Stopping the use of child soldiers (with surveys)

Three years ago, when I first engaged the issue of child soldiering, the very idea was not simply appalling and repulsive—its first real mention to me was actually physically painful. Several years, countless months of field work, dozens of interviews, and hundreds of surveys later (1361, to be exact) the shock of child soldiering has dulled (sometimes, it feels, too much so). The issue remains no less pressing, however, as children continue to be drafted into armed forces worldwide .

In 2006 and 2007 the international community rallied more than ever against the use of child soldiers. In fact, 2006 might be thought of as the year that child soldiers became an American pop icon. In a single year we witnessed the emergence of a bestselling memoir of a boy soldier (endorsed by Starbucks, no less), a major motion picture, and a novel of child soldiering that made the New York Times’ 100 most notable books of the year. Never before, and perhaps never again, could we buy a child soldier’s memoirs alongside our decaf, low-fat, grande mochaccino.

More substantively, in 2006 the United Nations and innumerable charitable organizations renewed their efforts to stamp out child soldiering. In particular, 2006 marked the 10th anniversary of Graça Machel’s ground-breaking report on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children, and a special report and strategic plan was commissioned to identify what has changed and what more can be done by the international community.

What has been most upsetting to me is the how little actual information and investigation has gone into understanding the causes of child soldiering and what tactics might be effective at tackling this most terrible of issues. Too much of the analysis and policy-making is based on myth, supposition, and outdated information. Too often it seems as though emotion and activism trump careful investigation. Stomping out the recruitment and use of child soldiers, however, will take more than moral revulsion and grand speeches. Rather we must strive to understand the motivations and constraints that drive government armies and rebel groups to recruit and arm children.

Dozens of rationales for the use of child soldiers appear in the large and growing literature. Yet virtually none of these hypotheses have been critically investigated or tested. One could be forgiven for believing that African rebel groups routinely kidnap nine-year olds to commit their most bloody and malignant work drugged out on a combination of cocaine and gun powder. Such a story makes good press, but good press does not make it true.

One of the most serious and serial offenders in child soldiering is the mysterious rebel Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, in northern Uganda. For nearly twenty years this large but largely rag-tag band of rebels has kidnapped thousands of children and young adults to fight in its spiritual and political quest against the Government of Uganda. The LRA has seemed to epitomize the image of the irrational and barbarous rebel group, recruiting children for their superior fighting power, fearlessness, and bloodthirsty nature. (Lest you think I exaggerate, see this recent New York Times account of the LRA.)

New and representative survey data and interviews from northern Uganda allow us to understand the phenomenon of child soldiering in Uganda more fully and discriminate between competing accounts of its causes. In this book chapter, my co-author Jeannie Annan and I use survey data from hundreds of former LRA abductees to show that, in Uganda at least, adolescent recruitment is a product not of barbarism but of rational calculation. As it turns out, the LRA were three times as likely to target a 14-year old for abduction as a child of 9 or an adult of 21.

The survey suggests that young adolescents were disproportionately targeted for three principal reasons: because they were overrepresented in the population; because they were more effective guerrillas than younger children; and (perhaps most importantly) because they were more easily indoctrinated and disoriented than young adults—the older the recruit, the less likely they were to buy into the fear and propaganda, and the more likely they were to know their location and attempt escape. Youth who were children and orphaned at the time of abduction were also much more likely to stay with the rebel group once abducted, suggesting a fourth determinant of child soldiering: the quality of the life to which one can return.

In contrast, little support is found for some of the dominant myths of child soldiering in Uganda. Nine-year olds are, contrary to popular wisdom, not the recruits of choice. Nor do they appear particularly useful or effective as guerrilla fighters (if the fact that very few were ever trusted with a firearm is any guide). Furthermore, abducted youth do not (thankfully) appear to have been forced to commit heinous violence as a rule upon abduction.

These findings have important implications for the way the international community moves forward in ending the use of child soldiers. First, programs that increase the likelihood that younger abductees will run away—through advance training in escape strategies or counter-indoctrination education—could reduce their value to the rebel group and discourage underage recruitment. In fact, anecdotal evidence from northern Uganda suggests that by 2002 informal community networks and radio programs had begun to (successfully) conduct such education for just this purpose.

Second, length of stay may also be diminished by programs that increase the value of a recruit’s outside options, such as amnesty programs and reintegration packages for ex-combatants, support for socially dislocated youth (such as foster care for orphans), as well as general schooling and employment opportunities. Again, anecdotal evidence suggests that such programs were influential in Uganda. Several abductees and rebel leaders explained the steep fall in new abductions in 2004 and 2005 as a consequence of the widespread knowledge of the government’s amnesty program.

By using careful data collection and analysis to understand the patterns of and forces influencing child recruitment in Uganda, we are in a better position to change the incentives and constraints facing rebel leaders and reduce and combat the recruitment of children more effectively. By backing our activism with analysis, we help to bring a sense of proportion and reality to the experiences of children in conflict, the underlying causes of their exploitation, as well as the interventions that work.

(P.S. The photo above was taken by Lance Bellers and was nicked from the July/Sept 2007 issue of BBC Focus on Africa, p. 58)