International Law's Failure to Protect Child Soldiers: An Analysis

This essay delves into the critical issue of child soldiers in armed conflicts, defining them as individuals under 18 involved in armed forces. It examines the reasons behind their recruitment, including poverty, displacement, peer pressure, and coercion by armed groups, while highlighting instances of abduction and exploitation. The essay then analyzes the international legal framework designed to protect child soldiers, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols, the Optional Protocol to the CRC, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and the ILO Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention. It argues that despite these legal instruments, international law is inadequate in providing comprehensive protection for child soldiers, underscoring the need for stronger enforcement and addressing the root causes of child soldier recruitment.

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Child Soldiers in Armed Conflict: The Inadequacy of International Law to Protect Against
Recruitment of Child Soldiers
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Introduction
A child soldier can be defined as any person that is below the age of 18 years and is part
of any armed force, be it regular or irregular (Brocklehurst, 2009). The definition of the child
soldiers was expanded by the Cape Town principles to include not only those who fight but also
those who are recruited to the armed forces to serve in capacities such as messengers, porters,
and cooks. This definition includes both the children who voluntarily join the armed forces and
those who are recruited forcefully. Arguably, the first written account of the concept of child
soldiers took place in 1032 BC when a boy by the name David managed to kill an adult soldier
named Goliath. Since then, other numerous accounts of child soldiers have been written. For
instance, there are written accounts of child soldiers during the American civil war where the
nobility and sacrifice of young boys in battle was highly celebrated. Further, the non-state actors
have recently been releasing print and video propaganda to celebrate and show child soldiers
being trained in basic infantry tactics and executing captives. ISIS has also given an account
about its activities of training child soldiers in schools. All over the world, the concept of child
soldiers has become a very serious issue. According to report by the United Nations, it is
estimated that the number of child soldiers who are involved in armed conflict, encompassing
children as young as 9 years, is roughly 300,000. Whereas Africa is the country that is most
critically affected by this issue of child soldiers, countries in Europe, Asia, Middle East, and
parts of Latin America have also been affected by this issue. This paper argues that whereas
involving children in war is a grave violation of child rights and humanitarian law and that there
should be severe punishment for those found guilty of recruiting children to armed forces, the
international law as it exists currently is inadequate to protect child soldiers.
The Recruitment of Child Soldiers and the Reasons for their Recruitment

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In interrogating the issue of child soldiers, it is important to understand why children find
themselves in armed forces in the first place despite it being illegal to recruit child soldiers under
the international law. Primarily, it is reported that when children are exposed to war and at times
trapped in the war zones and also have their families torn apart as a result of, it is always easy for
the armed forces to draw them into fighting. These children are always forced to witness
atrocities or at times they are forced to perpetrate those atrocities even, sadly, against their own
families (Eichstaedt, 2009). There are various factors that contribute to these children being
recruited into the armed forces. Whereas some actively seek to be involved in armed groups or
armed forces, others are always abducted in a brutal way and forced to serve as soldiers and
carry out support tasks.
It has been argued that the risk of children being recruited in armed forces in many
countries that are at war is high due to the factors such as extreme poverty, street violence, and
the absence of support structures. The children who are more vulnerable to being recruited are
those are not with their parents as a result of their parents having died or displaced as a result of
war. To these children, being cut off from their families tend to leave them will a lot of
uncertainty about their future and about the whereabouts of their families. In situations like that,
these children always find it easy to join armed forces or armed groups as their only means to
survival and to others as the only way they have to acquire some sort of protection or social
status. Another reason why other children happen to join armed forces is due to the need to be
among their peers. However, to some, they are always educated and indoctrinated and to them,
joining the armed forces is always due to the need to fight for a cause.
It has also been reported that in some instances, children join the armed forces due to
poverty and employment. A study in Columbia revealed that poverty, unemployment, and

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vengeance were the main reasons why children voluntarily joined the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC) (Sanin, 2010). In other circumstances, and particularly in the
Middle East, parents always give out their children voluntarily to ISIS. At times, they even sell
their children to armed forces. There were reports in 2009 which showed that then leader of the
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), known as Baitullah Mehsud, used to buy children soldiers
between the ages of seven and sixteen and making them serve as suicide bombers against the
Afghan, Pakistani, and US targets. In countries like the Philippines, the Moro Islamic Liberation
Front (MILF) always encourages families to have their children join them in the armed forces.
In some occasions, the armed forces tend to forcefully recruit the children to join them.
These armed forces always do this as a way of terrorizing or blackmailing the civilians. In
recruiting them into the armed forces, these armed forces always use the children either as spies,
messengers, sexual slaves, or domestic servants. Among the main reason why the armed forces
recruit children to join them is because they see children as people who are easy to manipulate,
do not fully understand the dangers of war, and have not properly developed to be able to
comprehend what is right and wrong. Some armed forces always recruit these children and arm
them with lethal weapons or ply them with drugs so that they can incite them to become violent
and fearless or make them remain dependent on the armed forces.
In a study conducted on the child soldiers during the Rwanda genocide, it was established
that one of the main reason children were recruited to fight was because they were viewed as
expendable and replaceable people who are cheap to maintain. Additionally, the armed forces
viewed children to have the ability of easily accepting dangerous tasks since their undeveloped
psychological ability denies them an opportunity to scrutinize the tasks that are delegated to
them. Further, the armed forces in the Rwandan genocide viewed children as being easily

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influenced and controlled due to the fact that they are at a stage of life where they depend on
being protected and guided. Thus, if their parents and family are not around as a result of being
displaced or killed, then they happen to transfer that loyalty to other adults.
There are other places where it is reported that children are made to join the armed forces
forcefully through abduction. One armed force that is notorious for this is the Ugandan Lord’s
Resistance Army (LRA). In 2008, a coalition to stop the Use of Child Soldiers released a Global
Report on Child Soldiers which showed that since the 1980s, the LRA has managed to abduct
over 25,000 children and initiated them to be part of it (Rodriguez, 2009). These children always
played an active role during hostile activities where they were forced to participate in combat
and carry out raids, loot and burn down houses, and even kill and mutilate other child soldiers.
Another body that is known to use abduction is the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) of Sierra
Leone.
The International Legal Framework in the Area of Child Soldiers
The relevance of the international legal regime governing the issue of child soldiers is
that it is supposed to address the issue of recruiting child soldiers into armed groups and armed
forces. Primarily, the definition of a child is provided for in the Convention on the Rights of the
Child (CRC). Having come into force in 1990, the CRC is a binding international treaty which
recognizes the human rights of children during the time of peace and during the period of armed
conflict. This convention boasts of being the most ratified convention in the history of the United
Nations. Under the CRC, the definition of a child that is given is that a child is every human
being under the age of 18 years. Further, the CRC proceeds to state that this definition shall not
apply in jurisdictions where the child is said to have attained the age of majority earlier. As it

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shall be seen later, this definition of a child is among the inadequacies of international law in
protecting child soldiers.
There are other international instruments which have undertaken to provide the definition
of a child soldier. Chief among these instruments are the 1977 Additional Protocols to the
Geneva Conventions (ICRC, 1977). The International Humanitarian Law, which regulates armed
conflicts and endeavors to limits its effects, contains the four 1949 Geneva Conventions and their
Additional Protocols as its core. The significance of these International Humanitarian Law
conventions is that they were the first to address the issue of children during armed conflict.
Under Additional protocol I which governs international armed conflict, it is established that
parties to a conflict should take all the necessary measures to make sure that children who are
under fifteen years of age are not recruited to fight or participate directly in hostilities. Under
Additional Protocol II, it is provided that children who are below 15 years should not be
recruited in armed forces and should also not participate in hostilities.
The other important instrument that addresses the issue of child soldiers is the
Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Ever since its enactment, this instrument is known
for its role in protecting children based on their age. Under article 38(2), it requires state parties
to take all the necessary action to make sure that anyone below the age of 15 years does not take
part in direct hostilities. It proceeds to state under article 38(3) that state parties shall desist from
recruiting anyone below the age of 15 years into their armed forces and that when recruiting
individuals who have reached the age of 15 years but are yet to get to 18 years, state parties
should give the oldest a priority over the others.
Under the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the
involvement of children in armed conflict, it is provided under article 1 that signatory members

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should take all necessary steps to make sure that members of their armed forces who are yet to
reach eighteen years do not get to be involved directly in hostilities (Assembly, 2000). The
optional protocol proceeds to state under article 2 that countries should make sure that there is no
compulsory recruitment into their armed forces for persons that are yet to reach the age of 18.
The optional protocol further proceeds to state that armed groups which are distinct from the
state’s armed forces should not recruit persons that are yet to attain the age of 18 years or use
them in hostilities. To further ensure this does not happen, the optional protocol, under article 4,
calls on states to adopt legal measures such as criminalizing the practice of recruiting persons
that are yet to reach eighteen years or using them in hostilities.
The other legal instrument that governs the issue of recruitment of child soldiers is the
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Under Article 8 of the statute, it is a war crime
to enlist or forcefully recruit children that are below the age of 15 years into armed forces or
armed groups in all categories of armed conflict.
Under the ILO Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention 182, it is provided that states are
under an obligation to take appropriate measures to prohibit and eliminate the worst forms of
child labor. In the convention the forced and compulsory recruitment of children into armed
conflict falls under the worst forms of child labor. The other legal instrument that protect
children from being recruited into armed forces is the Paris Commitments and Principles.
Finally, various UN Security Council Resolutions such as resolution 1261 0f 199 and resolution
1882 of 2009 have condemned the recruitment and the use of children in hostilities. However,
these instruments have done little to deal with the issue of child soldiers.
The Inadequacy of the International Law to Protect Child Soldiers

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It has been argued that there is no single source of international law of the child. What
this means is that the laws of the child have to be looked for in specific and general treaties such
as in the human rights law and the International Humanitarian Law. The consequence of lacking
an international law of the child means that the existing legal standards are inadequate when it
comes to providing solutions to the problem of child soldiers. Looking at the rights of child
soldiers that have been captured in the existing international laws, it is evident that they are
under-specified and a person has to look through numerous references before they can establish
an applicable law.
One inadequacy lies with the CRC and its definition of who a child is. Despite the fact
that many players took part in establishing the standards set in it, there are numerous
inconsistencies in the CRC clauses that relate to children in armed conflict. As stated earlier, the
CRC defines a child as anyone below 18 years but goes further to state that countries have the
freedom to set the age of majority. The effect of this definition is that countries have been given
an express permission to vary the definition and determine in their jurisdictions how old a child
is considered to be. Thus, it is easy for nations to place the age of the majority below 18 years.
The consequence of this is that children end up being treated differently depending on the
country where they live in. Granted, it was this freedom given to countries to set the age for the
majority that may have made them ratify CRC. However, the freedom has rendered the CRC
inadequate when it comes to protecting the children from being recruited into armed forces and
armed groups.
Additionally, these treaties that are aimed to defend the rights of child soldiers as simply
used as legal standards on the protection of the rights of the children and hence are inadequate
when they are on their own. One nature of treaties is that they are self-reporting. This means that

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states are tasked with the responsibility of reporting on the national legislations they have made
in order to achieve compliance with specific provisions of the treaty. It has been argued that self-
reporting is one of the weakest enforcement forms and countries are likely to tolerate the
recruitment of child soldiers without the international community knowing.
It is also argued that when treaties that protect the right of children become acceptable
standard of practice worldwide and thus become part of the international customary law, it tends
to apply to all states, including the ones that did not ratify it. However, whereas customary law
affects all states, non-governmental entities like opposition groups and guerilla are not affected
by it. In an era where most of the child soldier recruitment is done by non-governmental groups
like the Lord Resistance Army in Uganda, it is hard for such groups to be dealt with legally by
the international community. This further adds to the inadequacy of international law to protect
children against being recruited into the armed forces or the armed groups.
Conclusion
As stated earlier, the number of child soldiers being engaged in different battles all over
the world is approximately 300,000. These huge number of children tend to live under constant
fear of being trapped in an ambush, landmines, or gunfire. Out of the total number of the children
soldiers, a third of them are girls and despite being used in the same way as boys, they are often
used as sex slaves and others are taken by commanders to be their wives. Given what children
who are recruited into the armed forces go through, it is evident that children should have no
place in war. Indeed, there are numerous international laws that have undertaken to address the
issue and protect these children. However, this paper notes that the international legal framework
is inadequate to protect them.

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References
Assembly, U. G. (2000). Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the
Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict. UN Document No. A/RES/54/263.
Brocklehurst, H. (2009). Childhood in conflict: Can the real child soldier please stand up. Ethics,
Law and Society, 4(259), 259-270.
Eichstaedt, P. (2009). First kill your family: Child soldiers of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance
Army. Chicago Review Press.
ICRC. (1977). 1949 Conventions & 1977 Protocols: International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC)
Rodríquez, C. (2009). Tall grass: Stories of suffering and peace in northern Uganda. Fountain
Publishers.
Sanin, F. G. (2010). Organizing minors: The case of Colombia. Child soldiers in the age of
fractured states, 121-142.