The Children of War

An international effort to get kids out of conflict has local ties

The fact that there are children all over the world being used as weapons of war is a difficult thing to come to terms with. While there are no hard numbers (this is not exactly a sector of society that can stand up and be counted), it’s estimated that about 300,000 kids under the age of 18—and as young as eight—are used in direct combat by government forces or armed rebel groups. The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soliders states that between 2004 and 2007, nine governments around the world—including the United Kingdom—used children under the age of 18 in armed conflict. When you factor in non-governmental groups recruiting children, that number balloons to 19.

“It’s an issue that we tend to try to not hear about,” says retired lieutenant-general and Canadian senator Roméo Dallaire. “The fact that children are being used is shocking, but we tend to put it in the ‘not possible’ side of our brain and then change the channel.”

After witnessing the use of child soldiers firsthand during his time as the head of the failed U.N. mission in Rwanda before and during the country’s horrific 1994 genocide that saw at least 800,000 civilians slaughtered in a period of 100 days—an experience he has documented in his Governor General Award-winning book, Shake Hands with the Devil—Dallaire has chosen to make it his personal mission to help people not only open their eyes to these disturbing facts, but to also take steps to prevent it from happening in the first place. One such step is the Child Soldier Initiative, a project spearheaded by Dallaire in partnership with groups like the NGO Search for Common Ground and the University of Victoria. The initiative’s goal is to design a toolkit that can be used by on-the-ground aid workers helping to rehabilitate child soldiers as well as international leaders creating legislation to stop the use of children in conflict.

“What’s very much needed is a kind of a three-pronged approach where we have a coordinated effort at the international level, an effort with regard to developing protocols and approaches at the military level and a coordinated effort at the on-the-ground, humanitarian level, where we join up forces and find ways to work,” says Sibylle Artz, one of the Child Soldier Initiative researchers and a a professor at UVic’s School of Child and Youth Care. “To do that, we have to have collaboration, coordination and agreement at all levels.”

Part of UVic’s role in the project, says Artz, is being a member of the coordinating committee, a group of representatives with expertise in international, military and on-the-ground issues designed to keep the project focused. “Because it’s such an enormous challenge and it requires a political, strategic and proactive based-in-the-front-line humanitarian approach, those three areas need to intersect constantly in order to augment each other and support each other,” she says. “That’s why the coordinating role is such a privilege, because we can inform each other across those three sectors.”

Meeting conflict head on

The Child Soldier Initiative is well on its way to completion; the toolkit is slated to be finished in an interim format by March 2009, says Dallaire, and then it will be field-tested in Africa. “We’re going to countries where children have been used or are still used and test some of the stuff out,” he says. “Then we’re going to actually use a couple of [U.N.] missions and have them change their procedures and follow what we’re proposing and see, at the end of that year, how effective it is and what changes we have to do and then go with the final instrument.”

Artz says this phase is crucial to developing a program that is effective. “None of this is going to be workable if we don’t get input from the people who work in the communities in which the child soldiers are being demobilized and reintegrated, and if we are not making sense in what we suggest to the child soldiers themselves,” she says. “This is where the most important feedback will be gathered—from the people who were involved.”

Much work has been done to ensure the right kinds of people will be used in this phase of the project, says Artz; they’ve made sure that the interviewers have had previous experience working in African countries and are closer in age to the people they’ll be interviewing, as research shows people are more responsive to someone who they feel is a peer. And while what exactly that means is yet to be determined, Artz says the project is dedicated to making sure the skills stay in the country.

“We don’t want to simply be these nice professors coming in, asking a few questions and flying out,” she says. “We need to continue to develop the capacity of the people who live in the communities in the countries where these conflicts are happening so they can take charge.”

Artz, whose background is in research related to youth and aggression—particularly girls, who make up a surprising 40 percent of all child soldiers—says that the program will also have implications here in Canada.

“We forget that we are a country that welcomes refugees and that many of the people we welcome have needs that are a result of having come from conflict zones. We need to understand that better and, based on the research I’ve done so far, we definitely could be doing a far better job with regard to integrating people who come from war zones,” she says. “We need to understand that when you suffer from the kind of post-traumatic stress that they’ve suffered from, you can’t just plunk them in an apartment somewhere.”

While the initiative is designed to be flexible and adaptable to many situations, it’s important to think of it as a cohesive project, says Marie Hoskins, another researcher at UVic. “This child-soldier initiative is an effort to develop a multi-system, multi-layered approach,” she says. “It will have to be adapted for each particular situation, but it’s the first time that a group of people from various disciplines and various backgrounds in terms of knowledge and experience, have come together to work on an integrated, multi-level, multi-systemic approach to alleviating this issue.”

Much of the success of this watershed project has to do with having a high-profile person like Dallaire at the forefront.

“He’s an amazing leader and motivator,” says Hoskins. “It’s hard when you’re taking on a project of this magnitude to sustain your enthusiasm and your optimism, and he’s able to instill that kind of enthusiasm in the coordinating team.”

“It’s because the general can get people to listen that this thing is developing in the way that it’s developing,” says Artz. “It’s wonderful that he’s decided to take this up because he’s able to communicate with people and gain entry where it’s very difficult to do that.”

Indeed, the issue is one that seems to be close to Dallaire’s heart. Since completing Shake Hands with the Devil, which has subsequently been made into both a documentary and a feature film, the general has spent a significant amount of time raising funds and awareness about child soldiers and is planning to publish a book on the subject in 2010.

“Having lived through the experience of facing children with AK47s who were indoctrinated and drugged up and seeing the effects of them killing and maiming and slaughtering, seeing the effects on the girls being raped and then used as sex slaves and bush wives and having children at 14 being used in all facets of conflict, that became a dominant theme for me,” he says. “After I finished writing my book, I wanted to pursue that.”

He also is a strong believer in the power of celebrity. “I’m for more and more of the entertainment world to become more socially involved. They are part of our culture and they have enormous influence and I think they have a responsibility to be a useful instrument in advancing things like human rights and children,” he says. “Paul McCartney is a great guy, but going after seals is a horrible waste of an enormous amount of influential power.”

Fighting the good fight

The power of celebrity will very much be at work this weekend when Dallaire and acclaimed Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn (both recipients of honourary degrees from UVic) take the stage for Child Soldiers No More, a benefit for the Child Soldiers Initiative.

“During the first part, I am going to talk to them about Canada, the international community and where we are in that regard and the plight of children being used as weapons of war in conflict and why we should be very active in eradicating the use of children,” says Dallaire of the event. “Later on, during Bruce’s show, I’m going to be reading from my book a passage that speaks about child soldiers, with him playing music.”

Hoskins and Artz say a significant amount of money—over $1 million—needs to be raised to send people to Africa to begin field-testing the initiative. While it’s a big chunk of change, both the researchers and Dallaire remain optimistic.

“There are international donors who are in discussions right now,” says Artz. “This isn’t a pie-in-the-sky hope, this is a real thing.”

“We’re the little city that could, almost,” says Hoskins. “Here we are—little Victoria, on an island, far away from Africa. New York, Washington, some of the bigger cities, they’re used to these kinds of initiatives and here we are actually having an incredibly successful event about to happen where money is going to be raised and awareness is going to be greatly increased.”

While the fundraiser will likely not hit the million-dollar mark on its own, the awareness created by the high-profile event will go a long way toward attracting attention and getting more donations.

“I hope it’s a catalyst for other campuses to take on human rights and international affairs, including nuclear disarmament and things like that,” says Dallaire. “I think the University of Victoria has demonstrated a lot of progressive thinking in doing something like this. I think the environment, Darfur, human rights, child soldiers—all those things are subjects that campuses and students should be actively involved in. So I think the University of Victoria is demonstrating itself to be quite progressive.”

In a world where the use of children in armed conflicts holds steady despite international efforts, the optimism of the people involved in the Child Solider Initiative is inspiring—and infectious.

“It’s the only response that is possible if you want change,” says Artz of her and Hoskins’ enthusiasm.

Perhaps it is best summed up by a man who has been there and faced the horrors of children in conflict—and subsequently had to battle many demons before embarking on the path he has. “It’s a fight,” says Dallaire. “And the fight is worthwhile.” M

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Child Soldiers No More
(featuring Bruce Cockburn and Roméo Dallaire)
7:30pm Saturday, October 4
University Centre Auditorium, UVic
Tickets $81.50 • 250-721-8480

 

Child soldier facts

• Children were actively involved in armed conflict in government forces or non-state armed groups in 19 countries or territories between April 2004 and October 2007. These were: Afghanistan, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, the DRC, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Thailand and Uganda.

• The number of governments that used children in armed conflict only marginally declined—down from 10 in the period 2001-2004 to nine in 2004-2007.

• In Myanmar, boys below the age of 18 continued to be forcibly recruited into the army in large numbers and were used in active combat as well as other roles. Children also took direct part in hostilities in government armed forces in Chad, the DRC, Somalia, Sudan/Southern Sudan and Uganda. In addition, there were reports that the Yemeni armed forces used children in fighting against a militia in early 2007. The Israeli defence forces used Palestinian children as human shields on several occasions. A number of under-18s were deployed to Iraq by the British armed forces between 2003 and 2005, although most were removed from the theatre of war within a week of their arrival.

Taken from The Child Soldier Global Report 2008, published by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. View the full report at childsoldiersglobalreport.org