Stolen childhood

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Stolen childhood By: Lucía Noboa Herrera

“When they came to my village, they asked my older brother whether he was ready to join the militia. He was just 17 and he said no; they shot him in the head.

Then they asked me if I was ready to sign, so what could I do - I didn’t want to die.”

A former child soldier taken when he was 13. (Source: BBC report.)

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ince the capture of the Congolese rebel militia leader Thomas Lubanga in March 2005 and his subsequent charges of enlistment, recruitment, and use of child soldiers, many people have wondered why Lubanga was only charged with these crimes when he was clearly involved in other serious war crimes, including murder and sexual violence. The answer to this question, albeit complex, is easy to understand: the use of child soldiers not only fuels armed conflict, but turns children into killers and breaks down the fabric of society. In other words, they have no childhood, no hope and no future. What’s left for a nation whose future generation has no future?

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is a country located in Central Africa. It is the second largest country in Africa and the nineteenth most populous nation in the world. A vast country with grand economic resources, the DRC has been at the centre of the Second Congo War, sometimes named “Africa’s world war”. The conflict, which began in 1998, officially ceased with the signing of peace accords in 2003. However, the fighting continued in the east of the country where the ethnic divisions collided with the abundance of rich natural resources many of the factions wanted to monopolize.

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Though it’s true that the war began as a fight between the Hema and Lendu (two of the DRC ethnic groups), it slowly turned into a way for commanders to get rich by instigating people with ethnic hatred so they could continue the profitable war. One of these commanders was Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, president of the Union of Congolese Patriots and commander-in-chief of its military wing, the Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Congo. The purpose of the Union of Congolese Patriots was to establish the dominance of the Hema ethnic group trough violence against non-Hema people. To reach this goal, Lubanga enlisted many children under the age of 15 and used them to participate actively in hostilities.

Captured in March 2005, Thomas Lubanga was sent to the International Criminal Court (ICC), the world’s first permanent court responsible for prosecuting some of the most serious crimes known to humankind, being charged with recruiting and using child soldiers in north-eastern DRC in 2002 and 2003. Lubanga had pleaded not guilty, alleging that he was only a politician and was not involved in the violence. But the prosecutor accused him of using children as bodyguards, sex slaves and fighters, using videos to show how Lubanga forced child soldiers to fight for his military group.

Captured in March 2005, Thomas Lubanga was sent to the International Criminal Court (ICC), the world’s first permanent court responsible for prosecuting some of the most serious crimes known to humankind, being charged with recruiting and using child soldiers in north-eastern DRC in 2002 and 2003.

While originally scheduled to start on March 31, 2008, the Lubanga trial was delayed until June 23, 2008. Yet, in early June, the judges suspended it out of concern that Lubanga could not get a fair trial because he couldn’t access some information that could help him during the procedure. After a series of events, the judges decided the problem had been fixed and scheduled the start date on January 26, 2009. The trial officially began on November 24, 2009 and lasted almost three years. On March 24, 2012 Thomas Lubanga Dyilo was found guilty of the war crimes of enlisting, recruiting and using child soldiers during the years of 2002 and 2003.

The Lubanga trial is also the first international trial that focuses on the use of child soldiers and set legal precedents for other accused of similar crimes. But, let’s return to our first question: why is the use of child soldiers considered one of the most horrible war crimes? To answer that question we’ll begin with a definition of the term. “Child Soldiers International”, a non-profit organization that works to prevent the recruitment and use of child soldiers, states that a child soldier is a person below 18 years of age who has been recruited or used by an armed force or group in any capacity.

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Although child soldiers exist in the entire world, the problem is more critical in Africa, where children as young as nine have been involved in armed conflicts. The majority of child soldiers are involved in a variety of armed political groups, including government-backed paramilitary groups and militias. Most of them enlist “voluntarily” but that’s because they see no other choice or enlist as a way of survival or after seeing family members tortured or killed. They live in a deranged society where the only way to live one more day is to kill. They only want to live even if that means they have to kill, or endure beating and sexual abuse.

However, for the child soldiers that manage to survive there is some hope, a light at the end of the tunnel, it’s named DDR (Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration). The DDR is a program that consists of three phases: the first one is the collection of all weapons within a conflict zone; the second one is the formal and controlled discharge of soldiers from the army or from an armed group; and the last one is a long-term process which aims to give children an alternative to their involvement in armed conflict and help them resume life in the community. Thus giving the child a somehow “second chance” to have the peaceful live every child deserves.

However, for the child soldiers that manage to survive there is some hope, a light at the end of the tunnel, it’s named DDR (Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration).

Even if that seems like a “fairy-tale ending” the sad truth, and the answer to our start question, is that most child soldiers don’t live to have a second chance, or are traumatized for life, having scars so deep they can’t heal. And the minority that manages to go through isn’t accepted once again by their community because of the crimes they committed. The children that are supposed to be “the future generation” of a country, that are supposed to be the most vulnerable group of humankind, are used in the most inhuman ways by adults whose only purpose is to gain power. So even if Lubanga is just one person of many, or that his trial is long and complicated, the case of Thomas Lubanga is important not only for what it represents but for helping to maintain the hope to all the victims of this war crime. It is not going to give back the children their stolen childhood but it will give them a glimpse of hope for a new future.