Rencontre avec des enfants soldats (texte en anglais)

Yes, so in 2012 I’ve realized a report about children soldier, and after I met some of them, I decided to focus on one question: Why there are children soldier?

So, the first thing we have to focus, important but no obvious, is that every countries are not agree about what is a child. Under international law, the definition of a child has not always been clear. The Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) states that a child is any individual under the age of 18 years. However, the UNCRC allowed children to be lowered with regards to military service – leaving children between the ages of fifteen and eighteen vulnerable to recruitment. The International Criminal Court stipulates that it is a war crime to recruit children under the age of 15 or use them in armed conflicts.

Even if a child can’t be enrolled too young, there are promotions in primary school. In Quebec for example, soldiers come to convince children to join army later : They use game, events like « Month of military child ». Sometimes, military training could add good marks. In these activities, children are wearing uniform and shooting in the machine gun. And later, in high school, they can study and work in army in the same time. They also purpose “Summer Army Camp” during holidays. Children live like soldiers during one or two weeks (Of course, without all the bad sides”. In others countries, join the army is not because of the amusement but because of an all different reasons ! As we have seen with Mrs Euasine in the first part, a big part of children soldier come from poor countries. The context is a fact very important. In Africa, where the stories of children soldier are current, the economic situation is catastrophic. And we can ask “Why the economic situation have a link with children soldier?”. Children are vulnerable to recruitment into armed groups, and they are often those that come from the poorest sections of society, do not have families. Children have been used as soldiers by both rebel groups and government forces in many conflicts. Although the reasons children ‘volunteer’ include a desire for revenge, adventure, fun seeking, a sense of belonging and peer pressure, most of the evidence points to survival as the primary reason for enlisting. But for some children, join the army is not an amusement, not revenge, not a way to earn money but just an obligation. They are forcibly recruited. In Mozambique, the Mozambican National Resistance forced new recruits to kill someone from their own village, to be insensible and to can’t return in the village. Other methods of forced recruitment include abduction from homes and schools, the use of drugs, and physical threats to the children.

And don’t forget that if there is the army of government, there is also illegal army. In addition, in many of the regions where piracy exists, children are being used by terrorist groups, criminal gangs. In Somalia, Navy discovered that 25 out of 61 pirates that were arrested were under the age of 15 years, 4 of whom were estimated to be just 11 years old. Then, there are many terrorists who use children under the age of 6 or 5 years to suicide attacks. Our research at this point has confirmed parallels between the recruitment of child soldiers and child pirates. In both cases, children are used by armed groups for the same reasons:

- They are vulnerable and easily manipulated;

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