Albania, where children happen to be most at risk, awareness
campaigns have yet to be carried out.
The educational system also needs to gear itself toward greater prevention of the
problem. Currently, it is inadequate in responding to the high rate of school drop-outs,
which contribute to the vulnerability of children being trafficked. Teachers are either
indifferent or simply fail to assume sufficient responsibility in responding to this risk.
(INSTAT, 2003)
7.2 Difficulties in Protection
The greatest obstacles to protecting girls against trafficking are the lack of cooperation of
the Albanian government and inadequacies in the legal system. There are significant
breaches in the law concerning trafficking of children, particularly girls. Not only is there
no witness protection policy in place, but there are no specific laws designed to prosecute
perpetrators of trafficking. The country is also greatly lacking in standardized and
specialized mechanisms to protect children with different psychosocial needs. The greater
the child’s needs, the more protection she requires. This ties into the issue of there being
a low level of physical protection for high-risk children, particularly under-educated girls
in rural areas. Because children remain vulnerable and unprotected after returning home,
many are easily re-trafficked. The lack of proper safety, thus, perpetuates the vicious
cycle of being trafficked, returned, and re-trafficked. Another major problem impeding
the defense of children’s rights is the failure of the police to really get involved and help
potential victims. Many are either indifferent toward the problem or simply have little
motivation to fulfill their duties, partly due to bribes offered by traffickers. As such,
police continue to be corrupt and do not reach their potential of being the agents that can
truly make a difference in protecting and ameliorating the lives of those at risk. Finally, a
lack of coordination at the international level, for instance in the sharing of children’s
files to locate them, is rendering the fight against trafficking very difficult.
7.3 Difficulties in Withdrawal and Repatriation
The withdrawal and repatriation of trafficked girls appears to be the most difficult
component to achieve in anti-trafficking programs. The lack of cooperation among
humanitarian as well as legal organizations working in origin and destination countries
greatly hinders efforts to return trafficked girls. This means that aid workers operating in
Albania have neither sufficient support nor the resources required to locate and rescue
Albanian girls being exploited in Italy. As experienced in other levels of program
interventions, there is a widespread lack of involvement in the repatriation process on the
part of government organizations, the police, social services and any other societal
structures that have the potential to make a difference. In many cases, NGOs are the only
ones involved in repatriating girls. Without help from the government and other
authorities, NGOs come across many roadblocks in carrying out this task, and often may
38
not succeed in the end after all efforts have been made. Another problem with the current
repatriation process is that it does not undergo sufficient preparation. The planning stages
ensure it is safe, legal, fast and properly coordinated and so without adequate preparation,
the process fails in each one of these components. Because there is no overarching
framework of repatriation standards, different actors execute the process according to
their own methods and norms. Likewise, there is a lack of coordination among various
actors and structures trying to contribute to the process. As a result, activities are usually
implemented separately by different groups and fail to be harmonized at various stages of
the process. This lack of a coherent repatriation system prevents organizations from
sharing information and experiences, which are crucial in making everyone’s efforts all
the more manageable, efficient and successful. Standards are also lacking in transit
centres. As such, children often escape temporary shelters because of the extremely poor
living conditions.
7.4 Difficulties in Reintegration
The reintegration process is extremely important as it closely relates to other stages of
intervention. Successful reintegration can, in effect, significantly contribute to both
prevention and protection outcomes. The better a child reintegrates into society, the lower
her chances of being re-trafficked and the safer she is in her environment. Unfortunately,
current reintegration approaches in Albania face a number of challenges. On the whole,
there is very little follow-up carried out within families. This means one of two things:
either that the girl’s progress in the family is not monitored or that any psychological or
social support given to her and her family is provided for an insufficient period of time.
Short-term, rather than long-term solutions seem to be the current trend, which is
unsustainable and ineffective in the long run. Another major problem is that families
suffer from poor employment prospects. Reintegration processes are not sufficiently
geared toward increasing job opportunities for families of trafficked children, which
would significantly reduce the number of re-trafficking incidents. In addition, they are
not tailored to girls’ particular needs. Counseling for sexual abuse and other traumatic
experiences suffered mainly by girl prostitutes is not readily available.
In general, studies reveal that even if individual program implementations are successful
in the different areas of intervention, there remains a desperate need for coordination
among actors and activities. Some attempts to do this have been made, but in order to
achieve the maximum results, the bulk of this task must be taken on by the government.
This is because the government is the only structure that has the authority and stability
that permits for sustainability and receptiveness on a larger scale. As such, one of the
greatest feats is to pressure the government into responsibly taking on the role of creating
connections among the different humanitarian organizations working in Albania
(INSTAT, 2003).
8. Recommendations: Applying the ABC Conflict Triangle
39
While significant steps have been made in Albania in the past several years towards
dealing with child trafficking, the problem is far from being eliminated. The government,
NGOs and the general public have a long way to go in terms of creating a significant and
positive change. The number of trafficked girls has not declined drastically, and the root
causes upholding the problem continue to prevail. The high ratio of supply to demand in
the sex industry and the general feeling of animosity towards Albanian prostitutes in Italy
persist in exacerbating the tragedy. It is true that some progress has been made in certain
areas, including: raising awareness, enforcing legislation, creating policies to alleviate the
problem, establishing government institutions to protect victims and empowering NGOs.
Nonetheless, a lot more energy and resources must be put into each one of these areas
and new endeavors must be taken on to really eliminate the very sources of trafficking.
Extreme sensitivity and cooperation on the part of all actors involved is very much
needed to successfully implement anti-trafficking initiatives, which include changing the
attitudes, behaviors and contradictions present in the conflict.
8.1 Recommendations in Prevention
The ABC model can be very useful in providing possible solutions for preventing the
trafficking of girls. In light of this model, prevention can be attained by addressing
behaviors through the support of institutions and infrastructure for peace. Currently, one
of the keys to preventing the trafficking of Albanian girls is improving legislation that
deals with traffickers and strengthening the enforcement of existing laws. This involves
taking more drastic and just measures in prosecuting the perpetrators of crime and
creating a legal system which discourages individuals from trafficking (i.e. deters them
from continuing their violent behaviors). Not only do more rigorous laws need to be
established, but alternatives should be offered to those involved in trafficking. This could
include providing ex-traffickers with incentives to leave their life of crime. Such
incentives may consist of employment opportunities and free counseling or social
services for reintegration into society. The key is to, not simply punish the instigators of
trafficking, but to provide them with alternative lifestyles and means of income that
would deter them from ever having to turn to crime. By the government really making an
effort to establish programs that support potential or ex-traffickers in finding
employment, men who are presently recruiting girls would not have to resort to
dangerous or immoral ways of generating income.
Another urgent preventative measure is to facilitate the process of legal migration for
families and individuals seeking employment or vocational training abroad. The more
legal status granted to immigrants, the more rights they will possess in the destination
country and the more protected they will be. Also, rather than resorting to illegal jobs
such as prostitution, girls, in particular, will have the option of seeking other safer and
legal forms of employment.
While legal migration opportunities for work should be increased, illegal border crossings
should be restrained. This could be achieved by reinforcing border patrol and
coordinating police procedures between Albania, Italy and other neighboring countries. It
40
is important to include bordering countries in the initiative, as many of them, such as
Moldova, use Albania as a transit centre during trafficking.
Strides must be taken to support family reunification of children with migrant parents.
One of the main contributors to the risks associated with trafficking is children’s
vulnerability. Those with weak family ties may often end up orphaned on the streets,
where they become prime victims for traffickers. Consequently, it is crucial to create a
firm support network whose goal is to reunite girls with their families, where they are
more likely to be safe-guarded against traffickers.
More structured institutions need to be established on the municipal level that deal with
identifying and taking care of high-risk children, including those that are living in
extreme poverty and those that have been abandoned. Particular attention must be given
to girls living in rural areas, where very little assistance has been provided thus far.
In addition to changing behaviors, identifying and altering the contradictions in the
conflict is key to successful prevention. The structural and cultural risk factors of
trafficking must be determined and removed. One such factor or contradiction consists of
Albania’s long-held social and religious attitudes towards girls. As mentioned in a
previous section, girls are discriminated against, being perceived as “expendable” and
having little economic value in the household (simply because they are not the prime
generators of income). In order to transform these violent cultural views, equality among
girls and boys must be widely promoted across the country. The fair treatment of both
genders must be disseminated particularly to rural areas, where traditional beliefs are
most pronounced and age-old customs are still widely practiced. One purpose of these
promotion campaigns would be to dispel the belief that girls are “expendable”. Emphasis
would be placed on their unique qualities and capabilities, demonstrating that they, too,
are an important asset to the economy. The campaigns would promote the fact that girls
are just as valuable as boys, simply in different ways. Their distinct contribution to
society and family life would be stressed. Addressing this contradiction would hopefully
change people’s prejudiced attitudes toward girls, and eventually change parents’
decisions to send their girls abroad.
Closely related to this contradiction is the derogatory way in which trafficked girls are
depicted in the media. By using the term “prostitute” to describe trafficked girls and
ascribing sexual connotations to their misfortune, the media skews people’s perceptions
of the actual problem. In order to prevent society from buying into the media’s false
depiction of trafficked girls, guidelines for acceptable terminology should be established.
An international organization should monitor the press and ensure that these guidelines
are being followed. In addition, NGOs could lobby for the press to set up a protocol for
the types of terms that are permissible. Anything that involves the use of deprecating
words or negative connotations to depict trafficked girls should not be published. While
improved media standards are a form of prevention, they also serve to protect trafficked
girls by restoring their dignity and demonstrating that they are victims in need of
assistance.
41
Another key contradiction to be addressed by the ABC triangle is the deep culture of
ethnic discrimination still prevalent in the Albania. This form of violence results in girls
of Roma and Gypsy backgrounds to be at a higher risk of recruitment. One way of
changing this is by promoting ethnic equality through awareness-raising. As with the
previously suggested gender-equality campaign, respect for all ethnicities could be
promoted by demonstrating that each culture is unique and has something to offer.
Cultural events could be organized which would include performances by Roma and
Gypsy members, ethnic food, sales of arts and crafts particular to each ethnicity, etc. By
bringing about a positive and unified atmosphere, such events would hopefully dispel
some of the prejudices that people hold against minority groups. The more respect that
such groups gain in society, the more protection their female members will receive.
A potentially successful preventative measure would be to organize and fund a nationwide public awareness campaign, the goal of which would be to address the public’s
attitudes about trafficking. In the past years, the Albanian media has made some key
contributions to dealing with the problem. However, awareness-raising campaigns have
been primarily carried out in urban, rather than rural areas. While understanding of the
issue is quite high in big cities, it needs to spread to rural areas, where the majority of
trafficking victims originate. As such, raising awareness and changing attitudes must
focus on educating the public in the highest risk parts of the country. These include: a)
remote areas, where communities are afflicted with high poverty, low education and
unemployment, and b) cities where there is a high population of migrants from rural
areas. (Renton, 2001)
8.2 Public Awareness and Education Programs
The main goal of public awareness campaigns is to alleviate the conflict by altering
society’s attitudes toward trafficking. To this day, public awareness campaigns have
mainly been concerned with informing the public about trafficking and recruitment
methods. However, the focus should also include educating the public on the actual
consequences suffered by trafficked women. In other words, people must be made aware
of what happens to trafficked women when abroad. Information should be spread about
such issues as the girls’ atrocious working conditions in Italy, the violence they endure
due to the ruthlessness of their pimps, the health risks associated with their “jobs” and the
fact that they are rarely allowed to keep their earnings. This way, any myths or
misconceptions can be discredited and genuine concern about the issue may be instilled
in the public. Indeed, increased awareness is the primary reason for the decline in
recruitment. However, increased knowledge defying the “glorified view” of life abroad
can also help in deterring girls from going away voluntarily. In the same way, upon
learning of the dangers awaiting their daughters, parents would think twice before
encouraging them to go abroad and would be less likely to give in to false promises and
bribes offered by traffickers. But what form should such campaigns take on? Some
suggestions are listed below.
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The first step towards implementing an effective awareness–raising campaign is to
organize a team of dedicated individuals who are willing to take a stand against
trafficking. For an allotted amount of time (approximately six months to a year), the team
could visit schools across Albania, including those located in the most remote areas of the
country, which are often overlooked by other initiatives. Considering the high rate of
school drop-out of girls over the age of 14, the team should focus on elementary schools,
where the number of female students is still relatively high. Also, educating girls at an
earlier age could prepare them for making informed decisions when they reach an age at
which they are more independent, but also most vulnerable to trafficking. The awarenessraising team could run workshops and make presentations to teenage girls and their
teachers, as well as boys who may be at risk of becoming traffickers themselves. The
most effective way to do this would be to show videos of trafficking victims giving
testimonies of their personal experiences. By actually seeing a child recount the dangers
and consequences of trafficking, children would be touched on a personal level and the
message would have greater impact than if the team were to simply read off information.
To facilitate connections with schools, teachers, parent councils, etc., NGOs and
educational organizations could share their existing contacts. This way, the greatest
number of students would be reached. The education campaign could be enforced and
sustained by integrating information on trafficking into the school curriculum as well as
textbooks. In supplementing a short-term initiative with a long-term endeavour, the
positive effects of the campaign would have a longer-lasting impact.
The awareness-raising campaign should also include a component tailored to educating
parent council members and teachers on trafficking. The team would give seminars to
teachers in rural schools and would provide them with comprehensive, yet simple
information packages. Workshops should also be provided to train teachers how they
themselves can transfer information to their students concerning the dangers of
trafficking.
In rural areas where school attendance and literacy levels are especially low, the teams
could raise awareness through street drama and video presentations. This could be
modeled on the actions of a US-based NGO Free a Child, which is working with its
partner organization in Nepal on the Putali Yojana (Butterfly Project). The project
consists of outreach teams visiting remote communities to raise villagers’ understanding
of trafficking and child prostitution. While group discussions, workshops and one-on-one
meetings are key components of the outreach, street drama is also commonly used. The
short skits illustrate the most common traps and lies used by traffickers to persuade
families into handing over their girls. They also reveal the brutal reality of girls’ lives in
brothels and incorporate important information related to HIV/AIDS. The change in
attitudes toward such topics would hopefully result in a change in practices, away from
sexual abuse. The teams often encourage the villagers to come up with dramas, songs and
dances of their own that depict their personal experiences. (Boonpala and Kane, 2002)
A similar project could be implemented in Albania. Rural dwellers should be encouraged
to perform public skits, provided that they would be guaranteed protection by the police.
43
A media campaign should also be promoted across Albania as a means of reaching out to
the public and changing its perceptions on trafficking. It would involve TV segments and
short documentaries on girls who have been victims of prostitution in Italy. The programs
would focus primarily on the girls’ personal experiences, so as to really impact the hearts
of the viewers. Radio stations could also include segments on trafficking into their daily
reports and other programs on the air. The segments may include case studies as well as
statistics on the number of girls trafficked and returned as a way of keeping the public upto-date on the situation. At the same time, an anti-trafficking poster campaign should be
promoted. The banners could be distributed to educational institutions, community
centers, hospitals, police stations and other public buildings. It is important to target
locations where trafficking is most likely to occur. For instance, pamphlets could be
distributed to hotels which are often used as transit points for traffickers and their
victims. By the same token, brochures could be distributed to taxi drivers and speedboat
operators, who are often involved in some stage of the trafficking process.
A similar sort of nation-wide awareness-raising campaign should take place in Italy. In
this case, the campaign would mainly focus on highlighting the deplorable living
conditions of young female Albanian prostitutes working in the country. Hopefully, this
would instill empathy in the public (affecting its attitudes) and motivate people to take
action against the issue (changing behaviors). By making Italian citizens more aware of
the problem, traffickers’ illegal actions would be more scrutinized, while exploited
Albanian girls would have a chance at gaining respect. This, in turn, would lead them to
receive help from those around them.
In conjunction with the awareness-raising initiative, a nation-wide fundraising campaign
should be launched. Its aim would be to raise money for anti-trafficking programs and to
provide the Albanian public with the opportunity to contribute directly to welfare
programs. The project would hopefully lessen the apathy and the inaction of the general
public by presenting the severity of the problem and demonstrating that national
cooperation is crucial in helping victims of trafficking. The establishment of a fund
would give people concrete ideas as to how they can contribute, thus empowering them
to make a change. Fundraising could be done by showing a series of hard-hitting,
uncensored TV clips portraying the lives of trafficked girls. These short adverts would be
similar to the ones used in the awareness-raising campaign, but should be more graphic
so as to impact the older generations. The clips could include an appeal from respected
Albanians in society which would invite the public to make donations. The fundraising
campaign would also have to be advertised in other media such as radio and newspapers,
where potential donors would find information on how they can contribute. As a safeguard against corruption and to provide for transparency, the campaign should be a joint
effort between Albanian and international authorities. The international community
would keep the local officials accountable for the incoming money, which would be used
purely to fund anti-trafficking programs, projects and services for victims.
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8.3 Protection
According to the ABC model, protecting girls from trafficking involves rescuing them
from the harmful behaviors of their traffickers and pimps. In order to truly shield girls
against being trafficked, the Albanian legal framework must be significantly improved.
Criminal, civil and administrative accountability must be established for all parties
involved in trafficking. A child protection system that strictly adheres to the Convention
on the Rights of the Child must also be ratified. To further support children’s legal rights,
a witness protection and relocation law needs to be passed and enforced regularly.
Public awareness campaigns in Italy, such as the one mentioned above, are also a form of
protection against trafficking. The better the Italian public understands the causes and
consequences of trafficking, the more likely they will be to care for victims. Recognizing
the severity of the situation may inspire them to offer shelter or other forms of assistance
to girls who have been smuggled into the country for sexual exploitation. While
awareness-raising in the origin country (Albania) is a form of prevention, public
campaigns in the host country (Italy) function more as a means of protection.
Corruption within the judiciary must be urgently and strictly dealt with. As long as
members of the court system continue to be influenced by bribes, legal processes to
protect victims will remain futile. At the same time, international and regional
agreements (particularly between Albania and Italy) must be reinforced to improve
judicial collaboration among nations. The stronger this legal network will be, the more
accountable nations will be to each other and the more difficult it will be for Albanian
courts to get away with dishonest trials.
A key to protecting children against trafficking is to provide them with a safe
environment. One way to do this is to develop a program that works with parent councils,
school directors and bus drivers, aimed at offering children a safe passage to school.
Parents could take turns accompanying their children to school and shared transport
should be encouraged. For instance, they could combine forces to hire a private,
affordable and trustworthy bus driver that would safely take some 20 children to school.
Very poor communities that show sincere interest in the project could be provided with a
transport subsidy that would help cover the costs of these minibuses. To encourage taking
precautions, the subsidy could depend on school attendance. Increased school attendance
would merit more subsidies. (Renton, 2001)
In more dangerous communities, school routes could even be patrolled by trustworthy
policemen. These officers would have to be easily approachable by the children in order
to really restore a sense of security in them. They would have to be gentle and caring, yet
protective at the same time.
8.4 Withdrawal and Repatriation
As with prevention and protection, the first step towards safe repatriation is to establish a
legal framework that will enable and facilitate the process. If the legal system will not
45
lend its support, most efforts to securely return trafficked girls will be carried out in vain.
The aim of the legal system is to target the violent behaviors of those involved in
trafficking. By reproving those who act against peace, the law can help endorse and
maintain the respect of girls’ basic human rights.
In general, NGOs and IOs are not optimal agents for carrying out the rescue process.
Rather, it should be the responsibility of people who have a clear position in relation to
traffickers and who are professionally trained in handling potentially dangerous cases.
They include police and custom officers as well as other government agencies. NGOs and
IOs can still contribute indirectly to the rescue of girls by providing training to the
officials doing the work. Such organizations can support migration and police officers by
helping them understand the exploitative nature of trafficking and reaffirming the girls’
right to be protected from it. Humanitarian agencies can also inform officials of other
child rights related to repatriation, including protection from further trauma, the right to
be handled as a victim, not a perpetrator and the right to fair and just treatment in court. It
is important for NGOs to update legal authorities on these topics, as children’s rights are
not always clearly understood, nor are they always valued. (Boonpale and Kane, 2002)
In addition to helping improve the judicial structure, NGOs and IOs, both in Albania and
abroad, require greater coordination among themselves. Constant communication
between organizations would speed up the collection and evaluation of data. As such, it
would be possible to locate and repatriate girls more efficiently. Different organizations,
especially the Italian religious ones, could share information with their Albanian
counterparts to facilitate the rescue of sexually exploited girls. Similarly, a central contact
and information centre should be set up in Albania which offers guidance, family tracing
and mediation for relatives of trafficked girls. Currently, the majority of family tracing
and reunification is done by missionaries and Catholic organizations in a very informal
and uncoordinated manner. (Renton, 2001) Families must know who to approach for help
when searching for their daughters. A centre which is easily-accessible and protected
would assist families in the search process.
Reception centres must be established, particularly in the rural areas of Albania, which
would interview and help girls who have been deported from Italy. In these centres, girls
would be interviewed confidentially so that their identities could be established. They
would also be able to receive free services such as medical and psychological assistance,
family tracing and guidance in seeking longer term help.
8.5 Reintegration
Much work needs to be done within Albania to improve the reintegration process to the
point that it will actually begin contributing to the prevention of trafficking. Currently,
many reintegration programs in Albania are catered toward short-term, rather than longterm care. The focus must be shifted to developing more elaborate reintegration programs
that will follow the girls’ progress even after they leave a centre. The more successful the
reintegration of children will be into society, the lesser will be their chance of rerecruitment, as the safer they will be. The key is to integrate girls into environments that
46
protect them from the very situations and factors that led to their being trafficked in the
first place. In a way, proper reintegration is the main step toward eliminating the root
causes of trafficking. In order to reach this, however, a lot of work remains to be done.
There is a great need to establish new rehabilitation centres for returning girls and to
strengthen and expand existing ones. More anti-trafficking training needs to be offered to
NGOs and government structures to assist them in achieving sustainability in their
programs. As is the case with other phases of anti-trafficking interventions, there must be
increased coordination and synchronization of donor activities. The less overlap there is,
the more efficient and fruitful anti-trafficking efforts will prove to be and the more
sustainable NGOs will become. Above all, however, the works of humanitarian
organizations must be supplemented by governmental support through the enforcement of
appropriate policies and the provision of funding. Without either of these, reintegration
programs can not be developed to their fullest potential.
9. Conclusion
As this chapter has revealed, child trafficking is a serious and complicated problem,
involving many different actors and forms of exploitation. The trafficking of a child is
not an isolated act, but rather a chain of events which is not so easily reversed due to the
diversity and complexity of factors involved in each phase. The trafficking of Albanian
girls for prostitution is of particular concern, considering there is very little help available
that caters to their specific needs. Most programs aimed at preventing, protecting,
repatriating, and reintegrating trafficked children do not consider the unique
circumstances of young females suffering from the extreme physical, emotional and
social effects of prostitution. Eradicating child trafficking is a challenge that involves the
cooperation of all levels of society, ranging from children’s family members, to
government officials, to communities, to society at large. Long term solutions require
uprooting the underlying causes of the problem, and not just remedying the symptoms.
As such, the ABC model comes in useful for achieving a sustainable solution. While it
helps deal with the root causes of trafficking (which are not always so evident, concealed
in cultural and structural forms of violence), it also helps alleviate the visible effects, or
behaviors, of the problem. Finally, it is a highly valuable peace-building method in
addressing negative attitudes, which have a considerable effect on both the behaviors and
root causes of trafficking.
Chapter 4: Stopping the Use of Child Soldiers: A Global Perspective
"We must not close our eyes to the fact that child soldiers are both victims and
perpetrators. They sometimes carry out the most barbaric acts of violence. But no matter
what the child is guilty of, the main responsibility lies with us, the adults. There is simply
no excuse, no acceptable argument for arming children."
- Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu (Brett & Stohl, 2004)
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1. Introduction
Over the past twenty years, more children have been directly affected by armed conflict
than ever before. In past wars, up to 90% of all casualties consisted of adult soldiers
whereas today over 80% of the victims are women and children (Brett & Stohl, 2004).
Because of their direct participation in violent strife, hundreds of thousands of children
around the world are being stripped of their childhood. According to UNICEF, more
than 500 000 children are involved in armed conflict, 300 000 of whom are serving as
soldiers at any given time (Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, 2004). UNICEF
has defined a child soldier as:
Any child – girl or boy – under the age of 18, who is part of any kind of regular
or irregular armed force or armed group, including, but not limited to,
combatants, cooks, porters, messengers, and anyone accompanying such
groups other than as family members. It includes girls and boys recruited for
sexual purposes or forced marriage. (Brett & Stohl, 2004)
Child soldiers are used in over thirty countries, including Myanmar (Burma), Colombia,
Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
While the problem exists in several Asian countries as well as parts of Latin America,
Europe and the Middle east, it is most prevalent in Africa, where some 100 000 children
have been estimated to be involved in internal armed conflicts in 2004. While most child
soldiers are between 14 and 18 years of age, some as young as five years old have been
recruited to take up arms. (Human Rights Watch, 2004) Such was the case in Liberia,
where innocent five year old boys fought as combatants in the so-called “small boys
units”. (Brett & Stohl, 2004)
2. The Current Situation
Children involved in violent conflict are often manipulated by adults into taking part in
acts that hold long-term repercussions which are far greater than they could ever imagine.
Most child soldiers are recruited by armed political factions, either through direct force or
the use of persuasion and intimidation. Groups that recruit young combatants include
government- supported paramilitary forces, militias and units of self-defence working in
conflict areas. Others consist of armed forces opposed to the central government as well
as groups comprising primarily ethnic religious minorities who fight against the
government and each other alike to secure land and resources.
Once they are recruited, children are subject to some of the most atrocious acts of
violence. They are coerced into taking part in highly dangerous activities. Some of these
include using weapons on the front lines of battle, laying and detecting mines or
explosives, transporting supplies, taking part in suicide missions and acting as spies or
messengers.
48
Children involved in armed conflict are frequently killed or injured during combat or
while carrying out other tasks. They are usually forced to live under harsh conditions
with insufficient food and little or no access to healthcare. They are almost always treated
brutally, subjected to beatings and humiliating treatment. Punishments for mistakes or
desertion are often very severe. Many children are heavily drugged as a means of control
to keep them fearless, brutal and emotionally detached from the act of killing. Some
children are given “morale boosters” which include cocaine, marijuana and alcohol.
While recounting his experiences in Sierra Leone to the International Education and
Resource Network (iEARN), a child soldier revealed that he “was doing all this not with
[himself] but with the ‘morale booster’ that [he] took before leaving for the battlefield”.
Another child soldier confessed: “I was injected with cocaine and then given an AK-47
rifle to carry. I started going to front lines killing people, raping and doing all sorts of bad
things“. Yet another example is that of a 15-year-old boy who fought for the opposition
group in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He revealed: “They would give us ‘chavre’
[cannabis] and force us to kill people to toughen us up. Sometimes they brought us
women and girls to rape…they would beat us if we refused”. The examples given above
are only three of countless instances in which child soldiers are given drugs to better
“perform” in battle. (iEARN)
Girls are also used as soldiers in many parts of the world, especially in Colombia and
Ethiopia, where they comprise one third of the child soldier populations. Female recruits
are particularly at risk of rape, sexual harassment and abuse as well as being involved in
combat and other tasks. In some countries like Angola, Sierra Leone and Uganda, rebel
leaders sexually abuse young girls and forcefully take them as their ‘wives’. In Northern
Uganda, Human Rights Watch reported rebel commanders to have impregnated young
female soldiers. (Human Rights Watch, 2006) Upon giving birth, the girls were forced to
tie their babies to their backs and continue with their regular military duties, which
included shooting at National Security forces. A 13-year old Burundi girl interviewed by
Amnesty International once stated “I don’t know how many people had sex with me. A
man would come, and then another and another. You couldn’t refuse…they said they’d
kill you if you ran away”. (Cohn & Goodwin-Gill, 1994).
3. Root Causes of Children Being Used as Soldiers
There are many reasons for which children living in conflict zones are recruited as
soldiers. For one, they are easy targets due to their psychological and physical
immaturity. Also, because of their lack of independence, children are not equipped for
making informed decisions and can, thus, be more easily manipulated by their adult
counterparts. Ignorant of their rights, they are helpless and particularly vulnerable to
being taken advantage of. They are especially valuable in combat as they rarely analyse
the risks, easily adapt to violent settings, require less food than adult fighters and are
much easier to train and force into becoming aggressive. They also cost very little and
make obedient soldiers. Because of their age and inherent innocence, they are naturally
49
perceived as less threatening, which is useful in confusing the adversaries. As such,
children serve as highly effective spies or informants.
The socio-economic situation that accompanies any violent conflict increases the chances
of children being recruited as soldiers. Some major factors that contribute to children’s
involvement in armed conflict include poverty, unemployment, lack of access to
education, domestic violence, exploitation and abuse. Conflicts result in children and
youth being displaced from their homes, separated from their families and left orphaned
in the streets, all of which renders them attractive recruits for guerrilla groups frantically
seeking out combatants. In times when conflict is prolonged, children are used to sustain
large numbers of soldiers following heavy casualties, thus strengthening the force of an
armed group. When one or both parents die or are away fighting in war, many children
take on the role as head of the household, a task that involves more responsibility than
they can handle. During conflict, children are left with little to do, as the activities they
would normally carry out in times of peace are hindered by the violence. Schools in
which they used to spend their days are either shut down or destroyed and the land they
would help cultivate is off-limits due to warfare or mines. Children are often abandoned
and left to fend for themselves, as their family members, friends and neighbours are
arbitrarily arrested, humiliated, abused and even tortured. The loss of their families and
friends as well as the deterioration of social structures leaves children poor, illiterate and
stranded in rural areas. All these conditions cause them to be most at risk for recruitment.
Countries in which severe socio-economic conditions have resulted in children being
forced to fight include Afghanistan, Burundi, Colombia, Indonesia and the Philippines.
(Cohn & Goodwin-Gill, 1994)
One reason for which children become such attractive targets for armed groups is that, in
their desperation, they become easily persuaded by military ideological propaganda that
encourages them to enlist. More often than not, a gun equals a meal ticket and joining an
armed group seems like a more appealing alternative to sitting alone at home in utter fear
and helplessness. In some war-torn regions, many children view enlistment as the sole
means of surviving. Many also enrol after witnessing their parents and siblings tormented
or murdered by armed opposition groups and government forces.
In addition to psychological persuasion, a key reason for which child soldier use has been
made possible over the last two decades is that arms technology has become so advanced
that even little boys and girls can now manage to carry small weapons, including M-16
and AK-47 assault rifles. Not only are these arms easy to handle, but they are also very
cheap, some costing as little as 10 pounds a piece.
4. Recruitment Styles
There are several ways in which children wind up fighting for armed forces and guerrilla
groups. They range from forced and coerced recruitment to voluntary involvement. There
is a fine line that separates these forms of enlistment, as it is very difficult to determine at
50
what precise age a child or youth is capable of “volunteering” in the same way that is
accepted of an adult. While no one is completely free of outside influence when making a
decision, children are particularly prone to different forms of pressure coming from
people and other social factors in their environment.
4.1 Forced Recruitment
The first form of child mobilization to be discussed is forced recruitment. It entails “the
threat or actual violation of the physical integrity of the youth or someone close to him or
her, practised by both armed opposition groups and national armed forces”. (Cohn &
Goodwin- Gill, 1994) Even in countries where enlistment is under legal control, forced
recruitment continues to occur, with underage teenagers and young men being rounded
up on a daily basis.
Until the early 1990s, armed forces in El Salvador and Guatemala would fill the ranks by
snatching adolescent males from buses and cars, rounding them up in market places and
churches or simply kidnapping them on the street. Because of governmental corruption,
neither country fully upholds its conscription laws, so knowing one’s rights does not
necessarily prevent someone from being forcefully enlisted. Many peasants do not
possess identification cards certifying their birth date, because either: a) their date of birth
was never officially registered; b) the registry office has been demolished in the war; or
c) the government fails to issue them identification cards until they reach 18 years of age.
As such, victims of recruitment round-ups seldom have a way of proving their age or that
they belong to categories excused from enlistment, including students and “only sons”
(that is, if anyone is actually willing to listen to them).
New conscripts are transported from training quarters to stations far from home, making
the search for an abducted son or husband extremely difficult and expensive, especially
for rural peasants. Sometimes family members protest to no avail outside training centres
and barracks. Even if they get a hold of documents required for a conscript’s release and
impart them to the right official, they have no guarantee of their loved one being released.
As such, they may risk losing important papers without receiving what they merited. In
fact, it is nearly impossible for such families to gain any sort of legal assistance in the
search and even bribes are of little aid. Also, as recruits become more and more involved
in the system, military officials become increasingly reluctant to liberate them.
Until 1992, two major reasons for forced recruitment in El Salvador were the shortage of
manpower and class discrimination. During the country’s civil war, the government never
made any efforts to enforce legislation for systematic and fair conscription. People had
very little motivation to enlist, as army salaries were extremely low, especially in
proportion to the enormous risks involved in being a soldier. As such, even poor people
were rarely attracted by the option to enlist, thus lowering military numbers.
Unfortunately, members of the lower class became the main target of recruitment drives
as they were most easily spotted in public areas. Wealthier young men were less likely to
ride the country buses where recruitment sweeps would take place. In the rare cases that
they happened to be taking public transport, they could always escape recruitment by
51
paying bribes or “unofficial fines”, in exchange for a younger brother or son. Between
1980 and 1986, forced recruitment by El Salvador’s armed faction was reported to be at
its worst. In many villages, especially in the northeast part of the country, children
between 6 and 12 years old were obliged to attend guerrillas’ schools; those between 12
and 15 were required to go through military training; and anyone between 16 and 40 was
forced to perform military service. As such, countless Salvadorans fled their towns to
protect their children from being recruited. (Cohn & Goodwin-Gill, 1994)
Population control is another source of forced conscription. It was the reason behind
which much of the recruitment of young indigenous Mayan villagers in Guatemala took
place. Children as young as 14 were forcefully recruited by the paramilitary civil defence
patrols (PACs or Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil). Even though the PACs is described as
voluntary organizations by article 34 of the Guatemalan constitution, military authorities
would justify their acts to the Mayans by arguing that since the PAC is a pro-democratic
system, refusing to join the organization is a clear sign of anti-democratic attitudes.
Therefore, anyone resisting enlistment must belong to a rival communist guerrilla group
and should be “disposed of”. This left the young Guatemalan campesinos (or peasants)
with no choice but to enlist. Participating in PAC would only require one day of work per
week (thus costing a day’s wage of work), but exemption from duty would result in a fine
much higher than a day’s wage. Furthermore, a refusal to enlist could cost them their life.
As such, enlisting seemed like the best alternative given the choices.
Another form of forced recruitment is that of coercion and abuse. It includes those
circumstances where “there is no proof of direct physical threat or intimidation, but the
evidence supports the inference of involuntary enlistment”. (Cohn & Goodwin-Gill,
1994)
4.2 Voluntary Recruitment
While force and coercion are sometimes used in recruiting children to join the army, most
young soldiers join as a result of elaborate persuasion done on behalf of the military.
Children are all too often manipulated into becoming soldiers through subtle pressures
and motivations, which are actually far more difficult to resist than obvious forced
recruitment. A general image of the child soldier in a particular conflict zone may serve
to explain why some children fight and others do not, but it is harder to make broad
generalizations when it comes to understanding voluntary participation, as the motivating
causes are so diverse. For example, in studies conducted in El Salvador, children from
urban upper middle class families and those from poor rural communities had very
different reasons for volunteering for the FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation),
a leftist group opposing the state military. While each situation is distinct, it can be
possible to determine the underlying causes of children volunteering to fight by
determining the nature of the child soldier in the particular conflict at hand. As such,
gaining this understanding can be a catalyst for helping reduce, if not eliminate, the
causes that lead children to voluntarily take up arms.
52
5. Personal and Societal Factors Affecting Children’s Decision to Enlist
As demonstrated by the aforementioned case of El Salvador, children vary widely, both
within and across conflict zones. They differ not only in their personalities, but also in the
environments of their pre-war and war-related experiences. Studies carried out in diverse
conflict zones point out that many children and youth join armed factions as a direct
result of their personal experiences and living conditions, and within the framework of
their subjective evaluation of deciding to volunteer.
5.1 Degree of Militarization
The degree of militarization of daily life has a strong influence on a child’s decision to
join the army. Some aspects of militarization include armed police or soldiers guarding
the streets or public institutions such as schools; military staff holding top positions in
government; military control of social life; public curfews; and armed checkpoints on
roads. Even when outright violent conflict does not erupt, militarization continues to be a
part of children’s lives. Such was the case in El Salvador in the 1980s, and, until recently,
continued to be the case in the mountainous regions of Guatemala and the cities of South
Africa. In Sri Lanka, the militarization of education by the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam) continues to be of particular concern, especially since its dramatic rise
in1987, when manpower was low and fighting was escalating. The LTTE has been
reported to air violent Rambo-type movies on TV, which included live combat as well as
military training. They have also been known to organize parades of child soldiers in
front of school children leaving classes, perform military training routines within school
grounds, and give school presentations expressing the need for young combatants. There
is even one school in the LTTE-controlled area which has a memorial hall combined with
a playground. The area is replete with photos of children who died fighting in combat,
and the see-saws have toy guns mounted unto them. In addition, every day Tamil children
spend at least one hour per day digging trenches as a way of completing their ‘militarized
civic duty’. With all this military inundation at school, children are eventually required to
join the LTTE.
A similar type of educational militarization has been taking place in Peru, where some
60% of school children live in zones partly controlled by the Sendero Luminoso, a
national guerrilla group. In such areas, the curriculum includes military-style callisthenics
and ‘labour education’, wherein children learn to sew bandages, backpacks and uniforms.
Classes are often cut short for ‘popular assemblies’, some courses are banned, students
are recruited for the army and teachers who do not teach in accordance with the Sendero
Luminoso’s demands are punished. (Cohn & Goodwin-Gill, 1994)
Children’s lives outside of school are also often influenced by military thinking,
particularly in refugee camps. This is because refugee camps are located in areas open to
combat and are centerfields for political exploitation. Many humanitarian aid
organizations deliver weapons to refugee sites, where under-aged youth end up using
53
them. In 1992, over 2000 Sudanese displaced children disappeared from a refugee camp
in Kenya and are suspected to have been recruited into the Sudan Peoples Liberation
Army. (Cohn & Goodwin-Gill, 1994)
5.2 Personal Experiences of Violence
In addition to living in militarised environments, the experience of direct physical or
structural violence also leads children to join armed factions. Children who have either
personally endured or witnessed abductions, executions, massacres, torture, sexual abuse,
arbitrary arrest, deportation, and bombings of their homes or other property, often later
choose to become soldiers. This is because such sufferings tend to create feelings of
revenge and a sense of responsibility for continuing the efforts of their murdered loved
ones. Girls may join the military to run away from domestic slavery or forced marriage or
to flee domestic violence, exploitation and abuse. Violent experiences may often produce
the conviction to replace a devastated family or social structure and the need to take
control over the circumstances affecting one’s plight.
5.3 Social and Economic Disparity
Social and economic inequalities also inspire both children and adults to take up arms,
either in hopes of bringing about change or simply getting some food to get them through
the day. Forces that recruit children often promise that they will fulfil their basic needs,
including food, shelter and protection from other opposing groups. They also offer
minimal financial incentives. As such, some children volunteer for recruitment to gain a
subsistence wage. They may even be pressured by their parents to join in instances where
wages are paid directly to the family. This occurs mostly when families are in desperate
situations, living in poverty and dying of hunger. In situations where survival is the
driving force, children are unlikely to leave the ranks until their basic needs, or those of
their families, are met. Such cases were documented by the Red Cross in Liberia in 1990,
where children as young as 7 were picking up arms because “those with guns could eat”.
(Cohn & Goodwin-Gill, 1994) Such cases also demonstrate how large gaps in socioeconomic status can often be the root causes of children taking up arms. Social injustice
leads to indiscriminate poverty, which leads to insurgence, which in turn reduces the
fulfilment of people’s basic needs, which gives rise to volunteerism among youth for
armed factions. Finally, girls may be pressured into joining if their parents feel that they
their marriage prospects are poor.
5.4 Perceptions of Reality
Children’s individual perceptions of reality are shaped by their developmental processes,
as well as their environments. Children’s parents, families, friends, schools, religious
communities and other communal institutions, can all potentially play a role in sending
54
messages and putting forth pressures that direct them towards taking part in violence.
People within their communities can also influence the manner in which children assess
the decision to get involved in aggression or not.
Children’s developmental stages intrinsically affect their appraisals of objective
incidents, and can thus stimulate them to react to particular experiences by joining armed
factions. Likewise, developmental processes influence a child’s assessment of the choice
to join. For example, during the stage of adolescence, in which identity formation is the
main process, youth are likely to join armed factions, as they offer them a sense of
belonging. Adolescents are also particularly prone to joining those armed groups that
appeal to different ethnic, religious, or political ideologies. Under certain circumstances
of societal instability, young adults are inclined to create a false sense self by practically
replacing their identity with nationalist ideology. In such cases, youth develop an
excessive sense of nationalism, which is often the only thing remaining that gives
meaning to their lives. In refugee camps, the fight for reclaiming one’s homeland serves
as motivation for living when all else in the environment seems to deteriorate one’s sense
of purpose. For example, the Palestinian intifada (the national resistance movement)
provides a source of meaning and power to Palestinian refugees who would otherwise
become utterly depressed and hopeless if they were to stay in the camps. It has also been
noted that Palestinians typically establish their identity based on their association with
greater political groups. The importance that adolescents attach to different roles
presented in conflict, including “soldier”, “victim”, “hero” or “leader”, can also affect
their choice to join armed groups. At this stage of development, choosing a particular role
in the conflict can also give youth a sense of control over their futures.
Children’s attributional styles are also major contributors to the decision-making process.
For instance, those who naturally attribute the source of negative incidents to external
issues may be more apt to take up arms in the aim of seeking revenge. Children who view
outside influences as being responsible for their degree of well-being are more likely to
react through physical force.
If family and community violence are prevalent, a child’s rational decision-making
process may become jaded, overriding his/her ability to non-violently react to conflict. As
such, children may see violence as the only option in responding to the structural and
political troubles of their countries. Dr. Martin- Baro, a Salvadoran psychologist,
proposed the idea that too much militarization within a society results in “mental
militarization”, wherein hostile responses to societal difficulties are seen as the norm.
(Cohn & Goodwin-Gill, 1994) Children are also prone to picking up conflicting messages
from adults. For example, in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel, some
Palestinian parents are proud of their armed children, albeit they constantly fear for their
safety. Likewise, in Sri Lanka, some Tamil families support the LTTE while at the same
time doing everything possible to protect their own children from getting involved. Prior
to 1990, during their peak time of popularity, the LTTE were highly respected for their
discipline, including prohibiting the use of alcohol, as well as their ‘fair practices’ of
taking money only from those who could afford it. Because children recognized these
55
qualities as ones valued by their communities, they were probably more likely to join the
LTTE rather than other military Tamil factions.
5.5 Peer Pressure
Peer pressure is extremely persuasive in children joining armed forces. For countless
Palestinian children and youth to throw a stone is to be “one of the guys”, to hit an Israeli
car is to become a hero and to be arrested and plead innocent is to be a “man”. In Liberia,
children are also among the first to join armed groups due to peer pressure. The phrase
“everyone is doing it” is commonly cited by Liberian children who have volunteered to
join armed forces. In fact, peer pressure is so pronounced in Liberia that Charles Taylor,
the country’s former president and prominent warlord, had no difficulty recruiting
children to join his military units. Similarly, “my friends are joining” is a common reason
for which Tamil children in Sri Lanka claim to have joined the LTTE. A clever, though
immoral, strategy used by the LTTE in recruiting child soldiers involves taking boys out
of schools, training them and then returning them to their daily lives. The boys then
spend their days at school raving about guns, inspiring others to join this “glamorous”
military training they keep hearing about.
5.6 Feelings of Hope and Empowerment
Children’s hopes, in addition to feelings of empowerment and capability (or lack thereof)
also influence their decision to volunteer for combat. When children feel helpless, they
perceive joining armed groups as a way of escaping danger and gaining some sort of
security. They also view it as an outlet for feeling trapped, defenceless and voiceless,
thinking that being part of an armed force will somehow help them influence the issues
controlling their lives. Such sentiments are prominent in refugee camps where an
atmosphere of powerlessness tends to prevail. Around the 1980s, when El Salvador’s
death squad was carrying out mass killings, many youth between 15 and 25 years old
joined the FMLN (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional) in hopes of
evading abduction. Similarly, Sri Lankan youth who are plagued by hopelessness and see
but a futile future working on privatised tea fields, also seriously consider joining the
LTTE. In conflict situations, feelings of helplessness are almost always accompanied by
feelings of vulnerability, which are another root cause of child soldier volunteerism.
6. Consequences of Participation
Children who have served as soldiers face various psychosocial consequences, which can
be both positive and negative. This section will focus on the negative impacts that direct
involvement in war has on children. Each child’s experience in violent conflict is distinct,
56
including the nature and degree of their participation in hostilities. These unique
experiences, thus, produce varying psychosocial consequences for different children. The
economic and social conditions of children’s pre- and post- war environments as well as
their unique war-related experiences play a role in the way children respond to conflict.
This is because each child subjectively processes these experiences in a distinct fashion.
As such, similar experiences may end up affecting children very differently.
One severe consequence that children face following their involvement in armed conflict
is that of emotional trauma. Children who have been victims of war (as part of civilian
casualties) are often able to regain a considerable level of psychosocial health. However,
those who have served as soldiers and have themselves been perpetrators of violence find
it far more difficult to recuperate and to recover their mental strength. Such was the case
with a 15-year old boy who spent four gruesome years serving in the Khmer Rouge army
of Cambodia. After having spent one month in a camp in Thailand, he began hearing two
voices that were quarrelling inside his head. The first voice was that of a Khmer Rouge
leader, who was angry with the boy for having left the army. The second was that of a
Buddhist priest who said the boy would be punished for his actions when he dies. In
another case of a former Khmer Rouge cadre, a 13-year-old boy had recurrent visions of
one of his victim’s intestines transforming into snakes and strangling him. (iEARN)
During clinical sessions with child soldiers in such parts of the world as Guatemala and
Ethiopia, it was found that children’s mental turmoil became most severe once they gave
up their guns and tried to re-integrate into their former communities. Their psychological
suffering seemed to be provoked by their being reminded of killing as a moral
wrongdoing, and not just a physical act of inflicting pain. Similar trauma was
experienced by Mozambican ex-child soldiers who had escaped from rebel forces.
Thousands of such children reported experiencing flashbacks in which past events of
their combatant days would unexpectedly come flooding back to haunt them. (Cohn &
Goodwin-Gill, 1994)
Children who have been used to killing not only members of opposing forces but also
their friends and relatives, including their own parents, undergo intense feelings of guilt.
Girls who have been raped and forced into prostitution are particularly prone to suffering
guilt in addition to feelings of confusion, depression, anger, loss of trust in others and
extremely low self-esteem. Not only do children feel blameworthy for having committed
atrocities but they are also afraid of being rejected by their own communities or subject to
physical or legal retribution. Sometimes, these feelings may be subjective reactions,
while at other times they are a legitimate reaction to these children’s brutal realities.
Some young ex-combatants are so fearful of being discovered for the crimes they
committed that they resort to changing their names and even their personal histories. This
may occur to such an extent that these children may risk going through an identity crisis.
A more evident impact of war on child soldiers is that of physical injury. It may include
anything from the loss of limbs, eyes and other body parts to superficial scars. The types
of injuries suffered are innumerable and may be distinct for each conflict. For example,
Liberian children who fought in Charles Taylor’s “small boys units” had a high incidence
57
of hernias, which most probably resulted from carrying arms that were far too heavy to be
supported by their little bodies. Girls who took part in war and were forced to perform
sexual favors often contracted sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS, or were
impregnated. Pregnancies may subsequently result in young girls giving birth or having
abortions, which are often dangerous and even life-threatening given the poor quality of
health care in such war-torn areas.
Another important consequence of children’s participation in war is its effect on their
education: in particular, lost school time. While many children are denied the opportunity
to go to school even when there is peace, participation in combat may completely
eliminate their prospect of ever studying. In wartime, schools may be closed or even
destroyed, leaving children stranded without an opportunity to further their education,
even after the war is over. In the Israeli occupied territories, Palestinian children’s
schooling suffers for two reasons. Either the rebelling leaders may order strike days or
persuade youth into participating in intifada-related events during school hours or
security forces may close down schools for “security reasons”. Public schools in this
region have become the hub for PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) and extremist
Islamic meetings as well as convention centres for students involved in intifada violence.
The schools have even served as centres for both forced and voluntary recruitment. On
several occasions, PLO activists have interrupted classes, forcing students to leave the
classroom and join street riots. For this reason, the Israeli government decided to close
down schools for the children’s safety. However, closing down schools created another
danger of children roaming the streets during periods of political upheaval. It also caused
many adolescents, who were frustrated and going through an emotional and difficult
period in life, to join alternate organizations like military groups.
Children’s participation in combat also holds serious repercussions for their families,
communities and even entire societies. In the Israeli occupied territories, Palestinians
were faced with houses being destroyed or barricaded, public curfews, arbitrary arrests as
well as mass deportations. In the 1980’s, some 500 000 people were displaced and forced
out of El Salvador due to the military’s efforts to drain the fish from the sea. At the same
time, army roadblocks were imposed to prevent food from reaching communities
believed to have been harbouring FMLN troops. In Peru, the government’s security
forces wiped out entire communities and both kidnapped and assassinated countless
individuals on the mere suspicion that some among them favoured the country’s rebel
group, the Shining Path.
Active youth participation in war also affects societies by increasing juvenile delinquency
and diminishing discipline among children. Following El Salvador’s armed cease-fire in
1992, juvenile delinquency has reportedly increased. Some speculate that this is a result
of amplified media coverage, while others attribute it to the increase in highway armed
robberies after soldiers became aware that their release from duty was nearing. In the
same year, RENAMO (Resistëncia Nacional Moçambicana) forces in Mozambique were
struggling to manage the 8000 boy combatants who were freely roaming rural areas,
armed and hungry. Liberia is also experiencing an unsafe future, as humanitarian aid
workers are predicting an increase in juvenile delinquency among former Liberian child
58
soldiers. One reason for the rise in rebellion among ex-combatants is that many children
feel frustrated being trapped working for armed forces, without any authentic control
over their circumstances. Also, parents who live in violent societies become
overwhelmed by the daily problems they are faced with and, as a result, tend to raise their
children in a more authoritarian fashion. Likewise, civil strife, such as the Palestinian
intifada, often disrupts family structures, wherein the authority of fathers and
grandfathers diminishes. This often forces children to take on the authoritative roles in
the household, placing less importance on obedience to their parents. In Northern Ireland,
children raised in violent environments are considered to have been stripped of their
sense of fear and any notion of peace, thus becoming difficult to discipline.
War-torn societies which use child soldiers are also burdened by the great number of
orphaned children. In Uganda, for example, where the Lord’s Resistance Army recklessly
recruits child soldiers, communities are faced with the problem of housing and caring for
those young ones that have been left to fend for themselves. A similar situation is taking
place in Mozambique, Somalia and Liberia. While there are more orphaned child victims
than soldiers, those orphans that have fought in war are much more difficult to find
homes for, considering their traumatized backgrounds.
7. The Positive Side of Military Participation
While taking up arms and joining a violent conflict has countless detrimental effects on
the children involved, there is also a positive side to participation. Many young people
who are not forced into participation take up arms because they perceive to have greater
personal security within, rather than outside armed factions. They feel safer being united
with other orphans, refugees and street children who have also been recruited to fight. By
being a ‘part’ of an armed group, they cannot be ‘against’ it and therein lays their sense
of safety. Often, military units may serve as sorts of surrogate families for orphaned, waraffected children.
8. Challenges Facing Demobilization and Reintegration Efforts
There are enormous challenges facing the demobilization and reintegration of child
soldiers into society. These processes of achieving a sustainable solution are long and
complex and must be given extra care due to the delicate nature of the problem. One of
the main issues that must be addressed is the reaction of the returning soldiers’ home
communities. These reactions vary from complete rejection to the false assumption that
the ex-combatants will effortlessly return to their previous lives. Child soldiers often
dread coming back to their villages because of the atrocious acts they were forced to
commit against their families and communities at the time of recruitment. These strategic
acts were used by armies precisely to prevent the child soldiers from ever being
welcomed back into their home communities. As such, children fear being denied and
59
blamed by their own communities for the crimes they were coerced into committing.
Child soldiers return home carrying heavy burdens resulting from being so brutally
exposed to war. Having suffered extreme abuses, child combatants come back with
extensive emotional scars and physical injuries that render the reintegration process a
highly difficult one. Girls carry the additional weight of sexual abuse involving rape and
forced prostitution. Those who have conceived children out of wedlock after being raped
by rebel leaders face the added stigma imposed on them by traditional societies. Not only
are they looked down upon for bearing ‘illegitimate’ children, but they are also disgraced
for having been targets of sexual abuse. Many girls suffer such strong feelings of shame
that they become reluctant to seeking any type of medical assistance or emotional support
for fear of being humiliated. The particular circumstances of returning female soldiers are
seldom properly dealt with, nor are they given sufficient attention in demobilization and
reintegration programs. Girl soldiers who have served as sex slaves and commanders’
“wives” are frequently hidden from humanitarian workers, making it extremely difficult
to track and educate them.
A serious problem faced by all returning child soldiers is diminished economic
opportunity. Children serving in war may spend years away from their families, and
schools as well as job training opportunities. Rather than receiving education and
professional training, they have developed skills in the area of combat, including fighting,
killing and other war-related tasks. Because of their restricted skills, they are pressured
into quickly adapting to substantial changes in every aspect of their lives in order to
protect themselves from being recruited again into another armed force. Returning
soldiers are often attractive targets for re-recruitment as they are likely to lose patience
during the long and arduous reintegration process and resort to a life of violence.
Because of their frustration and dissatisfaction with the reintegration programs as well as
their previous military training, young ex-soldiers are at a high risk of being swept up by
armed forces for a second or even a third time. They are also likely to turn to crime for
employment. Another difficulty in the successful reintegration of ex-child soldiers arises
in cases where children have undergone a religious conversion during their military term.
For example, in Sudan, Christian child soldiers who converted to Islam were of particular
concern to the leaders of their primarily Christian communities during demobilization
and reintegration procedures. In fact, these Christian village chiefs are taking into account
the possibility of re-converting the children to their original faith in order to maintain
societal stability. (Cohn & Goodwin-Gill, 1994)
9. Recommendations: Applying the ABC Conflict Triangle
While demobilizing, disarming and reintegrating children involved in war is extremely
long and difficult, the process must be undertaken to prevent the continuing plight of
child soldiers around the world. In this section, the ABC model is utilized to stop violent
behaviours. This is done primarily through the adjustment and implementation of laws
aimed at fulfilling children’s basic human needs. The United Nations Convention on the
60
Rights of the Child states that “all children have the right to special protection in time of
conflict and should not take a direct part in hostilities”. In recent years, several steps have
been taken to create a legal and policy structure aimed for the protection of children
involved in violent conflict. In May of 2000, the General Assembly of the United Nations
adopted The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (also known
as the “Child Soldiers’ Treaty”) concerning the participation of children in armed
conflict. Officially entering into force on February 13, 2002, the treaty aims to strengthen
the legal protection of children and to prevent and abolish their use in armed conflict.
Specifically, the Protocol:
•
•
•
•
Requires state parties to "take all feasible measures" to ensure that members of
their armed forces under the age of 18 years do not participate in hostilities;
Prohibits the conscription of anyone under the age of 18 into the armed forces;
Requires states to raise the age of voluntary recruitment from 15 and to deposit a
binding declaration of the minimum age for recruitment into its armed forces; and
Prohibits the recruitment or use in hostilities of children under the age of 18 by
rebel or other non-governmental armed groups, and requires states to criminalize
such practices.
(Stohl, 2002)
While 111 countries have already signed the agreement, only 46 have actually begun
implementing it and have made obligatory legal commitments to uphold it. While the
Optional Protocol’s ratification is an important step in protecting children’s human rights,
it alone is not adequate for ending the use of children as soldiers. In order for it to have a
greater impact, it must be universalized to support the rising international standard that
children are entitled to protection in times of conflict. States must be closely monitored
by international bodies to ensure their compliance with the Optional Protocol. Also,
emphasis on children’s rights must be placed not only during violence but also after it
ceases. In addition to the continued support and spread of the treaty, long-term, allencompassing programs of demobilization, disarmament and reintegration must be
carried out in war-affected societies. Just as important is the inclusion of preventative
measures in areas where children are at risk of military recruitment.
9.1. Preventing the Use of Child Soldiers
Prevention strategies must take into account the various ways in which youth wind up
participating in armed conflict. They must attend to the general conflict issues, as well as
the subjective, personal experiences of the child. In terms of the ABC model, prevention
strategies involve changing the contradictions of the conflict, while altering children’s
attitudes toward the issue. One way of reinforcing the local capacity to prevent the use of
child soldiers is by raising community awareness of the national and international laws
regulating the minimum recruitment age. This can be done through massive education
campaigns targeting both affected and non-affected communities. Factors that contribute
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to forced and voluntary recruitment must be diminished or eliminated. In other words, to
achieve the sustainability of efforts, contradictions must be determined and handled
appropriately. Issues that motivate forced recruitment include population control, as well
as ethnic, racial and class discrimination. Most children taken as soldiers are young,
vulnerable, poor, under-educated and come from indigenous, rural communities. Aspects
contributing to the generation of conflict, such as social injustice and discrimination are
mirrored in the forced recruitment strategies of governments and armed groups. As such,
in order to reduce forced recruitment, the root causes of conflicts must first be addressed.
One step towards this is organizing grass-roots interventions or movements that pressure
local governments into stopping the recruitment of children. These can then serve as
catalysts towards addressing larger issues such as poverty and a culture of militarism.
In 1992, an indigenous NGO was created in the region of Solola, Guatemala to deal with
human rights violations related to forced recruitment. The initiative consisted of open
meetings in different villages and the gathering of some 9,845 signatures for a petition
declaring that mandatory military service infringes on cultural and human rights. The
petition proposed social service as an alternative to military duty, and required putting an
end to the intimidation and punishment of indigenous people who refused the draft. It
also specified that local military units would be held accountable for any harm inflicted
on youth refusing conscription or on people who signed the petition. The petition was
distributed to the local governor and mayor as well as the Federal Congress, the Ministry
of Defence, the President and the Human Rights Regulator. Within a year, a settlement
between the indigenous people and the human rights commission was negotiated,
guaranteeing the abolition of recruitment in the Solola area. Similar successes have been
reported in El Salvador, Guatemala and Paraguay, where ethnic groups and mothers of
young soldiers have united to pressure authorities into discharging under-age combatants
and ending compulsory military enrolment. In these cases, behaviours and contradictions
were addressed at the same time and a change in one correlated with a change in the
other. More precisely, grass-roots movements aimed at directly and immediately altering
behaviours simultaneously dealt with the sources of the problem (or contradictions) to
achieve a sustainable solution (i.e. the complete abolishment of child recruitment).
In addition to mass protests and community organization, legal methods are also
necessary and have proven useful in preventing violent behaviours in countries like
Guatemala. In cases where children have no identification cards documenting their age,
advocates ought to demand the recruit’s personal appearance and insist that the minor’s
under-age status be fully respected. NGOs have served an important function by
providing alternate forms of community service to potential recruits. They have also
initiated campaigns for legal reform and are encouraging popular resistance to emerging
recruitment techniques. With regards to the PACs, local activist groups are raising
awareness as to why the faction exists and how it abuses the human rights of those whom
it forces into participation. It does so through the use of pamphlets, community-based
education campaigns, marches and petitions to administrative authorities. In addition, the
CERJ (Council of Ethnic Communities) has been translating article 34 of the Mayan
Constitution into Mayan languages and distributing it on a mass scale. The article grants
people freedom of association and protection from forced involvement in the civil
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defence patrols. The CERJ also provides seminars on human rights for community
leaders of approximately 120 villages, educating and supporting individuals in actively
defending their civil and political rights. Furthermore, the NGO is offering legal
assistance to families wanting to be released from military duty and to minors serving
with the PAC who are legally exempt from service.
The above deals with interventions to eliminate recruitment by government forces.
However, it is also important to determine prevention measures for forced recruitment by
armed opposition forces. While these non-governmental groups are not legally entitled to
instituting a draft, they must still comply with national and international law. Sometimes,
negative publicity in the media can pressure armed groups into following international
recruitment standards. In the aims of gaining legitimacy and a positive image, armed
forces may sometimes conform to even stricter regulations. Local NGOs, religious
associations and civil society leaders should establish ethical frameworks (including local
customs, values and traditions) that deem the use of child soldiers unacceptable. Appeals
should be formulated based on this moral agenda and presented to leaders of the
opposition. This approach proved successful in Peru, where forced recruitment decreased
significantly in areas where parish churches condemned the activity. This method is also
particularly useful when armed groups strongly depend on the civil society for support
and protection. In such cases, the changing of behaviours is largely dependent on the
altering of attitudes. As illustrated in the examples, changing people’s attitudes such that
they cease to accept the use of children as soldiers leads to a change in behaviour among
those responsible for recruitment. Because society can often be a primary supporter of the
violent actions carried out by the perpetrators of crime, changing its attitudes toward the
involvement of children in war is bound to result in behavioural changes on the part of
recruiters. Society often dictates that which is permissible. Consequently, changing its
views of what is acceptable determines the types of behaviour that will be carried out by
its members.
Like the immediate, local society, foreign aid donors who support armed groups also
possess a lot of power in eliminating the problem by being able to pressure their clients
into stopping child soldier use. Donors could place sanctions on those who fail to adhere
to international law through the suspension of military assistance or weapons. In fact, the
UN is currently lobbying to strengthen laws on selling guns to prevent them from
attaining combat zones where child soldiers are fighting. Campaigns exposing the use of
child soldiers could be carried out in countries inhabited by expatriate support groups of
the armed group at hand. For example, lobbies exposing the use of children in the LTTE
could be publicized in countries like Norway, France, the United Kingdom and Australia,
where there are many Sri Lankan emigrants who support the armed force. (Cohn and
Goodwin-Gill, 1994) However, such an attempt could be risky as it could create tensions
between different ethnic groups (in this case, the Singhalese and the Tamils, who are on
“opposite” sides of the issue). Advocacy must also be carried out in countries where
tensions are low and which have a strong influence on the developments of the UN in
afflicted areas. For example, World Vision has introduced a campaign in Canada which
urges the government to use its diplomatic and political power to influence the UN in
taking appropriate action for helping child soldiers in Northern Uganda. The Canadian
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public is encouraged to write letters and make phone calls to the federal government to
demonstrate support for the cause, ensuring the message is loud and clear. In addition to
this campaign, World Vision has been promoting and organizing the Gulu Walk. It is an
international March for Peace whose aim is to raise awareness about and demonstrate
solidarity with the 50 000 children which commute from the Gulu district of Northern
Uganda to avoid being abducted by rebel forces. Many walk as far as 11 km every night
to seek refuge while they sleep. The demonstration has proven to be tremendously
successful. In October 2005, 15 000 people in 40 cities around the globe flooded the
streets to walk the same distance as a night commuter (about two hours). Many went out
with signs showing support for the children, and urging the government to take action.
(Lejtenyi, 2006) The more pressure Canadians put on their own government in these
types of advocacy campaigns, the more authorities will feel compelled to influence the
decisions of the UN in urgently assisting children involved in war. If each country
belonging to the UN were to adopt one or several nations that use children as soldiers,
and were to carry out similar advocacy campaigns, the UN, along with the governments
of the affected states would be under significant pressure to truly do something about the
problem! This demonstrates that, although individuals living in peaceful nations may feel
very far removed from those living in violent societies, they actually have a significant
impact on the fate of those who are suffering, including the way they are treated by their
governments and international governing bodies. As such, changing people’s violent
behaviours by changing their attitudes (through advocacy campaigns) is crucial in
bringing about sustainable, positive change.
Protecting the basic human rights of child refugees could also significantly reduce the use
of children as soldiers, as they are often the main target of forced recruitment. Most often,
“protecting” children involves addressing the “behaviours” aspect of the ABC model. In
other words, it consists of changing the violent behaviours of those who carry out crimes
against children. In 1987, UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees)
began paying extra attention to violations committed against refugee children and took
radical steps in addressing the problem. In addition to condemning the use of child
soldiers as an infringement on human rights (i.e. addressing attitudes), UNHCR called for
national and international action, which included the creation of special needs and
education programs. In August of 1988, UNHCR came up with Guidelines on Refugee
Children, which guaranteed the organization to intervene with governments to ensure
they were protecting the safety and freedom of young refugees. In addition, the
guidelines sanctioned the organization to take action if a breach of policy was detected.
UNHCR regional offices were directed to promote positive camp conditions, such as
setting up camps far enough from the border so as to defend refugee children from being
attacked and forcefully enlisted. This action, in the context of the ABC model, involved
tackling a contradiction, which consisted of the unsafe location of refugee camps.
UNHCR was also instructed to record all incidents of recruitment by government,
guerrilla and rebel forces and report them to the officials of the asylum country as well as
the UNHCR head office. (Cohn and Goodwin-Gill, 1994)
According to the ABC Triangle, preventative measures that deal with voluntary child
recruitment must, above all, address the root causes of armed conflict and strife. Priority
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must be given to the deep structural inequalities and violence that bring about societal
instability. Children’s environments as well as their assessment of the decision to
participate need to be targeted. This involves encouraging parents to see the negative
consequences of children’s involvement in conflict and helping them overcome the
preconceived notion that the use of child soldiers is inevitable and that the dangers are
overshadowed by the pressing nature of the conflict’s root causes. Psychologists in the
Philippines have underlined the necessity to strengthen the extended family and
community through material and emotional means. This, in turn, serves as a support
network for adults, who have a huge influence on children’s capacities to cope with
traumatic events. The ways in which adults react to children’s questions regarding issues
of social and economic injustice often decides how the children will deal with their
situations. Therefore, it is essential to change the importance that some adults place on
involving youth in hostilities as a way of responding to such issues. However, even if this
is done, adults can still assess the objectives of a conflict as prevailing over the dangers
posed to children involved in war. Perhaps a change in, or enforcement of laws can alter
adults’ views on the use of child soldiers. The illegality of child soldiers could pressure
military leaders into stopping recruitment of under-aged youth as they would be held
lawfully accountable for their actions. While tightening of regulations is necessary, value
advocacy could also prove highly beneficial. Campaigns based on moral agendas that
encompass culture, religion and/or history could be set up in violence-affected
communities to spread ethical principles. People who have control over territory are held
responsible to the general population and should, thus (despite their own plans), protect
children as a way of upholding basic human rights. This type of value promotion should
be carried out prior to violence, as it is very difficult to do once conflict has erupted due
to the survival mechanism that emerges in people. At this stage, often only practical
restraints on military tactics have the potential of being obeyed. As such, providing
military leaders with evidence that using young soldiers is disadvantageous to their
military strategies could be effective in reducing child soldier use. The changing of
attitudes (through value advocacy) would lead to a change in behaviour (of military
leaders) and would eventually result in the eradication of some contradictions, such as the
culture of violence.
To a certain degree, the ABC model can also be used to change the attitudes of victims,
in hopes of attaining a sustainable solution to the conflict. Empowering children by
reinforcing their feelings of security, competence and strength could contribute to
decreasing voluntary enlistment. However, because of the severity of the problem,
changing children’s attitudes is not sufficient. What must be changed are children’s
violent environments through the removal of violent behaviours. Children affected by
war feel helpless and vulnerable not because of individual perception problems, but
because that is their reality. Thus, the only way to truly make a child feel empowered and
safe is by actually ending their oppression and improving their personal security. This
may be done through the use of international condemnation or pressure on governments
that are responsible for kidnapping, torturing, and intimidating children. It can also be
accomplished by strengthening international monitoring to increase security in conflict
zones as well as other affected areas like refugee camps. Part of the solution could be to
present children living in war areas with alternate activities. For example, schools could
65
continue to operate and recreational activities could be provided. As such, youth would
be more occupied and would feel less bored, frustrated or desperate for change. By
simply keeping schools open, children would be safe in the classroom, rather than
aimlessly roaming the streets just waiting to be recruited. The more value that is placed
on education in a society, the less attracted children may be to joining armed forces.
9.2 Interventions Aimed at Demobilizing and Reintegrating Child Soldiers
A pressing priority is to demobilize all soldiers under 18 years of age from armed
factions. In light of the ABC model, the demobilization of soldiers is a form of stopping
violent behaviour. This is a difficult task, because even when children regret having
volunteered to fight, they find it nearly impossible to safely escape an armed force.
Taking Sri Lanka, for example, children serving in the LTTE are not permitted to pass
from the northern Tamil parts of the country to the southern, predominantly Singhalese
areas. Children trying to escape the rebel faction risk being detained by the police as they
attempt to cross to the south. In addition, those simply showing interest in leaving, face
the danger of being beaten and tortured in front of the other troops. The safe
demobilization of child soldiers requires national and international intervention that puts
pressure on both governments and rebel groups to release their young combatants. Failing
to do so should result in dire consequences, including detainment of military leaders and
the imposition of economic sanctions. Successful demobilization can only take place if
children are guaranteed security in the repatriation process. As illustrated, there are many
factors that must be considered in the process of changing behaviours. If efforts are made
to change behaviours, and yet children continue to live in danger, such attempts will
remain futile. From this follows that changing behaviours can be a very delicate process
and must take into account outside environmental factors in order to be effective.
According to the ABC model’s focus on transforming contradictions as a means toward
preventing violent conflict, appropriately reintegrating children into society could serve
as a successful method for doing this. It would involve changing those factors that lead
children to being recruited in the first place. Reintegration procedures must assist exchild soldiers in creating a new groundwork for their lives. Providing ways in which
children can restore relationships with their families and communities is vital. This is
because child soldiers have been raised far from their parents and have been denied the
opportunity for physical, emotional and intellectual development. New reintegration
programs must be set up and existing ones must be strengthened to promote health and
nutrition, as well as psychosocial wellness and education. Such programs must take into
account the unique circumstances generated by violent conflict. These include children
and their families forced to flee their homes, being displaced within their countries or
traveling across borders as refugees. Special attention must be given to those who are
most at risk in a conflict, yet often forgotten. Children and women are most likely to be
sexually humiliated, raped and forced into prostitution. Therefore, demobilization and
reintegration programs must be sensitively designed so as to appropriately respond to the
needs of vulnerable populations, particularly girl soldiers. The special requirements of
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adolescents who are in the process of forming identities and ideologies must also be
attended to. In 2004, World Vision set up a Child Mothers Centre in Uganda. The
institute is aimed at fulfilling the physical and emotional needs of young women and girls
who have been impregnated by LRA rebel leaders. It assists girls who are still pregnant
as well as those who have already given birth and are facing the challenges of
motherhood. At the centre, the girls are taught vital skills for supporting and caring for
their children. (World Vision, 2006) More establishments such as this one are required in
nations where females are likely to be recruited into armed forces.
An important aspect of assistance programs is providing returning soldiers with
educational and vocational opportunities. This can prove useful, not only in helping them
readapt to civilian life and increasing their families’ economic security, but also in
preventing children from rejoining armed units. Education and skills training renders
children more equipped for finding employment, which also contributes to making them
feel more accepted and included in their communities. Educational opportunities can also
assist in normalizing children’s lives and giving them the chance to create an identity
apart from that of the soldier. One challenge to reintegrating soldiers into schools is that
many have fallen behind in their education during military service and may, thus, wind
up in classes with students far younger than themselves. To address this concern, special
classes could be set up for former child combatants, which could serve as a transition for
re-entering the regular school system. Once they are caught up, they can re-enter the
regular school system and attend classes appropriate to their age. Within education
programs, ex-soldiers should be encouraged to use their energies, ideas and experiences
in positive ways when contributing to the renewal of post-violence societies. The
emphasis should be placed on channelling children’s energies into positive actions. This
is because their gradually increasing involvement in atrocities desensitizes them to
affliction and, consequently, makes them more prone to being violent themselves. As a
result, children adopt the idea that violence is an acceptable method of reaching one’s
goals. Governments and civil society, thus, have an important role to play in altering this
ideology and helping children transform their negative values into constructive ones.
The processes of demobilization and reintegration are long and complex. While they are
being carried out, concrete practical steps must be taken towards slowing down the
recruitment of children for war. Otherwise stated, immediate steps must be taken to
prevent violent behaviour from continuing to run its course. Since the proliferation of
lightweight weapons is enabling military leaders to arm children, the UN and other
international bodies should make it a priority to draft stricter global standards for limiting
the small arms trade. Also, countries producing small weapons should immediately stop
exporting them to areas where the use of child soldiers is prevalent. Without the supply of
manageable arms, rebel groups and armed government forces will not be able to provide
their young combatants with the equipment they need for killing. The sooner armsmanufacturing countries will cease to export their weapons, the quicker the use of child
soldiers will become a thing of the past. As such, it is the responsibility of many
European and other technologically advanced countries to help stop the exploitation of
children in some of the most remote areas of the world.
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10. Conclusion
War affects everyone. Unfortunately, too often it is the most vulnerable, innocent, and
weak members of society that are most severely affected by violence. Those members
happen to be children. They reap the consequences of war, and yet have nothing to do
with its beginnings: they are not in the least responsible for its eruption. Because of their
low status in society, children are forced to suffer the consequences of the most
destructive of actions carried out by authorities and governments. Not only do children
undergo physical and emotional torment because of armed conflict, but they are also
frequently directly involved in battle as soldiers, messengers, spies, and “wives” of armed
leaders. Regardless of the type of involvement, taking advantage of children in such a
way is completely unacceptable and goes against their rights as outlined in the
Convention on the Rights of the Child. Whether they be forced or persuaded, recruiting
children into joining armed factions destroys their innocence, sense of love, and even
sense of self. It tears them apart from their families and causes them to commit one of the
most barbaric acts known to man: murder. In other words, it crudely strips them of their
childhood and turns them into perpetrators of violence. This must be stopped
immediately. Awareness must be raised about the atrocities that are carried out against
children by involving them in armed conflicts. More than ever before, attention must be
given to the subject of child soldiers, especially with the increase in small arms trade.
NGOs, governments, civil society as well as the international community need to
coordinate their efforts to prevent the recruitment of children as soldiers, secure their
demobilisation and ensure their proper reintegration into society. As evidenced in this
chapter, one way to do this is by applying the basic concepts of the ABC triangle. By
addressing people’s attitudes and behaviours and tending to the root causes of the
conflict, significant changes can be made in creating a more peaceful environment for
children involved in war. Through the use of such peace-building tools as the ABC
model, there remains hope for war-affected children who find themselves in the bleakest
of situations.
Chapter 5: Comparing the Case Studies in Relation to the ABC Conflict Triangle
As evidenced in the previous chapters, the ABC Conflict Triangle is equally applicable to
each of the case studies in terms of coming up with practical solutions for improving the
state of children around the world. While there are slight differences in the specific ways
that it was applied, in general, the model proved uniformly useful as a means of
proposing concrete, sustainable resolutions to the problems depicted in each situation. Let
us take a look at how each aspect of the triangle was related to the different issues
concerning children’s human rights. First, we shall examine how the changing of
attitudes was a key element in addressing the various conflicts.
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1. Addressing Attitudes
In the three situations studied, changing the attitudes of the actors involved served as a
step towards eliminating the sources of the problem (i.e.: addressing the contradictions)
so that a long-term transformation of the conflicts could be attained. The proposed
altering of attitudes was also used as a means of redirecting the violent behaviors of
different actors toward more peaceful and constructive ones.
The three cases were similar in that the attitudes of various actors were proposed to be
modified in each one. However, they were distinct in terms of the specific actors on
whom the changing of attitudes was focused. For example, in the case of India, the focus
was on altering the attitudes of the perpetrators of crime, while in the other two cases,
more importance was placed on changing the attitudes of the victims. In all three cases,
addressing the attitudes of the general public was crucial in improving the situation of
affected children.
In the first case, modifying the approach of the police towards street children was a
necessary starting point for dealing with the root causes of the problem. Similarly,
changing the attitudes of the actors involved in the trafficking of Albanian girls was
necessary to begin eradicating the source of the issue. However, in this case, rather than
altering the attitudes of the direct perpetrators of violence (like of the police in India),
attention was placed on changing the attitudes of the victims, as well as the people closest
to them, including family members and friends. The “attitude changing” part of the
model was applied in a similar manner to the issue of child soldiers. As with the case of
trafficking in Albania, one of the purposes was to use the ABC triangle to change the
attitudes that children have towards military recruitment. Currently, one of the main
reasons for which children are recruited as soldiers around the world is that they are
easily persuaded by armed factions. This persuasion of children by military groups can be
likened to the persuasion of Albanian girls by traffickers. The parallel in the manner of
recruitment (ie: persuasion) allows the ABC triangle to be applied correspondingly in the
two situations. In the same way that the model aimed to change the attitudes of Albanian
girls toward life abroad, it can also be used to change the attitudes that children have
toward joining armed groups. However, in contrast to the Albanian case study, in which
attitudes were changed primarily through education campaigns, the attitudes of potential
child soldiers had to be altered through the initiation of government-based, legal action to
end their oppression and physically increase their level of safety. This is because these
children’s emotions and cognitions are not a result of individual, subjective perceptions.
Instead, they stem from the objective reality of a war environment, as opposed to the case
of Albanian girls’ perceptions of Italy.
A key similarity observed in the cases of child trafficking and child soldiers is that
significant weight was placed on transforming the attitudes of the victims’ parents. In
each situation, the parents contribute to the problem by encouraging their children to
either work abroad or join armed groups. As such, the ABC triangle proposed to alter the
parents’ views of life abroad (in the case of child trafficking) as well as parents’ attitudes
towards involving children in war (as in the case of child soldiers).
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Common across all case studies was the suggestion to redirect the attitudes of society as a
whole toward victims. It involved primarily raising awareness so as to create empathy
toward children in need. In all three cases, some sort of nationwide or international
awareness raising campaign was recommended to help the public better understand the
facts related to each issue. In the case of Albania, for instance, changes had to be made in
the way the media depicted trafficked girls. Likewise, in the case of India, awarenessraising surrounding the challenges faced by street children was proposed to humanize
these young souls in the eyes of the public. In all cases, the media was suggested as an
effective method for changing society’s attitudes towards each issue by dispelling certain
myths and propagating children’s rights.
In the three examples, the changing of attitudes through advocacy greatly contributed to
changing behaviours. This is because once people become aware of the truth, they cannot
help but do something about it. In each scenario, educating the public on the abuse of
children’s rights led them to first change their attitudes and then to take concrete actions
for improving their situations.
2. Addressing Behaviours
The ABC model was used as a tool to change the behaviours of the different parties
involved in each conflict. While it served as a platform to alter the direct violent
behaviours of the perpetrators of crime, it was also applied to change the behaviours of
victimized children. More specifically, it intended to guide children away from making
harmful decisions, and redirect them to opting for safer choices that would enhance,
rather than jeopardize, their well-being. The goal of the model was to eliminate
behaviours that abuse children’s human rights as quickly and efficiently as possible so as
to provide them with a safer environment (in other words, to stop and prevent violence).
This would, in turn, help deal with some of the contradictions. The proposed behavioural
changes were largely a natural result of the recommended attitude changes. This is
congruent with the ABC triangle theory which suggests that once attitude changes take
place, the behavioural changes will ensue. While the behaviours of specific actors were
targeted, attention was also given to shifting the conduct of society as a whole, in aims of
achieving a more sustainable solution. This was done by supporting institutions and
infrastructure for peace through such actions as the strengthening of existing laws and the
creation of news ones. It also involved the pressuring of governments (through lobbies),
and the establishment of NGO-based peace-centres. Because of the pressing nature of
ending violent behaviour, some efforts were aimed at directly stopping the violence
inflicted on children. Others, on the other hand, were geared toward enforcing long-term
behavioural changes through the establishment and implementation of legal frameworks.
In all three cases the ABC triangle was used to alter behavior through the tightening of
laws in accordance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In the case of India,
the model was practical for making suggestions to revise and enforce laws related to the
legal and social protection of street children. In the case of child soldiers, behaviours
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could be changed by establishing a legal and policy framework aimed at protecting
children involved in violent conflict. Likewise, bringing an end to the trafficking of
Albanian girls required a tightening of national and international laws. In sum, the ABC
model was helpful in all cases in addressing violent behaviours through the upholding of
peaceful legislation and the creation of applicable laws.
In the three situations, focus was placed on changing the behaviors of victims, although
to varying degrees. Most attention was given to this in the case of Albania, in which the
behaviours of girls at risk as well as those of their family and friends needed to be
changed. In addition, changing the behaviours of victims was largely dependent on
providing children with a safer environment, although this was easier to do in some
conflicts than others. More concretely, it was most challenging in the case of India, in
which children’s environments consist of the unsafe streets, where they are exposed to
every possible societal danger.
In all cases, direct, drastic measures had to be taken to create an immediate change in
behaviour on the part of violent actors. In the case of India, recommendations were made
to forbid the detention and torture of street children in police lock-ups. In the case of
Albania, directly preventing girls from experiencing violent behaviour was primarily
carried out in Italy. Finally, in regards to the last scenario, the immediate and safe
disarmament and demobilization of child soldiers was proposed. The goal was to remove
children from their violent environments and surround them with people that would
respect and care for them.
Another major way of changing behaviours in each conflict was to pressure governments
through lobbies, protests and other grassroots movements. In the case of India, the
suggestion was made to demand the state to ratify and implement previously proposed
reforms related to children’s human, judicial and custodial rights. In the study of Albania,
the goal of the international community was to pressure the government and the media to
really begin raising awareness about trafficking in the country. In the child soldiers
conflict, the initiation of campaigns and marches condemning the use of child soldiers
was proposed. In all situations, the possibility of changing behavior was largely
dependent on the efforts of the international community, whose duty was to strictly
monitor governments and hold them responsible for their actions. It is predicted that the
more pressure that international bodies exert on the respective countries, the more likely a
change in behavior will occur.
Finally, setting up humanitarian, grassroots organizations was used as a means of
changing behaviour, particularly in the case of India and child soldiers. In the Indian
conflict, the suggestion was made to institute an agency that investigates complaints
against police. In the last conflict, NGOs, religious associations and other non-profit
organizations were proposed to establish ethical frameworks that deem the use of child
soldiers unacceptable.
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3. Addressing Contradictions
The purpose of the “C” in the ABC triangle was to address the root causes fueling the
conflicts. In the original use of the model (namely, in a war situation with distinct
opposing parties), the ABC triangle would have been used to establish the different goals
of each party. However, in the situations described, in which the parties involved were
not in clear and direct opposition with each other, the ABC triangle was used to identify
the sources of the problems. In other words, it was used in a broader sense, to identify
risk factors, involving both structural and cultural forms of violence. The purpose of
addressing the contradictions was mainly to prevent the conflict from continuing and
resurfacing by dealing with the factors that enabled it. It required understanding the deep
culture and structure of each conflict. Contradictions common to all three cases included
unjust societal structures, political corruption, inadequate laws, gender-inequality,
discrimination based on age or social status, poverty, lack of educational opportunities,
domestic violence, as well as attitudes and customs which promote these injustices.
While they are listed as separate causes, the contradictions are all closely related. As an
example, poverty both perpetuates and is perpetuated by domestic violence and a lack of
educational opportunities.
In the three cases, addressing contradictions primarily involved the efforts of NGOs and
other grassroots organizations, as well as movements and campaigns that promote
peaceful values such as equality and empathy for victims. In many cases, tackling the
contradiction involved altering attitudes and resulted in changed behaviors.
In the case of India, the deep culture of the police was a contradiction in need of
attention. This was primarily done by changing their negative attitudes toward street
children. In the case of Albania, changing contradictions was also closely linked with
addressing attitudes. This included primarily shifting society’s negative feelings toward
girls. The contradictions were mostly addressed through awareness-raising campaigns,
which helped to ultimately create more empathy toward victims. This can be likened to
the attempt of creating empathy in police officers toward street children in the case of
India. The general idea here is to change some of the core values that society has been
instinctively following for years. Until these discriminatory beliefs and customs are
addressed, the conflicts will continue their course. Similar contradictions of deeply
embedded violent, cultural values were identified by the ABC triangle in the case of child
soldiers, including a culture of militarism and sexually-degrading attitudes toward girls.
In all cases, poverty and domestic violence were key contradictions stimulating the
conflicts. A desire to escape domestic violence was the reason for a) children ending up
on the streets in India, b) Albanian girls voluntarily going to Italy with their recruiters and
c) child soldiers willingly enlisting into armed factions. Promoting peace in the home and
strengthening family values were ways of addressing this contradiction. Also, providing
counseling services to broken families was useful in all cases.
Poverty and a lack of educational opportunities were also factors contributing to the
contradictions in each conflict. Children in India were often forced unto the street
72
because their parents could not afford to support them and because they had nowhere to
go during the day: not even school. In the case of Albania, the main reason for girls going
abroad was a desire to earn a living, both for themselves and their families. Similarly, in
the situation of child soldiers, the prevalence of poverty led children to join armed
factions out of desperation.
Class discrimination as well as societal and economic instability were also identified as
noteworthy contradictions in each case. In the Indian conflict, denied access to basic
health care left children physically and mentally ill on the streets. Ethnic discrimination
was also involved in the Albanian conflict in that it was primarily girls from Roma or
Gypsy families who were recruited. In the case of child soldiers, class discrimination and
economic crises were at the centre of many recruitment surges.
In all cases, addressing the contradictions was crucial in achieving a sustainable change
in behaviors and a long-term end to violence. Tackling the root causes of the problem
was closely related to addressing attitudes. More precisely, changing attitudes helped
dispel some of the contradictions spurring on the conflict. Likewise, changing the
contradictions automatically helped alter people’s attitudes toward each other and the
conflict. As such, addressing all three aspects of the triangle simultaneously (to varying
degrees at different stages) is important when seeking a feasible and lasting solution to
the conflicts in each study.
Chapter 6: Summary of the Three Case Studies in Light of the ABC Triangle
1. Case Study #1: The Abuse of Street Children in India by the Police
The Conflicts
Attitudes
Street children:
• Plagued with a sense of instability, insecurity, and hopelessness.
• Fearful of and intimidated by the police. View the police as enemies rather than
protectors.
• Detached from their families. Feel neglected and abandoned by society.
Public: Views street children:
• In a negative light, with suspicion and fear.
• As a hindrance to daily activities and a deterrent to tourist activity as well as
economic development.
• A danger to public safety, as criminals and trouble-makers.
Police: View street children as:
• Sub-human pests, “rats”, vagrants, and thieves.
• Criminals, lacking in social skills.
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•
•
A deterrent to tourist activity and economic development and a general threat to
society.
With suspicion, thinking they may possess inside information related to local
crimes.
Government officials: View street children as:
• A social blight, in need of being eradicated through any means necessary.
Behaviors
Police:
•
•
•
•
•
Physically, verbally and emotionally abuse street children
Illegally arrest, detain, extort, kidnap, beat, torture and even murder street
children.
Arrest them for petty theft, round them up and throw them into appalling housing
institutions or jails.
Rape girls and/or force them to perform sexual acts.
Verbally abuse children by yelling at them and referring to them in a degrading
manner (calling them pests, vagrants, swearing at them, etc.).
Workers in housing institutions:
• Neglect and discriminate against children, often leaving them to die.
Government officials:
• Fail to protect children’s rights by failing to properly implement the law and
regulate it.
• Give in to bribes and succumb to widespread corruption, perpetuating its
prevalence.
Street Children:
• Engage in crimes like petty theft, prostitution, drug trafficking and illegal work.
• Engage in vagrancy and loitering, not knowing how to participate in constructive
activities or how to take care of themselves.
• Sever ties with their families and refuse to return home.
Contradictions
•
•
•
•
•
Widespread poverty
Domestic violence
Development projects which cause displacement.
Unjust/discriminatory medical system, which denies street children access to
health care.
Rapidly increasing population of street children, which surpasses the police
force’s capabilities to control them.
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•
•
•
•
•
•
A deep structure of violence in the form of patriarchy and discrimination against
the young and weak, which has lead to the formation of negative attitudes toward
abandoned children.
Widespread governmental corruption and a culture of police violence.
Children’s vulnerability: Street children are easy targets. They are young, poor,
defenceless and ignorant of their human rights. They often have no family
members or any other authorities that can advocate for them in their defence.
The lack of proper implementations and regulations of the law in India
(e.g.: vague mandates of the Indian Penal Code).
Inadequate existing laws (children are ignorant of their rights).
Lawlessness (i.e.: law enforcement officials rarely suffer any punishment for
having disobeyed the law).
Conflict Transformations Through Peaceful Means
Attitudes
Police:
•
•
•
•
Change the deep culture of the police (i.e.: change its attitudes towards street
children). Do this by exposing them to the humane side of street children.
Educate the police on the various causes for which children end up on the street
by enrolling officers in mandatory workshops.
Empower police officers by showing them that they hold significant power in
being able to work for positive change.
Change the way in which police perceive themselves in their roles. They must
shift from viewing themselves as “enemies” and “punishers” of children to
“protectors” and “guardians” of abandoned youth.
Public:
•
•
Create public awareness around helping street children through the advocacy of
humanitarian agencies and various initiatives.
Educate the public on how their negative perceptions of street children perpetuate
the problem. Do this by exposing them to the humanity of street children.
Street Children:
• Change children’s attitudes towards police.
• Render them less intimidated and fearful of the authorities and encourage them to
turn to them for help. Help them to view police as care-givers and guardians,
rather than enemies.
• Educate them on the consequences of street life and encourage them to take on
legal forms of employment.
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Behaviors
Police:
•
•
•
•
•
Offer incentives to police who follow recommendations (i.e.: who respect
children).
The Indian government should strictly implement the reforms proposed by the
National Police Commission.
Establish an agency that has a close rapport with street children in order to
investigate complaints against law-enforcement officials.
Revise and enforce all laws contributing to the problem, in particular the Juvenile
Justice Act, which should be implemented in all states of India as to not
criminalize children who are forced into working on the streets.
Encourage the international community to ensure that that the provisions included
in the Convention on the Rights of the Child be acknowledged and respected, with
failure to do so resulting in severe repercussions.
Public, Police and Street children:
• The mass media should advocate children’s rights and propagate financial
projects/institutions aimed at rescuing the children.
• Provide children with support and help meet their basic needs through the
enhancement and establishment of adequate shelters and counseling centres.
• Support family reunification of street children with their parents.
Government officials:
• Establish transparency within the Indian government and render it responsible for
its actions through increased international accountability.
Contradictions
•
•
•
•
•
•
Diminish the prevalence of poverty through the work of NGOs and other aid
organizations.
Set up agencies to provide assistance in seeking safe forms of employment, for
both adults and children (in the case that they actually have no means of attending
school, and their only other option is work). The associations could also offer
income-generating activities of their own.
Decrease unemployment and provide skills training for specific trades.
Increase the standard of living among the poorest of the poor through the work of
NGOs in collaboration with the government. Establish mandatory provisions of
basic social services.
Change the violent deep structure of caste discrimination by granting extra
protection to poorer, lower caste children who are at particular risk of ending up
on the streets. This could be enforced by the government through laws and
promoted by the works of NGOs.
NGOs and the state could set up extensive family counseling services to diminish
domestic violence.
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•
Promote family values and advocate for the strengthening of both immediate and
extended family relations through lobbies and NGO services.
2. Case Study #2: The Trafficking of Albanian Girls for Prostitution in Italy
The Conflicts
Attitudes
Girls:
•
•
•
•
•
Falsely glorified view of life in Italy (i.e.: a better life with greater opportunities).
Permanent sense of fear against their traffickers.
False sense of trust and security in their pimps. Traumatized and confused girls
falsely believe their pimps will eventually marry them and begin to act like loving
husbands.
Deem working in the sex industry as an acceptable short-term solution to their
desperate situation.
Loss of hope in the future due to lack of opportunity and poverty.
Girls’ friends and families (particularly parents):
• View the sending away of their children as the easiest way out of a miserable
financial situation, as it often appears to be the “only option”.
• Lack of understanding of the true nature of the situation. They undermine the
long-term implications of trafficking in exchange for short –term relief)
• Traditional social and cultural attitudes towards children and girls cause parents to
view their daughters as expendable. They deem their girls to hold lesser economic
value to the family situation than do their sons.
Albanian public:
• Holds negative perceptions of trafficked girls as portrayed by the media. Views
girls as prostitutes and often has little understanding toward their situations.
• Attaches a negative stigma to trafficked girls.
• Generally thinks girls are responsible for their own fates and, thus, do not deserve
empathy.
Italian public:
• Holds similar views to those of the Albanian public.
• Apathetic towards trafficked girls and their situations.
Traffickers:
• View trafficking as a lucrative business: do not concern themselves with the effect
it has on girls.
• Some see it as their only source of income and an efficient way to make a profit.
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Behaviors
Girls:
•
•
•
Engage in prostitution and other illegal activity.
Engage in high-risk activity such as willingly travelling to Italy with their
traffickers, leaving their families behind.
Do not go to school. Instead, they stay at home where they endure domestic
violence or else choose to flee with their traffickers.
Girls’ families (especially parents):
• Encourage girls to go abroad to experience “a better life in Italy”
• Discriminate against girls by denying them an education
• Pressure girls to be “useful” by going to work abroad.
• Some fathers verbally, physically and sexually abuse their daughters.
Albanian public:
• Commits acts of omission as it fails to stand up for trafficked girls.
-Does not concern itself with protecting trafficked girls or preventing their
disastrous fate.
Italian Public:
• Same as Albanian public.
Pimps:
•
•
•
Exploit girls and contract them out as prostitutes.
Torture, beat, rape, and even murder girls.
Terrorize girls with threats against their families.
Trafficking recruiters:
• Trick girls into going abroad by approaching her and her family with a false
marriage or job offer.
Smugglers, intermediaries, counterfeiters, border officials, brothel operators:
• Facilitate trafficking by engaging in illegal activities such as the production of
false work or travel papers and permitting girls to illegally exit Albania and enter
Italy.
Contradictions
•
•
•
•
Widespread poverty
Unemployment
Decreased access to basic social services.
Domestic violence (including dysfunctional families) and women’s low economic
and social status.
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•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
A deep structure of violence involving discrimination against girls and ethnic
monorities.
Prostitution in neighbouring countries.
Large-scale migration of 1995 which disturbed the urban and environmental
balance and led to a severe social and economic crisis.
Increased demand for cheap migrant labour.
A free market economy for children in the sex trade: the demand for cheap sex in
Italy is complemented by the abundant supply of easily exploitable girls in
Albania.
Italy’s enormous potential for profit in the sex business.
Growing infrastructures and trends associated with globalization, such as the
opening of international borders, improved transport and technology, increased
migration and Albania’s emergence from isolation.
Desire for a better life abroad and ignorance of the reality of life in Italy.
Lack of education (due to lack of access or fear of being recruited along the way).
Lack of sexual education (no knowledge of the risks associated with unprotected
sex).
Low education level of parents
Widespread corruption of Albanian law enforcement officials (including
migration, custom and police officers).
Failure of girls to report crimes or testify against their pimps due to fear,
humiliation and lack of trust in the authorities.
Conflict Transformations Through Peaceful Means
Attitudes
Girls and their families:
• Educate parents and their daughters on the consequences of trafficking and dispel
myths associated with “a better life abroad”.
• Change families’ negative attitudes toward girls. Dispel the belief that girls are
“expendable”.
-Do this through the promotion of gender equality across the country (especially
in rural villages) in the form of workshops and presentations.
-Organize promotion campaigns which place emphasis on girls’ unique qualities
and capabilities to show they are an asset to the economy. Within the campaigns,
stress girls’ distinct contribution to society and family life.
Albanian public:
• Change Albania’s deep culture of a prejudiced attitude towards girls through
campaigns and workshops.
• Organize public awareness campaigns to dispel the myths and misconceptions
associated with trafficking and defy the glorified view of life abroad.
• Educate the public on such issues as the girls’ atrocious working conditions in
Italy, the violence they endure, the health risks associated with their “jobs”, etc.
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•
•
•
•
•
Organize and fund a nation-wide public-awareness campaign, the goal of which
would be to address the public’s attitudes about trafficking.
Implement and promote a nation-wide media campaign including TV segments,
short documentaries and radio programs on girls who have been victims of
trafficking.
-Include case studies focusing on the girls’ personal experiences as well as
statistics related to trafficking to keep the public up-to-date.
Promote an anti-trafficking poster campaign and implement it in educational
institutions, community centres hospitals, police stations and other public places.
-Target trafficking-affected spots, such as hotels and taxi cabs.
Launch a nation-wide fundraising campaign to raise money for anti-trafficking
programs and empower the Albanian public to create change by giving them the
opportunity to contribute directly to welfare programs.
Establish guidelines for acceptable terminology in the media to prevent society
from buying into its false depictions of trafficked girls.
-An international organization should monitor the press and ensure that these
guidelines are being followed.
-NGOs could lobby for the press to set up a protocol for the types of terms that
are permissible.
Italian public:
• Organize a national awareness-raising campaign in Italy.
-Highlight the deplorable living conditions of trafficked girls to decrease apathy
and motivate the public to take action and begin scrutinizing the acts of
traffickers.
Behaviors
Girls and their families:
• Facilitate the process of legal migration for families and individuals seeking
employment or vocational training abroad.
• Establish more structured institutions on the municipal level that deal with
identifying and taking care of high-risk children.
• Create a firm support network whose goal is to reunite girls with their families.
• Provide children with a safe environment by developing a program that provides
them with a safe passage to school.
-This includes parents accompanying their children to school and families hiring
private buses to take their children to school.
-Provide a transport subsidy to communities who are interested in the project.
• School routes should be patrolled by trustworthy policemen, who can be easily
approached by children.
• Safely repatriate girls by establishing a legal framework that will enable and
facilitate the process.
• Improve coordination between NGOs both within and outside of Albania to
repatriate girls more efficiently.
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Albanian public:
• Empower people and motivate them to take positive action through publicawareness, media, poster, and fundraising campaigns.
Italian public:
• Organize a national awareness-raising campaign to empower the public and
encourage people to take action against traffickers for the protection of girls.
Traffickers, pimps and other actors involved in trafficking:
• Improve legislation that deals with traffickers and strengthen the enforcement of
existing laws.
-Take more drastic and just measures in prosecuting the perpetrators of crime and
create a more rigorous legal system which discourages individuals from
trafficking.
• While discouraging trafficking, offer alternatives to those who are involved and
whose main source of income is trafficking.
-Provide ex-traffickers with incentives to leave their life of crime, such as offering
them employment opportunities and free counselling or social services for
reintegration into society. This could be done through government programs
established to support potential or ex-traffickers.
• Restrain illegal border crossings and monitor the flow of migration more closely.
Contradictions
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Address the deep structure of ethnic discrimination still prevalent in Albania.
Promote ethnic equality through advocacy and education.
Educate the public in the highest-risk parts of the country, including remote areas
and cities where there is a high population of migrants from rural areas.
Implement structural changes in the legal system.
-Significantly improve the Albanian legal framework and establish criminal, civil
and administrative accountability for all parties involved in trafficking.
Urgently address and eliminate corruption within the judiciary.
Reinforce international and regional agreements to improve judicial collaboration
among nations and increase accountability.
While decreasing the impunity of the perpetrators of crime, offer constructive
lifestyle and employment alternatives to those involved in trafficking.
Ratify a child protection system that strictly adheres to the Convention on the
Rights of the Child.
Pass and enforce a witness protection and relocation law to further support
children’s legal rights.
Support family reunification to prevent children from being re-trafficked.
Establish more structured institutions on the municipal level that deal with
identifying and taking care of high-risk children.
Address the violent deep structure of ethnic discrimination through promotional
campaigns.
-Demonstrate that each culture is unique and an asset.
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•
•
•
•
•
-Organize cultural events which would include performances by Roma and
Gypsy groups, ethnic food, art sales, etc. to put the positive aspects of these
minorities into light.
Establish reception centres, particularly in Albania’s rural areas which would
assist girls who have been deported from Italy. Such centres would provide free
services, such as medical and psychological assistance, family tracing and
guidance in seeking long-term help.
Set up a central contact and information centre, which is easily accessible and
protected to offer guidance, family tracing and mediation for relatives of
trafficked girls.
Improve the reintegration process by gearing its focus toward long-term, rather
than short-term solutions.
-Develop elaborate reintegration programs that will follow girls’ progress even
after they leave a centre
-Establish new reintegration centres for returning girls and strengthen and expand
existing ones.
Offer more anti-trafficking training to NGOs and government structures to assist
them in sustaining their programs.
Increase coordination of donor activities and supplement the works of
humanitarian organizations through the enforcement of appropriate policies and
the provision of funding.
3. Case Study #3: Stopping the Use of Child Soldiers- A Global Perspective
The Conflicts
Attitudes
Government- supported paramilitary forces, militias and units of self-defence (a.k.a:
military leaders): Perceive children as:
• Non-threatening and easy targets as they are innocent, vulnerable, inexpensive to
support and easily trained.
• A convenient and worthwhile investment in the military.
Parents:
• Believe that involving children in war is inevitable.
• Trust that children will be better provided with basic needs in the military than
they are at home.
Children:
• View enlistment as a sole means of surviving.
• Often easily enticed by ideological propaganda.
• May possess feelings of revenge and a sense of responsibility for continuing the
efforts of their murdered loved ones.
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•
•
Joining the military gives children a sense of independence, security and taking
control over their devastating circumstances.
Are plagued with a sense of fear and helplessness as they are ignorant of their
rights.
Behaviors
Military leaders:
• Recruit children (either through violent force or persuasion)
• Physically and emotionally abuse children by brutally beating and humiliating
them.
• Sexually abuse and rape girls, sometimes claiming them as their “wives”.
• Heavily drug children to keep them fearless, brutal and emotionally detached.
• Severely punish them for petty mistakes or desertion.
• Force children to live in atrocious conditions with insufficient food and little or no
access to healthcare.
• Kill or injure children during combat.
Parents:
•
•
•
Risk their children’s lives by encouraging or simply sending them off to fight.
Perpetuate the cycle of violence by supporting military leaders through the
provision of child soldiers.
Physically, verbally and emotionally abuse their children due to poverty,
alcoholism and other related problems.
Children:
•
•
•
•
Engage in highly dangerous activities, such as using weapons on the front lines of
battle, laying and detecting mines or explosives, transporting supplies, taking part
in suicide missions and acting as spies or messengers.
Induce drugs and engage in violent activity, killing their opponents.
Fail to attend school, because they are closed down.
Abandon their families and refuse to return home.
Contradictions
•
•
•
•
•
Widespread poverty (i.e.: a gun may equal a meal ticket)
Unemployment
Lack of access to education (i.e.: closure of schools).
Vulnerability of children.
-They are easy targets due to their psychological and physical immaturity.
-Because of their lack of independence, they are easily manipulated by adults.
Children’s particular value in combat (i.e.: easily adapt to new settings, easily
trained, require less food, cost less, and rarely analyze the risks involved in war).
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•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Domestic violence: girls often join the military to run away from domestic slavery
or forced marriage or to flee the abuse they endure at home, such as being beaten
by their fathers.
The displacement of children from their homes and separation from their families,
leaving them orphaned in the streets and attractive recruits for guerrilla groups.
Insufficient opportunity for daily activities, leading to boredom. This lack of
activities is largely due to the closure of schools.
Advancement in arms technology (weapons are now small and light enough for
children to carry)
Shortage of manpower, population control and class discrimination
High degree of militarization in society.
Community violence and political instability.
Personal experiences of violence.
Social and economic disparity.
Conflict Transformations Through Peaceful Means
Attitudes
Military leaders:
• Provide military leaders with evidence that using young soldiers is
disadvantageous to their military strategies. Do this through value advocacy.
Parents:
• Encourage parents to see the negative consequences of children’s involvement in
conflict and help them overcome the preconceived notion that the use of child
soldiers is inevitable and that the dangers are overshadowed by the pressing
nature of the conflict’s root causes. Do this through awareness-raising and
education campaigns.
• Change the importance that some adults place on involving youth in hostilities as
a way of responding to such issues. Do this through value advocacy.
• Spread ethical principles to communities through lobbies and education
campaigns.
Children:
• Empower children by reinforcing their feelings of security, competence and
strength. Do this by ending their oppression and improving their personal security
• Render children’s environments safer and more peaceful by strengthening
international monitoring to increase security in conflict zones and other affected
areas (e.g.: refugee camps). Do this to increase children’s subjective perceptions
of their level of safety, preventing them from having to choose the military as an
escape.
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Behaviours
Military leaders:
• Demobilize and disarm child soldiers.
• Reduce forced recruitment by organizing grass-roots interventions or movements
that pressure local governments into stopping the recruitment of children.
• Organize mass protests against the use of child soldiers like the Gulu Walk
International March for Peace.
• Condemn child soldier use in the media to pressure armed groups into following
international recruitment standards.
• Hold local military units accountable for any harm inflicted on youth refusing
conscription.
Children and their families:
• Offer children alternate activities to joining the military.
-Schools should continue to operate and recreational activities should be
provided.
• Adjust and implement laws aimed at fulfilling children’s basic human needs.
• Universalize the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child
by implementing it in all affected countries.
• Emphasize children’s rights both during and post-violence. In particular, protect
the basic human rights of child refugees, who are at a higher risk of recruitment.
• Create special needs and education programs for affected children.
• Offer legal assistance to families wanting to be released from military duty and to
minors serving armed factions who are legally exempt from service.
Contradictions
•
•
•
•
•
Model the works of the indigenous NGO created in the Solola region of
Guatemala.
-Hold open meeting in villages where recruitment is high and encourage
people to sign petitions which condemn conscription, propose social service as an
alternative to military duty and call for an end to the intimidation and punishment
of indigenous people who refuse the draft.
Raise awareness regarding why particular armed factions exist and how they
abuse recruits’ human rights.
-Do this through the use of pamphlets, community-based education campaigns,
marches and petitions to administrative authorities.
Strengthen and universalize ethnic minority rights by translating countries’
constitutions into indigenous languages and distributing the contents to villages.
Provide seminars on human rights for community leaders of villages, educating
and supporting individuals in actively defending their civil and political rights.
Raise community awareness of the national and international laws regulating the
minimum recruitment age. Do this through the initiation of mass education
campaigns targeting both affected and non-affected communities.
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•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Diminish and eventually eliminate factors causing forced recruitment, such as
population control and social injustice (including ethnic, racial and class
discrimination).
-Do this through advocacy campaigns and by organizing grass-roots interventions
or movements that pressure local governments into stopping the recruitment of
children.
Local NGOs, religious associations and civil society leaders should establish
ethical frameworks (including local customs, values and traditions) that deem the
use of child soldiers unacceptable.
Donors could place sanctions on those who fail to adhere to international law
through the suspension of military assistance or weapons.
Campaigns exposing the use of child soldiers could be carried out in countries
inhabited by expatriate support groups of the armed group at hand.
Carry out advocacy in countries where tensions are low and which have a strong
influence on the developments of the UN in afflicted areas.
Strengthen the extended family and community through material and emotional
means.
-This includes offering financial support (to ensure that the basic needs of families
are met), employment opportunities, counselling services and support groups.
Appropriately and effectively reintegrate children into society.
-New reintegration programs must be set up and existing ones must be
strengthened to promote health and nutrition, as well as psychosocial wellness and
education.
Strengthen assistance programs by providing returning soldiers with educational
and vocational opportunities.
-Help ex-combatants readapt to civilian life and increase their families’ economic
security, preventing them from rejoining armed units.
Promote safe conditions in refugee camps (e.g.: strategically setting them up far
enough from borders so as to defend refugee children against recruitment.
Conclusion
The struggle for protecting children’s human rights and fulfilling their basic human needs
is as great as ever. The problems discussed in this paper are serious and complex. Each
conflict is huge in scope and requires great sensitivity, both cultural and political. While
the devastation suffered by countless children around the world does not appear to be
declining and the obstacles in assisting them are endless, there certainly is hope. Tackling
the very complicated issues associated with children’s rights abuses is possible- as
demonstrated in this paper- with the appropriate peace building tools and with the
international community’s commitment to addressing such problems as a matter of
urgency.
Unfortunately, many governments as well as civil societies avert their gaze when it
comes to the many, unthinkable atrocities committed against children. Such issues as the
abuse of street children by police, the trafficking of girls for prostitution and the use of
86
children as soldiers in war continue to prevail in violent societies, even though many
countries have signed agreements related to, and including the Convention on the Rights
of the Child. While these sorts of agreements are designed to protect children from harm
and guarantee the fulfillment of their basic needs, abominations against children’s
liberties continue to occur. This is because, too often, the law is not properly
implemented and the structures within societies are not oriented around securing
children’s lives, both present and future, nor are they geared toward providing them with
peaceful environments. Deep cultures and structures of violence are at the root of many
conflicts involving children and pose significant roadblocks in attempts to work for
peace. Consequently, they must be uprooted at the source to enable positive and lasting
change to take place.
One way of coming up with possible solutions to the abuses inflicted on children in
violent societies is by applying the ABC Conflict Triangle, derived from the Transcend
method of peace building. This paper attempted to demonstrate the usefulness of the
ABC model by applying it to three distinct problems. Two of the case studies involving
children’s rights abuses were region-specific, while the third addressed a conflict on a
global scale. This was done to demonstrate that the ABC triangle can be equally applied
to national as well as international conflicts involving children’s rights abuses. In other
words, it is not bound to the size of the conflict nor to the number of actors involved. The
three issues were illustrated in a comparative light to determine in what ways the ABC
triangle applied to each case study. In all cases, the ABC model for transcending conflict
proved valuable in achieving a sustainable solution, grounded in a framework of peace.
Its function was to address attitudes, behaviors and contradictions present in each conflict
in order to decrease, or eliminate the risk factors associated with each problem. The paper
drew upon concrete examples to determine what is currently (and has already been done)
in regards to improving children’s lives and employed the ABC model to provide further
recommendations. While there were slight differences in the way the ABC triangle was
utilized in each conflict, on the whole, it proved universal in its effectiveness and
applicability. Using this theoretical peace building model is helpful in assisting children
in need, yet it is important not to stop at it as a “final” and “only” means toward a
solution. While coming up with practical answers, it is crucial to remain mindful of the
fact that more can always be done. We must not stop at feeling satisfied with our
answers. We must continue to explore the issues, share information and pull together
lessons in order to maintain peace.
The hope is that this paper will add to the multitude of other reports in an effort to raise
awareness about the plight of children around the world. It is an attempt to answer to the
young girl’s plea quoted in the beginning of the paper, who begs us to “do [our] best to
tell the world what is happening to [them], the children, so that other children don’t have
to pass through this violence.”
87
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