Africa:  Africa is the epicenter of the children soldier phenomenon.  It is estimated that Africa has over 120,000 children soldiers (King 2006). African countries that deploy children soldiers include, but are not limited to:  Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, DR Congo, Congo, Angola, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Chad, and Algeria.  A key component when examining the colossal crisis of children soldiers in Africa is demography.  Youth dominate Africa.  “A shortage of adults makes children vulnerable to recruitment” (King 2006).  Only 5% of the African population is over 60, while almost 50% of the population is under the age of 18.  “Youth in Africa are marginalized by political and social structures, and neglected and overlooked by (all)” (McIntyre 2005, 7).  A brief glance into some of the recent African conflicts helps shed light on the dismal situation.    

            Perhaps the most notorious army, almost exclusively made up of children soldiers, is the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda.  The conflict in northern Uganda between the LRA and the Ugandan government forces (UPDF) is not widely known about, despite the resounding atrocities.  Led by Joseph Kony, the LRA is thought to have abducted over fourteen thousand children in the past 20 years in order to turn them into soldiers (Singer 2005, 20).  Thousands of other Ugandan children live in constant fear and sleep outside to make a potential escape into the bush easier.  Based out of southern Sudan, the LRA consistently raids rural northern Ugandan villages looting goods and kidnapping children.  “The children are brainwashed to fight to the death and are tough to distinguish from their captors” (Singer 2005, 10). 

The LRA’s intentions are to overthrow the Ugandan government and establish their own government based on the Ten Commandments.  Kony mixes Christian fundamentalism and animist spiritual teachings while casually killing and mutilating those who displease him.  “Kony’s a madman”, says one former LRA captive.  He sends children into combat without weapons, orders executions, and takes the abducted girls to be his wives.  It is estimated that Joseph Kony has over 50 wives.  He has fathered many children with these wives who eventually become soldiers in the LRA (Briggs 2005, 154).  Kony forbids people from riding bicycles and anyone caught is subject to having their feet amputated.  Kony became the leader of the LRA after another rebel leader, Alice Lakwena, was defeated and had to flee to Kenya.  Lakwena claims she was inspired by the holy spirit to start the movement with the intention of overthrowing the government and establishing a new order.  Lakwena won several victories before being defeated by the Ugandan forces.  Lakwena claims her movement was different from Kony’s in that hers was only fighting the government, not civilians.  Regardless, war has now raged in northern Uganda since 1986.²

Children taken into the LRA face one of four fates:  1) foot soldiers in the LRA, 2) porters for the LRA, 3) sold to the Sudanese for arms and supplies, or 4) murdered as an example to other new recruits (Briggs 2005, 143).  How are these atrocities even possible on the world stage in the 21^st century?  The answer goes abated with the complexities of the region.  Sudan supports Kony and the LRA and urges them to wage war on the SPLA (Sudanese People’s Liberation Army) and Dinka tribesmen in southern Sudan.  In return, the Ugandan government supports the Sudanese rebel group, SPLA, and refuses to chase the LRA as they retreat across the border into Sudan.  Furthermore, the Ugandan government cites their constitution does not allow them to fight across the Sudanese border.  Meanwhile, the international community stands by, and the results are  a current genocide in Sudan and ongoing abduction and forced recruitment of children into the LRA in Uganda.  In the words of a mother from Uganda’s “Concerned Parents Association”, “I made up my mind to no longer cry, but instead to raise up and do something” (Briggs 2005, 176).  In 2004, the International Criminal Court in Rome issued arrest warrants for Joseph Kony and a dozen fellow LRA officers for war crimes including the abduction and use of children soldiers.  They are still at large.

Rwanda’s genocide in 1994 included thousands of child genocidaires.  The Rwandan genocide that began in April of 1994 lasted merely 100 days but resulted in over 800,000 Tutsis deaths at the hands of the Hutu majority.  In March of 1992, state-owned Radio Rwanda announced the discovery of a Tutsi plan to massacre all Hutus (Gourevitch 1998, 94).  The Hutu used this and the assassination of Hutu president Habyarimana in April of 1994 as propaganda to kill the Tutsis before they killed them.  The mentality quickly became a survival of the fittest, to the victor belongs the spoils, and there is not room for both groups.  The first to be killed in Rwanda were Hutu opposition leaders and highly educated Tutsi officials. “We the people are obliged to take responsibility ourselves and wipe out this scum”, explained a Hutu official (Gourevitch 1998, 96).  Soon everyone, including Hutu children, were called to hunt down all Tutsis.  What followed were massacres and obedient murders committed by Hutus against their neighboring Tutsis. “Hutus young and old rose to the task.  Neighbors killed neighbors, colleagues hacked colleagues to death, doctors killed patients, schoolteachers killed pupils. . .Within days the Tutsi populations of many villages were all but eliminated” (Gourevitch 1998, 115). 

The events of Rwanda are extraordinary.  This decimation of the Rwandan population occurred at nearly 3x the rate of Jewish deaths during the Holocaust.  It is the most efficient mass killing since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki  (Gourevitch 1998, 3).  Thousands of children had participated in the genocide, and still thousands more were killed.  Currently some 400,000 children are forced to survive without one or both parents, and international relief agencies label approximately 1,000,000 children in Rwanda as “vulnerable”.  These children are at risk of being moved from their homes, not attending school, being exploited, living in poverty, or being infected with disease.  By 2004, it was estimated that there were over 7,000 homeless children in Rwanda, half of which were in the capital city of Kigali alone (Briggs 2005, 23).  These statistics are a stark reminder of the appalling remnants of war.   

            Children played a prominent role in the Sierra Leone civil war that lasted from 1991-2001.  Thousands made up the rivaling Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF).  In fact, as many as 80% of the RUF consisted of children soldiers between the ages of seven and fourteen.  In April of 1998, the RUF began Operation No Living Thing, a systematic campaign of killing, rape, and mutilation which has been labeled a “new barbarism”.³  Children were perpetrators, accomplices, and victims to murders, mutilations, rapes, torture, forced labor, and sexual slavery.  Today in Sierra Leone, “children are the most vulnerable to the acute hardship, disease, and malnutrition faced by Sierra Leonean refugees and displaced people” (Beasley 1999, 43).  It is estimated that 10,000 children soldiers were engaged in this bloody civil war.     

Sudan is home to the largest number of refugees, displaced people, and children soldiers in all of Africa.  According to Rory Mungoven, a spokesman for the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, “Sudan is one of the worst child soldier problems in the world.  As many as 100,000 children are fighting on the government side or for rebel groups in southern Sudan” (BBC News 2001).  The civil war pits the “Arab” Muslim North against the “African” Christian South.  Armed conflict has waged for over four decades restraining the country’s growth, stability, and security (Idris 2005, 1).  Ethnic and religious differences are the underlying causes of a gross human tragedy.  Little has been said or done to curtail the appalling human rights violations in Sudan.  Meanwhile, the Islamist government and factions of the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army (SPLA) continue to wage war against one another and the civilian population.