CHILD'S PLAY


Psychological effects of participating in militancy on children


Conflict has a psychological effect on children who are caught up in it as victims and witnesses. But when children are active participants in violent conflict, such as militancy, the psychosocial consequences can be much more severe. Studies have found that former


child militants suffer a range of post- traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, particularly guilt over acts they may have carried out. Their moral development is often stunted and they also may become dominated by a fear of people in superior positions and an inability to control aggressive impulses, leading to further involvement in violence. Children who were sexually exploited whilst in militant groups will also have lost basic concepts of trust and healthy adult relationships. A study by Palestinian psychiatrists


in 1995, on the psychological effects of the First Intifada (1987-1993) on Palestinian youths, found that the more traumatic experiences a child had endured, and the more they participated in the Intifada, the more problems they had with neuroticism, self-esteem, memory, concentration and attention. Furthermore, the greater their experience of trauma, the more likely they were to participate in the Intifada. In 1996 Mozambique’s former First


Lady and Education Minister, and wife of former South African President Nelson Mandela, Graca Machel, commissioned a study for the United Nations on child soldiers and militants. Key findings were that recruitment is either coercive at best or abusive at worst and that a child’s involvement in military conflict can never be entirely voluntary. Psychologists Mendelsohn and Straker in a 1998 study stated that children may feel they have no choice but to take part in conflict in order to gain employment, self-esteem, to exact revenge for the death of relatives or just


AUGUST 2010


to survive. The Machel study found that children need to be reinstated into their communities as children, not tarnished with the label of terrorist, militant or soldier, and that they need to be given assistance to develop or redevelop pro- social attitudes and behaviour. The report also found that family and community based psychosocial recovery programmes were more effective than clinical approaches, and that local religious and cultural methods should be taken into account.


Countering the phenomenon


In 1977, the Geneva Convention (1949) adopted Protocol I, relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts, in which it stated that parties to a conflict should take all feasible measures to ensure that children who have not reached the age of 15 do not take a direct part in hostilities. In 1989, 140 countries signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the First Optional Protocol of which restricts the involvement of children in military conflict. In 1998 the ICC, under the Rome Statute, adopted an article designating the conscription and enlisting of children under the age of 15 into a national armed force or using them to actively participate in conflict, as a war crime. Although the age of majority varies between nation states, international law defines anyone under the age of 18 as a child. The issue with attempts to counter child militancy in law is that conventions and statutes such as the aforementioned relate mainly to the armed forces of a sovereign state, not militant groups. Because militant and terrorist groups are proscribed in the laws of practically every nation, recruiting children into such groups needs no law or convention nationally or internationally to ban it because it is illegal in the first place. When leaders of such groups are indicted in absentia or captured and, assuming they were taken alive, brought before the courts, the higher offences they are charged with usually take precedence over their


use of minors. The Coalition to Stop the Use of


Child Soldiers was formed in 1998 by international human rights and humanitarian organisations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Save the Children Alliance, and maintains links with the UN and UNICEF in particular. Through advocacy and monitoring, the Coalition aims to stop the use of child soldiers in armed conflict and to promote the adherence to international legal standards concerning minors by both governmental and non-governmental groups and urges and promotes the rehabilitation - by governments and NGOs - of former child militants back into their communities. Whilst programmes for the


rehabilitation of former child militants are in place in some countries, they are non-existent in others, and not every former child militant has access to such help. And whether they are able to return to their communities and welcomed back is dependent upon a number of factors, including the nature of their actions and whether they attacked members of that community whilst active in the group.


Conclusion


As many long-running conflicts have reached their end game, as in the case of Sri Lanka and Nepal, or are nearing the end, as in the case of Colombia, with its left-wing paramilitary groups’ – namely the FARC – numbers having been dramatically reduced by military offensives, thousands of children, who were robbed of their childhood have been left to pick up the pieces of their lives, the majority without any rehabilitation. And many more armed struggles are continuing with no end in sight, fuelled in part by ‘armies’ of young recruits, many of whom willingly or unwillingly are prepared to die for their ‘cause.’ Wherever poverty, war and a lack of basic rights – education, healthcare, dignity – flourish, propaganda, forced recruitment and often little alternative will continue to ensure the phenomenon of child militants continues.


vii CounterTerrorGazette

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