THE USE OF CHILD SOLDIERS IN ARMED CONFLICT AS WAR CRIME UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.0. BACKGROUND
Armed conflicts with devastating effects have been part of mankind since time immemorial and thesedays, there are easily accessible light weapons and even more destructive weapons, leaving a large number of the wounded, maimed and dead in their wake. Children all over the world constitute the largest and most powerless members of the society and; it used to be assumed that adults had the best interests of children at heart and there was no need to think in terms of children’s rights or their protection. This idealized perception of adult-child relationship ignored the grim realities of our world today.It is virtually impossible to watch international television stations like Cable News Network (CNN) or British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) without hearing or seeing the sufferings of children in one part of the world or the other.
On these international television stations, the glares of child soldiers with their oversize ‘AK-47’ weapons from war torn countries, calls out to the world to end these endless and senseless wars. Luckily, Nigeria has not experienced these horrors although she had had to contend with refugees from war torn countries, faced her own various communal, ethnic and sectarian clashes. The Niger Delta insurgency readily comes to mind; and in all these situations, the people who are most affected are the innocent children. It is children who are increasingly becoming the principal victims of hostilities and acts of violence perpetrated in the course of armed conflicts. Children are often in greater danger than adults during armed conflicts – the danger and form of harm to which children are subjected to, is specific to them due to their innocence, vulnerability and age.
In order to prevent the use of children and ensure their protection during armed conflicts and most especially, to bring to justice all those engaged in such callous acts, preventive and counter measures must be perfected.This work is an inquiry into the consequences of traumatic man made actions which were borne out of flawed leadership and greed for money and power and, of political failure by our leaders to prevent the tragedy that has befallen an entire, defenseless population and; how international justice is confronting the aura of impunity to justice of all those involved in this unlawful creation, called Child Soldiers or Child Combatants (which shall be used interchangeably throughout this research work).
1.1. STATEMENT OF THE RESEARCH PROBLEM
The use of child soldiers poses a challenge to moral norms and legal regulations guiding the conduct of warfare. The direct involvement of children in armed conflicts has dire implications for the development of children and the society as a whole.[1]Child soldiering is a relatively new phenomenon even though it has quickly gained notoriety, and it is not restricted to any continent or region of the world but fortunately, Nigeria has been spared such horrors. There is however scarcity of relevant authorities on the subject, either in our public or private libraries, and even those found on the internet are restricted or too costly.
Most of the available authorities on child soldierswere not focused on the liability of child soldiers, and their recruiters and commanders. With the foregoing, several research questions therefore beg for answers:Who are combatants? Are child soldiers liable for their actions? What are the legal prohibitions of the use of child soldiers? Are the recruiters and commanders of child soldiers liable? How is international justice combating the aura of impunity to justice of the recruiters and commanders of child soldiers? Answers to these and other important questions are the bedrock of this study.
1.2. OBJECTIVES OF THE RESEARCH
This work attempts to focus on how international justice is used to protect the fundamental human rights of children during armed conflicts, most especially, as active participants. And how it is also been used to confront and combat the atrocities of their recruiters, commanders and the perpetrators of these callous atrocities in order to de-mystify the aura of impunity surrounding such misdeeds.We shall attempt to answer the above questions and many more, posed in our statement of the research problem, and this shall be done with reference to relevant laws, practical applications and thereafter, proffer our findings and recommendations tothe issues so raised.
