Children of War! It never STOPS!

What do children dream of? … I believe, they dream of becoming a doctor, a policeman/ woman, an astronaut, a soldier, perhaps, too….

In some countries, the counties at war, this peculiar dream of being a soldier is a reality children have to face with. In modern highly developed world where paternity is an utmost important issue, a vulnerable child stays a child. Sadly in many parts of the world a child is the child that kills. This unprecedented notion is still popular, it is a cheap tool of leading a war, the most cruel of all. Neither can it be underestimated or ignored. It exists and must be got rig of … by all means … yet, the world learnt it is not that simple.

The children soldiers were wide-spread since the image of war emerged, it was not a common procedure to recruit a child to kill; an innocent, not fully comprehensive young, inexperienced life. It was always a successful recruitment. The USSR, Cambodia, Japan, China, Yugoslavia, Africa, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, The United Arab Emirates used children as a tool to win a war, to refill the number of missing soldiers to go on with a fight. Century after century it became a fact. And, it has never been be fully stopped.

A refugee camp in Turnaj which was situated on the border between Bosnia and Croatia was supervised by Polish United Nations Peacekeeping Units, one of the Polish UN soldiers witnessed and prevented, eventually, a repetitive attempt of forceful recruitment. This camp was a place where young boys and men were regularly taken to fight;  a Polish UN Peacekeeper noticed a woman, she was walking directly toward him, in a hear beat she collapsed as if she fainted in death, yet, she was not dead, she was weak and out of her strength, grieved in despair, her husband and sons, including the youngest one were taken to fight the war, that war without the end, a lost cause. Months of searching the country through and through,  got nothing but lost hope, futile efforts of finding anyone alive.

The forces of Fikret Abdic regularly made recruitment from that particular camp, Adbic was eventually halted, yet, the beginning was horrid and frightful for the camp’s citizens. Abdic a warlord led and fought a war in northern Bosnia. Polish soldiers saw mothers and sister in sorrow; the lost they experienced was irreversible.

Graca Michael an author of the United Nations Report on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children has estimated that in 1995 and 1996 250,000 children were serving either in government armies or in opposition forces, truly: “(…) it one of the most alarming trends in armed conflicts (…)”.

In 1998 another decision to cut the procedure off emerged; The Rome Statute for an International Criminal Court lists as a war crime conscription or enlistment of children under the age of fifteen into a state’s armed forces or using them to participate actively in hostilities.

Human rights law addresses this problem as a very serious issue – using children in armed conflicts.  The 1998 UNCRC Convention has gained almost in international acceptance, except – Somalia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates. These countries didn’t signed and didn’t ratified the convention which states the status of a child as “ (…) a person under eighteen but sets fifteen as a minimum age for combatants (…)”

Every day and every hour children become soldiers. They become killers. In Liberia, armed forced are 75% created by very young force, kids with machine guns. The capital of the city Monrovia experiences the death toll every day, armed children are spotted at every corner, they shoot anyone they are told to …. Their unpredictability is lethal.

April 1996 in Liberia was exceptionally disastrous and filled with blood-shed. The chaos burst out, thousands of hundred of people fled out of the city, the equal number was killed. There were children who butchered Monrovia’s citizens. The woman was butchered – gutted by six inch long butcher knife by ten years-old boy. This young killer is not paid, instead, he is given a can of coca-cola, it is his ‘reward’ for a ‘good done job’.

One of many who was captured and interrogated, stated:

-          ‘Where is Your mama?’

-          ‘She dead’

-          ‘And Your daddy’

-          ‘He dead, too’

-          ‘How old are You’

-          ‘Old enough to kill a man’

It is a double trouble. Most of children in Liberia experienced more loss and pain before, beforehand. Their recruitment was just another step. For that reason the war is nothing new for them, they do not know the other life, but, this one.

Their future is not bright, the ongoing wars in Afghanistan, Syria, Tunisia, Ukraine, Chechnya, are much more difficult to follow up, to report and to stop. Ultimately at the age of every possible international law. Children of war must be remembered, never, forgotten about. It would be a blessed filling if they weren't at all.

Bibliography:

1. Refugees, United Nations High Commissioner for. "Refworld | Child Soldiers Global Report 2001 - Iraq". Retrieved 7 August 2016.
2. Human Rights Watch Interactive Map of Child Soldiers". Archived from the originalon 1 November 2008.
3. Mikaberidze, Alexander (2011). Conflict and Conquest in the Islamic World: A Historical Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. p. 418. ISBN 9781598843361. OCLC 775759780.
4. "Report: Syria rebels send children into war". Retrieved 2 October 2014.
5.  "Child Soldiers Global Report 2008 – Colombia". UNHCR: Refworld. 20 May 2008. Retrieved 20 May 2010.
6. "History of children's human rights". United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Retrieved 21 November 2015