When Napoleon Adok was 16 years old he saw his best friend blown to bits next to him. That was when he decided he had had enough of being a soldier. But he was not allowed to leave. Deserters were put in front of a firing squad, no matter how young they were.
Napoleon was one of hundreds of thousands of child soldiers in Africa and the rest of the world. His story is not unique. Instead, it is all too common on a continent where children are routinely used as messengers, scouts, sexual slaves or simply as cannon fodder by government forces and rebel groups alike.
Despite almost world-wide condemnation of the use of child soldiers, and a specific United Nations convention banning their use, children under 18 years of age were involved in armed conflicts in over 20 countries between 2001 and 2004, according to the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers.
The coalition, which includes several human rights and children’s organisations, has said that at least six governments claiming to have ended the recruitment of children continue deploying them to gather intelligence and to act as messengers or scouts.
Three years ago on Saturday, a so-called Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child came into force. It raised from 15 to 18 years the age at which direct participation in armed conflict is permitted. It also bans compulsory recruitment of people below 18 years of age.
Countries ratifying the Optional Protocol, 88 to date, also have to declare at what age the national army will allow voluntary recruitment.
The UN children’s fund, Unicef, calls this clause particularly important ”because although the Optional Protocol sets 18 as the minimum age for compulsory recruitment, it does not establish age 18 as a minimum for voluntary recruitment”.
Napoleon Adok was one such voluntary recruit. Born in 1973, he was ten years old when the latest civil war in southern Sudan, which ended last month, broke out.
”The government had barracks in our town. Northern (Arab) troops would beat up local children and rape women. We considered them a bunch of foreigners. When the war broke out, everyone was a potential rebel. And our town was on the frontline,” Napoleon recalls.
Soon, the system started crumbling. The school closed. Napoleons parents moved with their five children away from the frontline. But Napoleon had heard stories about an exciting place called a refugee camp. He ran away from home to seek adventure.
”But it was not what I expected. A lot of people died during the long walk. I arrived at the camp when I was 12 years old.” The refugee camp turned out to be a recruitment camp for the SPLA rebels.
”The kids in the camp were kept separate. The rebels offered security. They said they would take care of us, we would never have to go to war. They said that everyone must train and be prepared, because the government may attack at any time.” So Napoleon and his new friends went to school in the mornings, and practiced target shooting in the afternoons.
”After two years, I was taken away to help guard convoys of military supplies. It was good in the beginning, but then the convoys started getting attacked, and we had to defend them. I was 15.”
He describes the creeping realisation of the first few years as a child recruit: ”When we were young, we thought guns were like toys. But when we started realising that it was connected to death, we wanted to leave, but by that time you can’t, you would face a firing squad for desertion.” Some other child recruits, friends of Napoleon, tried to walk to Kenya. They were caught, brought back and shot in front of the other children.
”The commanders said we should watch and learn.” Soon, Napoleon was chosen to become part of a team specialising in explosives and landmines.
”Me and my best friend, whom I had walked with from my village, were working together clearing mines. We were lying down next to each other on the ground. We had defused a mine, and I turned to get some tools. It was a new model, we had not disarmed it properly. It went off in his face. My best friend was lying there next to me — without a head. That’s when I knew I wanted to try to get out. It was in 1989. I was 16.”
More than 15 years later, Napoleon still finds it hard to talk about his friend. In the beginning, talking about it worked like therapy, he says. But now, every time he talks about his experiences, he needs time to deal with all the memories that wash over him.
Napoleon eventually managed to get away from combat. He joined a senior rebel officer who was a medical doctor as his assistant.
”I didn’t even have to carry a gun, but I was not considered a deserter. I was sort of gradually discharged.” In 2000, the SPLA rebels under John Garang started a much publicised child demobilisation programme, and said they had demobilized 16 000 children between 2001 and 2004.
The Child Soldiers Coalition said, however, that during that period, the rebels had continued to recruit child soldiers.
Although wars ending in some regions, such as southern Sudan, have resulted in the demobilisation of more than 40 000 child soldiers in the world between 2001 and 2004, the Coalition says 30 000 children have been drawn into new conflicts during the same period.
”Every day that we delay, the toll of death and suffering among children in armed conflict will continue to grow — and that is simply unconscionable,” says Carol Bellamy, head of Unicef. — Sapa