Recruitment of children into terrorist groups

ACCORDING to the United Nations, despite global consensus against sending children into battle, there are 300,000 children under the age of 18 (both male and female) serving as combatants in almost 75 percent of the world’s conflicts. In 80 percent of this, there are child fighters under the age of 15 and 18 percent fighters under 12. Also, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), more than 8,000 boys and girls have been recruited and used as child soldiers for different roles by armed groups across Nigeria in the last 14 years. This includes children as young as four years. Children who are recruited into terrorist organisations are exposed to extreme forms of violence. They are forcefully made to bear arms and they participate directly in all forms of hostilities. These children serve as cooks, messengers, spies, made slaves and are subjected to other gender-based violence like forced marriages. They may be involved in execution of hostages. Children offer terrorist group leaders cheap and easy recruits and they provide new options to strike at supposed enemies.

An example is when the American troops that brought the reign of Saddam Hussein to an end got into a faceoff with Iraqi soldiers. They were faced by Iraqi child fighters in at least three cities. Also, groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad have also recruited children as young as 11 to smuggle weapons and explosives. According to reports, young people have been made to conduct more than 30 suicide bombings in the Israel- Palestine conflict which got revived in the year 2000. All these are to buttress the point that the recruit of children by terrorist groups is a menace all over the world. Groups that cannot win unconventional wars can resort to using unconventional means to strike terror. They use the ‘weak’ in the society, women and children specifically, by pulling them into terrorism using them as targets and participants.

The most worrisome part is that these children are forcefully abducted as this is the major way these terrorist groups are expanded. A good example is the abduction of 276 girls on April 14, 2014 from a government school in Chibok, Bornu State. According to news reports, more than 100 of the girls are still missing. In 2018, in like manner, 113 girls were abducted from Government Girls’ Science Technical College in Dapchi, Yobe State. Some 107 were later released even though five had died during the hullaballoo. One of them was kept captive. These are just few of the instances where children were forcefully taken and inducted into the scary world of terrorism in Nigeria in recent years. Children can also be easily coerced to do the bidding of adults. They are easily controlled and indoctrinated into whatever is needed easily. According to reports in The Guardian on 12 January, 2015, three people were killed and many wounded in Yobe State. It was reported that the bombing was suspected to have been caused by two children. Another had happened a day earlier where a girl around 10 years was stopped for a security check in Maiduguri, Bornu State, when bombs strapped to her detonated killing at least 16 people. Another case was a girl around the age of 12 who detonated a bomb at a bus station in Damaturu, also in Yobe State on 15 May, 2015, according to news reports, resulting in the deaths of seven people. They are docile. These children are also used as human shields against attacks. In many cases, they are also subjected to forceful religious conversions and forced marriages. Many of the girl children in captive have been used severally for sexual purposes.

It is so sad that these children are denied the beauty of enjoying their childhood and are being forced to live a life of fear and violence. Even when they manage to escape or are rescued, they most times live with the trauma for the rest of their lives. Their childhood innocence that was taken away can never be returned nor replaced. Nigeria isn’t a country that puts emphasis on therapy for victims and many of this children do not have the best way to deal with being reconnected with their families or being back in the normal society. They face being stigmatized by the people they came back to. Some who come back bearing babies have another life mapped out for them. When a little girl of 12 or 13 is being forced to be with a man of 39 or 40 to the extent of carrying his child and bearing it, it can affect the psyche of a child for life. Some of the girls live with Vesicovaginal fistula (VVF) for the rest of their lives. The painful part is the government doesn’t seem to care about how those rescued among these children fair.

I think in all fairness, it is the duty of the government to see that children do not suffer the worst impacts of conflicts and wars. Children should not be denied their childhood and freedom.

Child recruitment into terrorist groups is prohibited by international laws, so the Nigerian government and its justice system should do all it can to prevent child recruitment and exploitation by terrorists and any other extremist groups. It is not out of place for the government to beef up security in the schools around those volatile areas where terrorism is rampant: Bornu, Yobe, etc. Since it is a well known fact that most of the children abducted are taken right within their school premises, security outfits should be made to keep an eye on these children, at least during school hours; it might curb the way the schools get bombarded. There should be protection for children.

Source » tribuneonlineng