Military Training And Children In Armed Conflict

During recent armed conflicts - such as those in Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda - public attention was repeatedly caught by images of children, both as civilians and as soldiers. Those conflicts, like so many others, were vivid reminders that where there is armed conflict there are also, almost always, children. Soldiers and officers fulfil many roles in relation to such children - sometimes as combatants, sometimes as humanitarian workers, sometimes as protectors, and/or sometimes as enemies and abusers. This book aims to address three main questions: what are the obligations of officers of national armed forces in relation to children, either civilians or combatants, whom they or those under their command may encounter while participating in situations of armed conflict? How realistic and achievable are these obligations? How can compliance with them be encouraged, monitored, and/or enforced? The book examines these questions in the context of military training. In doing so, it has another inextricably linked aim: to see if there are ways in which the training of officers can improve the protection of children in armed conflict situations, in accordance with international law and policy. It is intended for use particularly by those involved in training of national armed forces, including officers themselves, and members of governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and inter-governmental organisations. It is hoped that it will also be of interest to lawyers, academics and others concerned with 'child rights' and related law and policy. It contains examples of actual training materials that can be modified for use in different countries and contexts.

"In this path-breaking study, Professor Goodwin-Gill and Dr Cohn assess the status of the Child Soldier in international law and highlight the ways in which international humanitarian law fails to provide effective protection, particularly in the internal conflicts which are the most common battlefields today. Based upon empirical data gathered from places of conflict all over the world, the authors examine the consequences for child soldiers, their families and communities, of their participation in armed conflict. They conclude their study with practical suggestions for preventing recruitment, and call for a more coherent policy of treatment for those children who have participated in acts of violence."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This is a book that students and professionals from different disciplines and backgrounds, including from academia, international organisations, non-governmental organisations, the medical community, governments, etc., will find to be a valuable resource in their quest to learn more about an area of study that has long been neglected. 2 Volume set.

It is estimated that more than 300,000 children are involved in armed conflicts throughout the world, the vast majority through forced labour. This publication contains the personal views and experiences of child soldiers, highlighting a number of factors contributing to their participation, including the socio-economic and political environment, and their vulnerable personal circumstances, as well as how diverse risk factors interact. These personal stories also draw attention to the gender dimensions of the problem, and to concept of child soldiers 'volunteering' in armed conflict situations. The book then goes on to explore key factors in the development of a comprehensive strategy to tackle the problem, including addressing issues of breakdown of law and order, availability of weapons, extreme forms of social exclusion including poverty and inequality, lack of educational opportunities, widespread child abuse and child labour. The publication includes profiles of conflict situations in Afghanistan, Colombia, the Congo, Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Sri Lanka.

The purpose of this book is to help researchers and professionals understand the possibilities for protecting children in violent political conflicts. This is the first book to be published on this important, complex and painful topic. Most other publications have concentrated on the effects of political violence on children and adults, but have little or nothing to say on prevention from the point of view of the social sciences. This book represents the beginnings of a new field of inquiry and policy. The book includes: research on the effects of exposure to political violence on children; reports by police and military experts of their experiences in protecting the public and children while keeping order; observations from people in human rights and childrens rights organizations on issues of attempting to report to and observe both sides in a conflict; and work by legal researchers on international law relating to the protection of children in political conflicts.

At a time of escalating global conflict and instability, this book examines international efforts to protect children from the effects of war and armed conflict through the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), especially article 38, and the Convention’s Optional Protocol on the involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (OPAC). The principal focus of the book is on the existing UN established machinery for implementing the CRC and OPAC – the Committee on the Rights of the Child and its processes for monitoring states’ compliance with the CRC and OPAC. The book exposes major shortcoming in the monitoring process and concludes by examining possible ways in which compliance with the CRC and OPAC, and with human rights conventions in general, might be secured more effectively. The work has significance not just for scholars working on human rights and the UN, but also for international organisations dealing with human rights in general and with children’s rights and armed conflict in particular. It is also significant for UN and EU policy-makers and for grass roots NGOs.

Children at War is the first comprehensive book to examine the growing and global use of children as soldiers. P.W. Singer, an internationally recognized expert in twenty-first-century warfare, explores how a new strategy of war, utilized by armies and warlords alike, has targeted children, seeking to turn them into soldiers and terrorists. Singer writes about how the first American serviceman killed by hostile fire in Afghanistan—a Green Beret—was shot by a fourteen-year-old Afghan boy; how suspected militants detained by U.S. forces in Iraq included more than one hundred children under the age of seventeen; and how hundreds who were taken hostage in Thailand were held captive by the rebel "God's Army," led by twelve-year-old twins. Interweaving the voices of child soldiers throughout the book, Singer looks at the ways these children are recruited, abducted, trained, and finally sent off to fight in war-torn hot spots, from Colombia and the Sudan to Kashmir and Sierra Leone. He writes about children who have been indoctrinated to fight U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan; of Iraqui boys between the ages of ten and fifteen who had been trained in military arms and tactics to become Saddam Hussein's Ashbal Saddam (Lion Cubs); of young refugees from Pakistani madrassahs who were recruited to help bring the Taliban to power in the Afghan civil war. The author, National Security Fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of the Brookings Project on U.S. Policy Towards the Islamic World, explores how this phenomenon has come about, and how social disruptions and failures of development in modern Third World nations have led to greater global conflict and an instability that has spawned a new pool of recruits. He writes about how technology has made today's weapons smaller and lighter and therefore easier for children to carry and handle; how one billion people in the world live in developing countries where civil war is part of everyday life; and how some children—without food, clothing, or family—have volunteered as soldiers as their only way to survive. Finally, Singer makes clear how the U.S. government and the international community must face this new reality of modern warfare, how those who benefit from the recruitment of children as soldiers must be held accountable, how Western militaries must be prepared to face children in battle, and how rehabilitation programs can undo this horrific phenomenon and turn child soldiers back into children.