• Child soldiers
• Girl child soldiers
• Reintegration of child soldiers

Child soldiers

This report looks at the experiences of children living in conflict situations, and focuses on strategies to prevent the recruitment of children into armed groups. Following interviews and discussions with around 200 children and 300 parents and carers in Ivory Coast, Liberia and Sierra Leone, it highlights a number of preventative strategies used by children, families and communities. These include moving to a safe place and avoiding separation.

The research revealed a complex range of strategies used to recruit children, and a wide variety of reasons why children join armed forces or groups; there are no simple solutions to this gross abuse of children’s rights. However, findings do suggest four responses that are likely to reduce recruitment:

• ensuring that children remain with their families where possible, and are properly cared for and protected
• addressing attitudes towards recruitment to remove the desire to join
• reducing the household poverty that pushes many children into armed forces or groups
• providing children with alternatives through schooling or skills training.

In making these responses, it is essential to build on successful attempts already made by children and their families to avoid recruitment. As a first step, it is important to gain a proper understanding of the context in order to determine the relative emphasis to be placed on each of the four responses, and the precise elements of any preventative strategy. During periods of conflict, the research suggests a number of measures to implement this four-pronged approach.

For voluntary recruitment, these include:

• taking immediate action to provide relief to prevent hunger
• developing targeted messages that address the specific motivations of children in the community
• involving parents, children, community leaders, teachers and the wider community in delivering messages and ensuring that statements about children’s recruitment are constantly reiterated
• discussing the likely risks associated with awareness-raising campaigns
• keeping schools open for as long as possible, but regularly re-evaluating the risks to schoolchildren who may be targeted during recruitment drives or become separated from parents in attacks.

For forced recruitment, these measures include:

• putting mechanisms in place so that any prior knowledge of attacks can be quickly shared with communities, enabling them to plan their departures if necessary
• identifying areas where risks of recruitment are greatest and ensuring that community members are aware of where they can find safety
• assisting in the safe and organised movement of populations
• ensuring that refugee or IDP camps provide safe havens for children and their families who are fleeing to avoid the fighting forces.

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