Forcing Children to Bear Arms: A Contemporary Form of Slavery

Michael G. Wessells is professor in the Programme on Forced Migration and Health at Columbia University.

Social problems such as racism, sexism, and greed have exhibited enormous durability, changing form according to the context and even morphing into something that appears on the surface to be different yet all the while retaining the same odious qualities. Although considerable strides have been made over the past two centuries in ending the sale and ownership of human beings, the problem of slavery has by no means been ended. In fact, considerable evidence indicates that other forms of human enslavement are widespread in the contemporary world.

A Form of Slavery

Nowhere is the continued existence of slavery more conspicuous than in the forced military recruitment of children. Each year, significant numbers of children, defined under international law and international human rights standards as people less than eighteen years old, are forcibly recruited into official armed forces (i.e., government military groups) and irregular armed groups such as opposition units, paramilitary forces, and other non-state actors. The parallels between forced child-soldiering and slavery are diverse and have to do with extreme control through coercion, exploitation for purposes not one’s own, and expendability. Commanders achieve a high level of control over forcibly recruited children through the use and threat of severe violence. The forcibly recruited children are exploited for the purposes of commanders, and failure to follow orders typically leads to severe punishment or death. The regime of control is backed up by the extraordinary lengths to which commanders go to punish escapees and dominate recruits—lengths amounting to a reign of terror. Just as slaves in the United States before its civil war were expendable because they could be traded, sold, or even lynched, so child soldiers, too, are frequently regarded as expendable.

In this essay, I will describe why and how children are forcibly recruited and analyse the methods used to control and exploit them. I will also offer suggestions about how to end this widespread form of slavery. Throughout, I will attend to the often neglected issues of gender that motivate recruitment in some circumstances and shape how control is exercised.

At the outset, it is important to note that many children who are associated with armed forces or armed groups have not been recruited by force. Numerous “push” and “pull” factors frequently lead children to decide without obvious coercion to join armed forces or groups.¹ For example, in northern Afghanistan in 2001, significant numbers of children whose families and villages fought against the Taliban joined in the fighting or in ancillary activities such as carrying food and weapons. Many of those children said they had done so in order to be with their fathers or older brothers and to resist domination by what they saw as alien extremists. In the conflict in Columbia, some children have joined armed groups such as the FARC rebels because they viewed them as a surrogate family. In countries such as Liberia, some children joined armed groups in order to exact revenge for the killing of family members. In many countries, children join armed forces or groups in order to earn money, obtain protection, or help meet basic needs that would otherwise go unsatisfied. In ethnic separatist struggles such as that in Sri Lanka, many children decided to join the Tamil Tigers militia because they saw it as their best means of achieving liberation from Sinhalese rule. In other conflicts such as that in Palestine, politically conscious children have seen themselves as freedom fighters deliberately and proudly fighting to end the oppression of their people.

These and many other examples remind us that children are not passive innocents but active agents who make decisions and negotiate their lived circumstances and identities. The fact that these forms of non-forced recruitment are common in certain conflicts indicates that it is an oversimplification to think of all child-soldiering as a type of slavery. The category “child soldiers” is far from homogeneous and defies universalised description. Consequently, this essay focuses on the subset of child soldiers who have been recruited into or otherwise made part of armed forces or groups against their will.

Forcible Recruitment of Children

Most analysts agree that there are likely to be tens of thousands of forcibly recruited children in the world at present. This amounts to a massive violation of child rights. However, the exact number of forcibly recruited children is unknown, not only because of the fog of war but more importantly because of the steps taken by recruiters to hide their exploitation of children. Also, the numbers change in fluid environments in which there is often a recurrent cycle of recruitment, release or escape, followed by re-recruitment.

The scale and pattern of forced military recruitment of children varies significantly across conflicts. In some conflicts, it is the opposition groups rather than government forces that recruit children forcibly, whereas in others the opposite pattern occurs. In yet other conflicts, both state and non-state actors engage in the forced recruitment of children. Furthermore, the non-forced recruitment of children may be more widespread than forced recruitment in a particular conflict. Within a conflict, patterns can shift over time, with non-forced recruitment being dominant at one time and forced recruitment becoming dominant subsequently. This contextual variation and dynamism caution against assumptions that child recruitment follows a common pattern in all conflicts or that armed conflicts are all alike from the perspectives of children.

Why Recruiters Choose Children

Commanders often claim they recruit children because of troop shortfalls they had no other means of redressing. This explanation is self-serving in that it reduces personal accountability and allows the rationalisation, “I did it only because I had to.” In reality, however, children are often recruited by force because they are readily available. In most war zones in developing countries, children constitute half of the population. In a situation of lawlessness, social breakdown, and desperation, parents are often unable to protect their children from