For me, there is nothing quite as horrific as reading about the exploitation of children. News articles detailing the plight of child soldiers leave my stomach in knots - and with the question banging around my head: how is this still happening?
As an eternal optimist, I see beauty in the world - but I also have to acknowledge: there is some serious evil lurking around. Point in fact, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s use of child soldiers (those are the bad guys better known as ISIS or ISIL…. and you thought they couldn’t get worse).
Photo: taken from ISIS training video
Across the vast region of territory under ISIS’s control (which includes large swaths of land in Iraq and Syria), the extremist group has been enlisting children for battle and committing a wide range of abuses against youngsters according to Human Rights Watch and various other human rights groups.
Within the city of Raqqa, Syria - the de facto capital of ISIS, there are reports of young boys attending training camps and religious courses before being conscripted into the extremist group’s fright. Other boys serve as cooks and guards for ISIS - or work as spies, informing on people in their neighborhoods (if this sounds familiar, it’s not a new tactic - drug cartels in Colombia and other Latin American nations use children to collect intelligence, and of course, during the reign of Hitler, Nazi Youth would report on suspicious activities, sometimes against their own parents. Further the use of child soldiers is seen throughout the world in a variety of conflict ridden zones... and now back to ISIS).
Photo: taken from ISIS training video
The ISIS takeover of certain areas in the Middle East is alarming for a myriad of reasons, but it’s the reports of the use of child soldiers that really brings home for me how devastating this group is in its actions. According to an article by the Associated Press, children were observed fighting alongside militants in the Syrian town of Kobani. Additionally, eye-witness reports tell the story of bodies of young boys being carried away from battle, and young people being recruited to carry out suicide attacks. Within the Syrian province of Aleppo, rebels affiliated with the Free Syrian Army said that seeing children fighting was an “often” occurrence in battles against ISIS.
A main hurdle in this issues is that it is difficult to know the full scope of child exploitation in the region - as ISIS-controlled territory is pretty closed to the outside world. There is currently no reliable data on the number of young people employed by the Islamic State, according the the United Nations.
Despite inconclusive figures on child soldiers, a UN panel investigating war crimes in the Syrian conflict concluded that in ISIS’s enlistment of children for active combat roles is doing so "in a systematic and organized manner."
Photo: taken from ISIS training video
It’s heavy stuff. While the use of children in armed conflicts is an epidemic around the world, ISIS has been unusually deliberate in getting children involved in the fight. Commented Laurent Chapuis, UNICEF regional child protection advisor for the Middle East and North Africa, “ISIS seems to be quite transparent and vocal about their intention and their practice of recruiting children...CChildren as young as 10, 12 years old are being used in a variety of roles, as combatants as messengers, spies, guards, manning checkpoints but also for domestic purposes like cooking, cleaning, sometimes providing medical care to the wounded.”
If you’re feeling horror - I’m with you. And you may be also be asking the question (and it’s a good one): why the use of children in armed conflict? The answer is this - ISIS "prioritizes children as a vehicle for ensuring long-term loyalty, adherence to their ideology and a cadre of devoted fighters that will see violence as a way of life," according to the United Nations.
This may be an intuitive fact - but (and can I say “duh!”) the use of children under the age of 18 in combat is a war crime. For children, the devastation of battle has life-long implications. In a study of 300 former Ugandan child soldiers, it was found that almost one third had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Further, two-thirds were suffering behavioural and emotional problems, mostly anxiety and depression.
ISIS’s use of child soldiers is bone-chilling - and with these children being recruited into fighting in some of the remotest regions of the world, it may seem impossible to help halt this growing crisis. But, (my personal mantra) knowledge is power - and by understanding what these young children are going through, we, global citizens, can have more impact in our responses to the epidemic.
My personal recommendations for those looking to get more involved in fighting back against the use of child soldiers: First, stay informed by checking out the advocacy work of organizations like the International Rescue Committee, Amnesty International, or reading memoirs about the experience of those conscripted into fighting at a young age, like Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone. Second, you can urge your local, state, and/or national representative to help support the end of the use of child soldiers through increased aid (like USAID in the United States Congress, or the Department of International Development in the UK. I may be sounding a bit like a Pollyanna (okay, guilty as charged), but I fundamentally believe that by trying to understand and empathize with others experiences, we, global citizens, are able to make positive change in the world.
What are your thoughts about the use of child soldiers - and how do you think this global crisis can be stopped? Leave your ideas in the comments section! I look forward to reading them.