Child Soldiers: From International Norms to Local Practice
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 3 Mar 2025
René Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service
27 Feb 2025 – The conquest of the city of Goma, North-Kivu, a city of two million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo in November-December 2024, followed by the conquest by the same forces of Bukavu, the capital of South-Kivu in January-February 2025, a city of one million persons, has brought to attention the use of “child soldiers” – very young people mobilized to kill and destroy. The armed forces, the regular Army of the Democratic Republic of Congo, not having been paid in some time, faded away and left the fighting largely to militias organized along clanic or ethnic lines. There are real possibilities that the fighting will spread to Rwanda and Burundi, perhaps even Uganda.
The issue of child soldiers had gained attention in the ethnic-based fighting in Liberia. Young people had also been used in fighting in Colombia, South America. Child soldiers were often accused of sexual abuse, and there were difficulties in reintegrating the youth in their home villages when the fighting stopped.
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) active in Geneva in the United Nations’ human rights bodies felt that action was needed on the issue of child soldiers and began to organize on the issue. In practice, what gives NGOs their influence is not what an individual NGO can do alone but what they can do collectively. “Networking” is a key method of progress. NGOs make networks which facilitate the trans-national movement of norms and information. Such networks tend to be temporary and highly personalized. However, at the U.N. they are bound together in a common desire to protect the planet and advance the welfare of humanity.
In 1979 a Special Working Group on the Rights of the Child was created under the chairmanship of the Polish representative, the legal specialist Adam Lopatka. Government and NGO representatives worked together from 1979 to 1988 for one week each year in Geneva. There was a core group, including the Association of World Citizens, which worked steadily together. Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Labour Organization were brought into the sessions.
The Working Group managed to come to a consensus on a final version in time for the U.N. General Assembly to adopt the Convention on the Rights of the Chile on 20 November 1989. By creating a common legal framework of world law, the Convention on the Rights of the Child has increased levels of government accountability, brought about legislative and institutional reforms and increased international cooperation. As James P. Grant, then UNICEF Executive Director said at the time “Transcending its detailed provisions, the Convention on the Rights of the Child embodies the fundamental principle that the lives and the normal development of children should have first call on society’s concerns and capacities and that children should be able to depend upon that commitment in good times and bad, in normal times and in times of emergency, in times of peace and in times of war, in times of prosperity and in times of recession.”
The Convention of the Rights of the Child has an important provision banning the recruitment and use in hostilities of persons under 15 years of age. The same provision has been placed in the Rome Statute creating the International Criminal Court. These international legal standards are tools which can be used. It is difficult to reach out to the armed militias active in the Congo. However we must try as Citizens of the World to make world law known and put into practice.
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René Wadlow is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment. He is President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation and problem-solving in economic and social issues, and editor of Transnational Perspectives.
Tags: Africa, Child Soldiers, Child labor, Child protection, Child slavery, Children, International Day against the Use of Child Soldiers, Latin America Caribbean, United Nations
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 3 Mar 2025.
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