News from the field

24 August 2006

_____________________________________________________________

Child Soldiers and human trafficking

• Trafficking

Child soldiers drill with weapons in an ethnic Hema militia camp near Bunia in the Democratic Republic of Congo Photo credit: Reuters Alertnet

Consider this…

Rebels arrive in your village. Your parents and the parents of your neighbours are beaten, speared and bludgeoned to death in front of you and your friends.
Everyone between the age of 8 and 16 is rounded up. Then, loaded on your backs with loot taken from your own families you are force-marched across the country. The abuses continue. You watch friends murdered for lagging behind and their corpses left to rot where they fall or are thrown into the surrounding bushes.
The captives and their captors finally arrive in the rebel camps, where the former undergo a strict regime of forced labour, deprivation and punishment. Girls are raped or forced to become the "wives" of rebel commanders. Even those not yet in their teens are not spared. Any unsuccessful attempts to escape are brutally punished. Some succeed, but many never reach home.

This is a real story. More than 20,000 children have been abducted by the rebels in northern Uganda since 1990. The kidnappings subsided in 2001, when hopes were high that the conflict was slowly dying out, but after the Ugandan armed forces launched a military offensive in early 2002, the abductions escalated, spreading -- along with the conflict -- to previously unaffected areas.

Reproduced with permission from IRIN.

Some facts about child soldiers:

• More than 300,000 children under 18 are fighting in armed conflicts in more than thirty countries worldwide. Hundred of thousands more children have been recruited, both into governmental armed forces and armed opposition groups.
• Most child soldiers are between the ages of 15 and 18, although they can be as young as 10.
• Only now, in 2004, are international protocols being developed to limit the age of recruits to those over 18 years of age. Some countries who have signed the protocols still have armies that recruit under this age but at least they are thinking about it.
• What is the appeal of children as recruits? Often because sources of adult men have been depleted through battle and the destruction of communities by war. In addition, children are more compliant and can be more quickly conditioned into killing. This makes them easier to train. While they can quickly be conditioned to actions of violence, psychological harm occurs as they begin to appreciate what they have done. The resulting sense of shame, confusion and isolation is enough to trap them into a lifetime of violence.
• Child soldiers are often used for special tasks, including to commit atrocities against their own families and communities.
• Most vulnerable children are those separated from their families or with disrupted family backgrounds, for example, orphans, unaccompanied children, children from single-parent families, or from families headed by children – all common scenarios in war-torn communities.
• The widespread availability of modern lightweight weapons enables children to become efficient killers in combat.
• Because children can be intimidated more easily than adults, they can be bullied into staying with their leaders – leaders who are in fact their oppressors.
• The price for trying to break free can be very high, beatings, rape, death.
• Child soldiers can be found all over the world – The Sudan, Uganda, Thailand, Columbia. The problem is most critical in Africa and Asia, though children are used as soldiers by governments and armed groups in many countries in the Americas, Europe and Middle East.
• The threat of being kidnapped into a militia group is so serious in some communities that whole villages seek safehavens to sleep in at night so that the children will not be stolen from their homes. While this provides safety in numbers, it destroys the fabric of life.
• It is often difficult for child soldiers to return home, since many of their victims families are their neighbours.
• Rehabilitation of child soldiers is possible, with psychological support and the support for their communities.
• Much of the funding for militia and rebel armies who recruit child soldiers comes from governments of neighbouring countries. If those countries can be educated to change their policies, real change can occur – this is achievable.
• Today there is a concerted international effort to eradicate the problem of child soldiers.
• By reducing and controlling the arms trade we will reduce the incidence of child soldiers 
    

Case studies

"I am twelve and I am from the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). I served in a militia group for about one year before UN troops caught me and took me to a transit camp for demobilised child soldiers.

"Although I went by myself to join the (army) I left it because I didn't see the benefit of fighting. I was paid only once.

"I decided to join without my parent's knowledge because I was tired of running every time there was a raid on our village. I was also afraid or being forcefully recruited

"My duties in the UPC were mainly routine. I didn't kill anyone as I was mostly on guard duty. Right now, I am glad to be at this camp where I get food and clothing. All I want is to go to school. I need help to return to school in order to help my parents. I don't want to go to school in Bunia, the militia might recapture me."

Information supplied by the UN

I am 15. I was abducted by the Lord’s Resistence Army (Uganda). I was made to kill a boy who tried to escape. I watched another boy being hacked to death because he did not raise the alarm when his friend escaped.

Information supplied by Amnesty International

‘Justine’, a former child soldier from Northern Uganda now aged 17, was abducted, tortured, sexually abused, made pregnant and gave birth to a baby girl. She received assistance from the Children and War Centre in Gulu and has gone back to school.

‘Mary’ from Goma is 17. She was abducted and repeatedly raped for several days by Mai-Mai rebels. She had a baby but was eventually able to rejoin her village. She has joined a rehabilitation school funded by Caritas Australia and is now learning skills to support herself and provide for her baby.

information supplied by Caritas Australia

Back to top

Human trafficking

• Trafficking can be for illegal and or underpaid work but it is usually for the purpose of sexual exploitation.
• Children, that is, those under the age of consent are as vulnerable to human trafficking as those over the age of consent
• From Himalayan villages to Eastern European cities, people – especially women and girls – are tricked into leaving their home village by the prospect of a well-paid job as a domestic servant, waitress or factory worker in a distant city.
• Sometimes, the recruitment is for a ‘holiday’.
• Often, parents give approval for their children to go because they falsely believe that their children are being given the opportunity to go to a better life.
• Trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation tends to be more universal than the problem of child soldiers – we do not have any recorded cases of Australian children who are child soldiers but we have cases being prosecuted before Australian courts involving girls brought to Australia from the Phillipines and Indonesia to work as prostitutes, although they were told that they would be given jobs as domestic workers.
• Traffickers recruit victims through fake advertisements, mail-order bride catalogues and casual acquaintances.
• Upon arrival at their destination, victims are placed in conditions controlled by traffickers while they are exploited to earn illicit revenues.
• Many are physically confined, their travel or identity documents are taken away and they or their families are threatened if they do not cooperate. Women and girls forced to work as prostitutes are blackmailed by the threat that traffickers will tell their families.
• Those trapped in these situations are dependent on their traffickers for food, shelter and other basic necessities. They are usually intimidated into dependency.
• Traffickers also play on victims’ fears that authorities in a strange country will prosecute or deport them if they ask for help.
• There is a need to strengthen the criminal justice response to trafficking through legislative reform, awareness-raising and training, as well as through national and international cooperation.
• The support and protection of victims who give evidence is key to prosecuting the ringleaders behind the phenomenon.
• Education decreases the risk of trafficking because it creates options for work without having to leave home communities and it helps to inform those who might not be aware of the dangers to their children and family members.
• In many communities, including our own, the stigma of prostitution sticks, even when it has been forced on the victim.
• Rehabilitation is possible, with psychological support
•  There are many people and organizations throughout the world who are committed to fighting human trafficking. It is a problem which has been around for centuries but it is a problem which public awareness and condemnation can change – much as with slavery, which was once considered socially acceptable.

Case studies

Sylvia was 17 years old when she was trafficked from Nigeria to Italy. She was offered the chance to study in Europe, and despite her father's concerns, she decided to go. Her trafficker paid for her travel, and she agreed to pay him back once she finished her studies.
Sylvia was taken to Italy, via Hungary and Austria. The journey took over a month, and the trafficker reassured her that he was finalising arrangements for her arrival in Italy.
But when they reached their destination, the trafficker took her passport, and sold her to a madam for US$10,000.
She was forced to work as a prostitute for one and a half years, and her madam demanded she hand over all her earnings. She faced constant threats and violence if she did not make the required daily earnings.
stophumantraffic.org

Alice was 25 when she left her job in Manila, the Philippines. She is a qualified civil engineer, yet her salary was not enough to pay for her four brothers and sisters to go through school. When she saw an advert offering well-paid posts as civil engineers in Kuwait, she contacted the recruitment agency immediately.
She had to pay half the agency's fees up front, agreeing to repay the rest on taking up her position. But when she arrived in Kuwait she was told to sign a contract to work as a domestic servant. The agency refused to allow her to return to the Philippines, insisting that she take up the post and pay them the money she owed.
For two and a half years she worked as a domestic servant for a family. She never had a day off, and regularly worked 20 hour days.
stophumantraffic.org

Overlaps

There is an overlap between the issues of child soldiers and human trafficking:
• both boys and girls are recruited as child soldiers. The girls are vulnerable to rape and sexual abuse, in addition to the other issues child soldiers confront.
• Neither child soldiers or trafficking are ‘new’ they have been around for centuries. But what is new is that many thousands of people are organising to stop them.

What Caritas is doing

Caritas Australia through its partners in Uganda support the Former Child Soldiers Rehabilitation program.
More than 900 former child soldiers will receive the emotional, and physical support to allow them to be fully rehabilitated and reintegrated back into their communities.

The abducted children are taken to rehabilitation centres ran by Caritas partners, where they will be (where possible) reunited with families, and provided with clothing.
Most children who return are malnourished and are provided with a balanced and nutritious diet to help them gain strength.
At the centre, the children receive counseling that allows them to start to deal with the trauma, anger and sadness of their experiences. Step by step the are slowly introduced back into their communities.

The program also ensures that the children are monitored for any signs of not coping after they leave the rehabilitation centre.
A similar rehabilitation program is run in Nepal for those being repatriated from sexual slavery in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Caritas Australia also runs extensive awareness and education programs in Nepal as a prevention tool. It also runs a national radio program on the topic.

What you can do

The following actions are things you can do to help prevent the exploitation of children:
1. Learn about the rights of the child.
2. Show your support for the Millennium Development Goals by signing the millennium development goals petition. If less people live in poverty, less will be vulnerable to exploitation by those making false promises.
3. Become informed – educate yourself using sites such as OzSpirit and the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, share your knowledge with others.
4. Become politically active, demand your politicians be proactive about sexual exploitation and child soldiers
5. Make sure that you eliminate exploitative behaviour from your own life.
6. Do not lose the sense of social justice you carry now – when you are bankers, nurses, lawyers, teachers, secretaries and scientists, speak out and remain active – mobilise with others to seek change.
7. Make a donation to organisations which work to fight the use of child soldiers and human trafficking and to rehabilitate victims.
8. Keep pressure on politicians to develop laws that impose severe penalties on Australian nationals who go to places such as Asia to sexually exploit children. Strong laws in one country are undermined by weak laws in their neighbouring country.
9. Pray for change.
10. Be hopeful and do not give into despair – the world is still a beautiful place.
 
To make a donation ring our Caritas Australia toll free number on 1800 024 413 or donate online.