NCJ Number
182840
Editor(s)
Elizabeth Bennett
Date Published
December 1998
Length
67 pages
Annotation
This monograph discusses using children in armed conflict in Africa and criminalizing the recruitment of child soldiers.
Abstract
The exploitation of children for military purposes is becoming pervasive, as the many civil wars in Africa have shown. For example, of the 60,000 combatants in Liberia’s civil war, about 10 percent were children. Not only are young people ill-equipped to cope with the physical dangers they encounter, but their immaturity poses a threat to the safety of other combatants. In addition, children taken from their families and communities are deprived of the normal processes of socialization and education and, when peace comes, there is little hope of veterans being successfully reintegrated into society. The child brutalized in its formative years is primed to perpetuate a cycle of killing and lawlessness. An article that examines whether using children in armed conflict is a legitimate African tradition includes chapters on Culture, Tradition and Human Rights; Age Grades and Age Sets; Military Action and Socio-Political Structures; Age Sets in the Zulu Kingdom; Age Sets Under Colonial Rule; The Definition of Childhood; and The Consequences of Violating Children’s Rights. An article on Criminalizing the Recruitment of Child Soldiers includes the following discussions: The Nature of the Problem; Existing Protections Under Humanitarian Law; International Human Rights Law; and Problems of Enforcement. Notes