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Young solgiers
Why They choose to fight
The world is currently witnessing a grave trend in the form of more than 300,000 children actively involved in armed conflicts.
With the adoption, in 1999, of the Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labour, No. 182, the International Labour Organization (ILO) was called upon to contribute to international efforts to prevent and end children's participation in armed conflicts, one of the worst forms of child labor. The Convention, now ratified by 136 ILO member states, calls interalia for the urgent elimination of forced recruitment of children in armed conflicts.
This book brings together the children's own views about why they are combatants. It highlights a number of the factors contributing to their joining up, including the nature of their socioeconomic environment, vulnerable personal circumstances and triggers, and how these diverse risk factors interact. In the process, it also draws attention to the gender dimensions of the problem. Additionally, it examines the question of how "voluntary" the young soldiers' participation really is, and whether this difficult choice should ever be presented to a child.
Many of the conditions described by these young soldiers relate to forced labor. They live in fear for their lives, not from the enemy but from their own units; they are often not paid; their working conditions are quite different from what they expected; and they are unable to flee from their predicament. Here again, the accumulated experience of the ILO in applying the Forced Labour Convention, No. 29 (1930), can be invaluable in helping actors address these many issues.
This book highlights a number of the key factors to be considered in a serious comprehensive strategy to tackle the problem. They include the need to take into account the root causes-the changed nature of weapons and warfare, the breakdown of law and order, and intolerable levels of poverty, unemployment, inequality, and other forms of social exclusion, as well as weaknesses in the educational and vocational training systems, rampant violence and abuse meted out to children, and social pressures on children to engage in armed conflicts and other of the worst forms of child labor. The strategy should also include intensified efforts to prevent and resolve the numerous armed conflicts around the world.
By focusing on the real stories of the young soldiers themselves, the book provides a valuable addition to existing materials for advocacy, policy, and action against this heinous trend.
Finally, the ILO's Crisis Response and Reconstruction Programme expresses its gratitude to Rachel Brett and Irma Specht, the authors of this volume, as well as to all the consultants and ILO and non-ILO personnel who contributed to the data collection and analysis for the book. Above all, our special thanks go to the young soldiers for sharing their painful personal stories with us.
--Eugenia Date-Bah
Director, InFocus Programme on
Crisis Response and Reconstruction, International Labour
Organization