Girls as Survivors Following Child Soldiering
Summary of the panel discussion written by Gretchen Gayle and Robin Poulton
Women War & Peace Conference 2013: VFoM with VCU, RSCC and RPEC
Discussants: Mike Wessells (Columbia), Beth Maclin (Harvard), Patricia Maulden (George Mason) and John Williamson of the USAID/DCOF (defense of children and orphans fund).
Several of these speakers also contributed published articles to the Conference documentation, which were also used to enrich this summary.
Themes were introduced in advance on the website through articles that included:
“Girl Soldiers in West Africa: Myths, Realities, and Priorities for Reintegration” — Dr Michael Wessells, Columbia University
“Mental Health and Psychosocial Well-Being of Former Child Soldiers” – Dr Michael Wessells
“Comparing the Ways in Which Boys and Girls Experienced Child Soldiering in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo”—Dr Beth Maclin (Harvard Humanitarian Initiative)
“Conceptualizing Gender in War and Peace: Girl Soldiers in Sierra Leone and Liberia”— Dr. Patricia Maulden (George Mason University)
“Child Soldiers in Sierra Leone – Reintegrating Boys and Girls Who are Victims of War” Ibrahim Bangura and Robin Poulton, GIZ magazine Digital Development Debates published June 2013.
"The disarmament, demobizilation, and reintegration of child soldiers: social and psychological transformation in Sierra Leone" -- John Williamson (USAID/DCOF)
"The Paris Principles-- Principles and Guidelines on Children Associated with Armed Forces or Armed Groups" – United Nations: www.unicef.org
Mike Wessells – author of the book Child Soldiers: From Violence to Protection. (Harvard University Press) - talked about the mental health and psychosocial well-being of former child soldiers. In war-torn countries, he said, most children have been affected in some way by the combination of armed conflict and chronic poverty. Effects on their spirit and mental state which seem to be due to their recruitment as soldiers or as sex slaves, may in fact also be the result of extreme poverty and exclusion, loss of livelihoods, families and homes.
These former rebels are not a homogeneous group. They have different ages and different origins. Some have been soldiers longer than others, their experiences have been different; and of course those who were 13 years old five years ago are now 18 years old, and no longer count as “children” although they may still be highly traumatized and greatly in need of psychosocial support. In addition, many young fighters have been forced to consume drugs such as cannabis and amphetamines, which make them fearless in battle and which have – in some cases – been used to force the young people to kill their own families… or to kill other children who were disobedient or who tried to escape. Traditional healers also provide charms, which are believed to make the soldiers “bullet-proof.”
Girls have frequently been used as fighters; but they may also have been victims of rape, forced marriage to a “bush husband” and they may have contracted all sorts of sexually transmitted or other infections.
Explaining the physical and psychological dangers to children in general and to girls more specifically, Wessells introduced the audience to the Paris Principles adopted by UNICEF in 2007. Citing the preamble, he explained that specialists and child protection workers now prefer to talk about “children who are victims of war” (rather than “child soldiers” because, girls or boys, children who have been killers and those who have not, they are all victims and they have all had their childhood and their school education stolen from them.
Preamble
3.0 All children are entitled to protection and care under a broad range of international, regional
and national instruments. The most widely ratified human rights instrument is the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. States have primary responsibility for the protection of all children in their jurisdiction. A child rights approach, meaning that all interventions are developed within a human rights framework, should underpin all interventions aimed at preventing recruitment or use, securing the release of, protecting, and reintegrating children who have been associated with an armed force or armed group. Funding should be made available for this programming, according to the rights and needs of the children, irrespective of formal or informal peace processes or the progress of formal adult DDR processes.
The term “child soldiers” is doubly misleading because it seems to imply that some of these children are “soldiers” and therefore – by implication – some of them are not. This is especially discriminatory towards girls, who are very often used as cooks or nurses or laborers for the armed groups, carrying munitions and caring for the wounded: jobs that are just as dangerous and just as important in war as shooting weapons. The Paris Principles therefore specify that:
3.1 Discrimination may arise in various ways: on the basis of sex, between vulnerable groups
upon reintegration and between children who were associated with different armed forces or
armed groups or based on social definitions such as ethnicity, religion, disability or caste.
3.2 Girls and their children: Pro-active measures must be taken to ensure the full involvement and inclusion of girls in all aspects of prevention of recruitment, release and reintegration, and
services should always respond to their specific needs for protection and assistance.
Extreme sensitivity is required when seeking to identify and assist girls in order not to increase the stigma attached to their involvement and make their situation worse. It is central to programming interventions that attention be paid to the particular needs for protection and support both of girl mothers and of children born to girls as a result of their recruitment by an armed force or armed group.
3.3 Reintegration: Measures to secure the reintegration of children into civilian life should not
stigmatise or make any negative distinction between children who have been recruited or used
and those who have not, nor between children who have been recruited or used for temporary or
short periods of time and those who have been recruited or used permanently or for longer
periods of time. It is also detrimental to all conflict-affected children if other vulnerable children
who have not been associated with armed forces or armed groups are placed at a disadvantage
vis-à-vis those who have been so associated.
Girls are often rejected by their families, because they very often return from the war with children who have been fathered by fighters who are seen as enemies, and who may be from clans or tribes with which the girl’s family has no affinity. But it is not her fault is she has been “sleeping with the enemy” who may have taken her by force. In many cases there has been some form of marriage; so the girl feels bound to her partner, the father of her children. If he has been killed, she may find herself a widow with kids and with no form of support. She may be rejected by her own family and her community, through no fault of her own. This is specifically recognized in a section of the Paris Principles entitles “The reintegration of girls”:
7.59 Girls face specific consequences from their time in armed forces or armed groups. The stigma facing girls is fundamentally different in kind – it lasts much longer, is critically more difficult to reduce and is more severe. Essentially, many girls will have lost their “value” as perceived by the community including in relation to marriage. Programmes should seek to establish positive values for the girls in their communities and families. In addition, a girl will often have to deal with residual relationships or feelings for her captor, as he may be both her “husband” and the father of her child or children. In appropriate circumstances, girls should be consulted and counselled about whether they wish to recognize or reject the relationship they had with a member of the armed group or force.
7.60 Programmes to assist girls associated with armed forces or armed groups need to strike a careful balance between seeking to identify them in order to ensure their particular needs are met and not stigmatizing them further. The key to any intervention is to consult with and be led by those affected - many of the following suggestions have come from girls associated with armed forces or armed groups.
7.61 Extensive community dialogue and mediation is needed to support girls’ reintegration. Key messages are that girls, especially those who are pregnant or girl mothers need the support of their family and community. Strategies should enable girls’ acceptance through steps such as conducting traditional rituals, making reparations, providing health care and livelihoods support, and developing links with women’s groups.
7.62 Some girls associated with armed forces or armed groups and girl mothers in particular may require a period of intensive, additional or lengthier support during reintegration. Although only a minority of girls may need residential care, most will benefit from family or community support for purposes of healing and adjustment, medical care, learning parenting and vocational skills, and the development of community support networks.
7.63 Girls may be viewed as an additional burden on their family and without value in terms of their potential to be married. With little hope of earning an income and limited opportunity to participate in educational and vocational training programmes without financial support or child care, girls may become depressed and isolated from their peers and wider community. Specialised, culturally appropriate responses should be identified or developed for those girls who have become depressed and even suicidal. Long term support may be necessary.
Girls make up 40% of children victims of war in some war zones
Patricia Maulden emphasized that thousands of children under the age of 18 – boys and girls – are actively participating with government forces and armed opposition groups across the globe. These child soldiers engage in both combat and support services and overall, girls make up approximately forty percent of this population (Singer 2010; Coalition 2008; Save the Children 2005; Brett & McCallin 1998).
Studies exploring causal variables leading to the continued use of child soldiers worldwide vary in their focus from primordialist views of cultural practices or ethnic divisions, to the effects of socioeconomic dislocation, political marginalization or exclusion, the logic of resource appropriation, or a breakdown of warrior honor (Singer 2010; Sesay 2003).
More specifically, the recruitment of girl soldiers, given these additional causal variables, is not an anomaly or incidental occurrence but a systematic strategy as part of intrastate wars in particular. We need to explore the experiences of girl soldiers within the contexts of gender and agency, conflict and peace. Any solution needs to look at gendered and generational domains, gender and agency, and post-conflict programming, said Ms Maulden.
Soldiering can bring serious disadvantages, for example physical injury, sexual abuse, illness, infection, loss of education, trauma, feelings of guilt, fear of retribution, shame, stigmatization, and ostracism by family and community. On the other hand, soldiering can bring situational benefits, in part through individual agency and re-appraisal processes to make the most out of very difficult circumstances. Benefits could include finding a sense of purpose, mission, or importance, gaining protection, inclusion, validation, respect, identity, skills, and access to resources (Maulden 2007, 17). Girls as soldiers balance the two ends of the experiential spectrum, struggling to ‘play’ their environment to ensure their own and their children’s survival. That anyone so young must do so seems unthinkable; that tens of thousands of the young do so on a regular basis remains a fact of modern war.
The majority of girl soldiers across cases studied, were abducted: taken by force while working in fields, walking down roads, or sitting in classrooms (Save the Children 2005). Most of these girls, and indeed the vast majority of girl soldiers overall, did not go through disarmament, demobilization, or reintegration (DDR) processes and did not participate in research conducted immediately following war’s end. Although some girls did volunteer (Peters & Richards 1998), agency and scholarly reports tend to qualify that self-determined rationale by citing the coercive factors existing within the circumstances of the vulnerable girl child. Children in areas of civil war witness fighting, see bloodshed, lack basic necessities, and face disrupted family relationships and increasing patterns of family violence (Singer 2010). Against this backdrop, communities fracture, social structures weaken, and adults increasingly prove unable to protect children or keep them out of the war. It becomes almost a matter of semantics to use the word “coercion” in cases where violence has become the normal experience of country residents. Individuals are forced to interact with the violence in one way or another, by virtue of its omnipresence.
Some girls (and boys) claim they chose to join in order to defend their country, to avenge family members, to escape conflict or abuse at home, or because their families were too poor to provide for them. In conditions of uncertainty such as existed in Sierra Leone and Liberia during their civil wars, alignment with an armed group often seemed the best chance for survival and for access to resources (Save the Children 2005, 11-12; Brett & Specht 2004, 41-44; Cohn & Goodwin-Gill 1994, 30-35). “Power grows out of the barrel of a gun” is often the experience of these young people; and this sometimes teaches them that the old ways, with respect for parents, are no good. Especially if they have seen their Elders cowering from fear when faced with their children’s firearms.
Gendered dimensions of male and female experiences of violence and war: DRC
The role of girls more specifically – and the specifics of their differences from boys as victims of war - was illustrated from the DRC by Beth Maclin. The eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been affected by conflict since 1996. Throughout the almost two decades of instability in the region, the use of underage combatants has been widespread by non-state and government armed groups. More than 30,000 underage combatants have been demobilized since the 2003 peace agreement was signed, which formally ended the conflict. Ongoing instability in the area, however, means that the use and recruitment of underage combatants continue. For instance, recent estimates from the United Nations state that nearly 1,500 underage combatants were demobilized and reintegrated into civilian life during 2012 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), while almost 600 children were recruited into armed groups during the same time period.
A detailed study highlighted important gendered dimensions of male and female experiences being associated with armed groups. Firstly, boys and girls experienced different kinds of violence. Sexual violence was only discussed as being perpetrated against female participants, while boys were more likely to discuss incurring injuries during combat. Additionally, former underage combatants – male and female – experienced stigma when returning to communities and attempting to rebuild civilian lives.
Female former combatants, however, were more likely to face stigma as a result of returning home with children who were born while they were in armed groups; in contrast, male former combatants were more likely to be socially isolated and shunned because of their inability to fulfill traditional male roles, particularly finding employment and having a family.
Definition of Child Soldiers and the role of girls as victims: Sierra Leone
John Williamson observed that the peace process in Sierra Leone established a crucial precedent regarding child soldiers, and particularly in highlighting specificities needed in the treatment of girls.
The Lomé peace accord specified that child combatants would be given particular attention and handled differently from adults in the demobilization and reintegration process. Written guidelines for children’s disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration in Sierra Leone were established by the NCDDR (NCDDR Technical Committee, 2000). Their implementation, however, was down to a variety of different actors on the ground, including military observers and the personnel of various national and international child protection NGOs. These had the support of UNICEF. Various donors supported the child-focused aspects of the DDR, with the largest amount coming from USAID/DCOF, followed by the European Union, and the German National Committee for UNICEF. One of he most important agencies dealing with child – and girl – refugees in Sierra Leone was the Christian Children’s Fund (now called ChildFund International) headquartered in Richmond, VA, where Dr. Wessells was working at that time, together with Dr. Michelle Elcoat Poulton. Their work together on child soldiers in Sierra Leone was seminal. The Paris Principles derived in part from this Sierra Leonean experience.
The first DDR process in Sierra Leone was a failure: something that Michelle and her husband Dr. Robin Poulton (UNIDIR) had predicted: they had warned in early December 1998 of the trouble that was about to break out … and in January 1999 the DDR process collapsed in the sack of Freetown, capital of Sierra Leone and an extremely bloody battle that took place for control of the city. The Nigerian forces of ECOMOG prevailed, and in May 2001, demobilization resumed.
After these delays, there was considerable pressure to disarm all combatants as rapidly as possible. No one wanted a repeat of the January 1999 disaster. Decisions about when, where, and how disarmament and demobilization would be carried out were sometimes (of necessity) taken quickly, and child protection NGOs often had to move very fast in order to be able to play a role in the process. It was sometimes difficult for them to gain access to areas were demobilization was to take place. There were also many logistical constraints, as much of the country’s limited infrastructure had been damaged or destroyed by the war.
Despite the specifications in the DDR guidelines regarding how children were to be screened and processed, implementation was often ad hoc. It varied considerably in the various sites involved. Although the guidelines provided for particular NGO roles regarding children in the DDR process, in practice, some military observers did not recognize this. One reason was the rotation of peacekeepers, some of whom did not have the relevant preparation for the aspects of their job related to demobilizing and separating children. Soldiers in general – unsurprisingly - are less inclined than child-protection NGOs to worry about the needs of children, whom they see as “smaller fighters” who may be just as dangerous as the bigger, adult fighters. Consequently, after disarmament and demobilization, it was sometimes necessary for UNICEF and child protection NGOs to negotiate the release of children to the organizations designated as responsible for their reintegration.
Demobilized adults were entitled to receive cash stipends and skills training, while children were assisted with family tracing and reunions. They could choose between access to education or skills training, but they were not eligible for cash payments. This was based on the view that if children were given cash, their commander might easily take it away and keep it for himself. In order to protect young people from predatory commanders, it was decided that they should instead receive services in-kind (Brooks, 2005).
It was necessary during disarmament and demobilization to determine who had actually been associated with a fighting force. All young people are considered by the United Nations to be “victims of war” - although this is not necessarily understood by military personnel, nor by members of the population who consider that they and their communities have suffered during the war at the hands of these (supposedly vicious) children.
Young men of 17 or 18 who seem apparently to be adults, are also the same young boys who were barely 12 years old when they were swept up into the fighting by the RUF or another fighting force, five years ago. They may be physically grown, but they may be emotionally stunted and it is certain that they are (and will remain all their lives) victims of the things they have seen, and of the things they have perhaps done.
And the same is true for girls who may now be mothers with one or two children. They have been victims of violence, maybe of rape; they have been victims of war and of poverty, they may carry the scars of physical wounds as well as mental wounds, and they may have been abused in other ways: for example by being forced to carry huge loads at a time when their skeletons were still unformed. This can lead to malformations of the lower limbs. Very often these girls are injured, and in many varied ways.
The concept of “childhood” raises another conceptual problem, as some people in the audience were aware: UNICEF has established that the age of majority is 18, under pressure from American and European NGOs (including the Quakers). In many other cultures, young people are considered adult (young adults, but nevertheless adults) at 16 or 15, or even 14 years of age. In some of these cultures, the ages of young people are nor evens recorded. “Born around 1990” may be as close as you can come to a precise birth date. How then, can one determine whether youths are above or below the age of 18? In Sierra Leone, child protection personnel were involved in determining whether an individual was a child or an adult.
Another failing of the process in Sierra Leone was the inconsistent implementation of the guidelines regarding weapons. The guidelines specified that any children who had been associated with a fighting force were to be considered as “victims” and to demobilized: making them entitled to the assistance prepared for former child soldiers, regardless of whether they had been fighters or ever carried a weapon. Some military peacekeepers, however, found this an unrealistic rule. They imposed a weapons tests and required children as well as adults to present a weapon and demonstrate operational familiarity with it. This had the effect of excluding many children from the DDR process, in particular girls, who often had been abducted by the RUF and used for carrying loads, for cooking and other domestic (and often sexual) tasks. The girls are equally VICTIMS of war; they have lived in military camps and survived a war zone, even if they have not been direct perpetrators of violence and do not know how to strip and clean a weapon.