In pact, nations pledge not to use child soldiers

Some have doubts
“It’s more concrete than past documents and that’s good, but I’m worried it won’t be properly applied,” said Beah, who at 13 joined an armed faction after his mother, father and two brothers were killed in Sierra Leone’s civil war in the 1990s.

On Monday, the now 26-year-old Beah told delegates from 58 countries and about 100 international agencies and non-governmental groups that once he started fighting, “taking a gun and shooting someone was as easy as drinking a glass of water.”

He pleaded for rehabilitation programs to help former child soldiers recover from the trauma of the battlefield. Beah himself went through such a program in Sierra Leone’s capital. He now lives in New York and has written a book about his experiences.

Participants at the conference also drafted another text — a guideline that gives governments, aid groups and educators concrete recommendations on how best to prevent the recruitment of children and reintegrate former child soldiers into society.

The 31-page document urges caregivers to try to rekindle former fighters’ family bonds and offer a wide range of educational and vocational training, from literacy classes to apprenticeships.

Goll-Kotchi, the Liberian deputy minister, said the guidelines are a good step but she is skeptical about the recommendations and holds little hope for rehabilitating many former fighters.

Liberia struggles
She said Liberia, which is recovering from a 1989-2003 civil war, is grappling with how to return former child soldiers to civilian life. Reinsertion programs like those recommended in the guidelines often create more problems than they solve, she said.

“In communities where the former child soldiers are going through rehabilitation there’s a lot of resentment, because people think it’s unfair these kids are being rewarded for killing and destroying property while their children get nothing,” Goll-Kotchi said.

An estimated 95,000 former child soldiers have taken part in recent demobilization programs in countries from Asia to Latin America, including Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Congo.

AP

The recommendations also focus on strategies to help girls, who account for nearly 40 percent of recruits in certain armed groups and are particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse, conference organizers said.

Such girls are frequently rejected by their families and have an especially hard time returning to society. They also have regularly been overlooked in prior rehabilitation programs the world over, organizers said.

As a way of combating such treatment, the guidelines recommend hiring female staffers throughout the rehabilitation process and making reproductive health care facilities available at rehab sites.

Last week, the International Criminal Court took up the issue of child soldiers by ordering Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga be tried on charges of recruiting children and sending them to kill and be killed in a bloody tribal conflict. The court, set up in 2002, has expanded its definition of war crimes to include the drafting of children under age 15 into armed conflict.

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