At the end of 2004, the International Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers http://www.child-soldiers.org released one of its most ambitious reports on the use of child soldiers worldwide. The “Child Soldiers Global Report 2004” covers the period from April 2001 to March 2004.
Through 196 country-specific summaries and regional overviews, the report includes information about recruitment practices and abuses by governments and armed groups regarding the use of child soldiers. Not all the countries included in the report are involved in officially recognized internal or external armed conflicts, and some country summaries simply cite governments’ military conscription practices or the international treaties they have ratified. For most of the Latin American and Caribbean countries featured in the Coalition’s report this was generally the case, but there are notable exceptions.
The political violence that has wracked Haiti in recent years with the participation of children is noted by the report. Although occasional recruiting of children by armed political groups in Haiti has occurred, such recruiting does not “appear to be systematic or widespread,” says the Coalition. But it reports that young children are “‘easy prey’ for the armed gangs, given the estimated 10,000 street children in Port-au-Prince.”
In Mexico, the Coalition admits that obtaining reliable information on irregular armed groups is difficult, but it is alarmed by the rise of these groups in the states of Chiapas, Guerrero and Oaxaca. Monitoring the recruitment of those under 18 “is difficult in areas where indigenous communities suffered constant attacks by these groups.”
In Central America, the report spotlights the rise of gangs composed mostly of children and the governments’ authoritarian response, reserving its harshest criticisms for anti-gang laws passed in El Salvador and Honduras. “The government [in El Salvador] responded to continuing levels of violence with repressive measures,” says the report, “while failing to address the underlying causes of dramatic social and economic inequality and the ready availability of firearms.”
Brazil presents one of the most hair-raising examples from Latin America in the report, and like the Central America sections it is gang related. In the city of Rio de Janeiro alone “an estimated 5,000 armed under-18s were involved in organized armed violence.” The report says the recruitment and use of children combatants in urban-based drug factions is comparable to, and in some cases surpasses, that of formal armed conflict. “[The gangs] have targeted particular age groups for recruitment, allocated them specific functions [within] the command structure, and reward them financially.”
Finally, in Colombia, in a chilling example of child abuse, the Coalition estimates that paramilitaries and armed opposition groups recruited 14,000 children in the three years covered by the report. And since 1999, only 10% of these child soldiers have been demobilized. Both “boys and girls, some as young as 12, were used as child soldiers by armed opposition groups and army-backed paramilitaries,” according to the report. “The children recruited into these forces had to endure harsh conditions. Some were forced to commit serious abuses, killing civilians and destroying villages.” In some cases, these children are forcibly recruited.
Although there were no reports of the Colombian government having active duty child soldiers, the Coalition strongly condemns the use of children as informants. Some children are paid and others simply threatened for information on the presence of armed groups or the location of a village, putting them at risk of retribution. One program called “Soldier for a Day” invites children as young as five to visit military facilities. The Coalition cites a Colombian military report that says the program was used to “get guerilla children to question their fathers.”
In the preface to the Global report Graça Machel writes: “The haunted eyes of a child survivor ask all of us how we can live in a world where children can be brutalized and murdered as part of adult conflicts.”
“I have no answers for these children.”
About the Author
Teo Ballvé is a NACLA editor and a contributing news editor for the Resource Center of the Americas http://www.americas.org
