Beyond Kony 2012, child soldiers are used in most civil wars

Such findings, of course, make sense. But what this suggests is that the problem of child soldiers can be addressed via structural approaches aimed at governments and societies. Tackling the underlying problems in those countries can mitigate the factors that give rise to the use of child soldiers in the first place.

For example, states with a track record of human and civil rights abuses should be held accountable before conflicts start. Directly influencing foreign governments’ human rights policies is obviously difficult. Yet, governments can make it more difficult for human rights abusing regimes to hide their atrocities by calling international attention to those actions and the leaders responsible for them. Part of what can shape leaders’ use of child soldiers is their expectations of whether it will alienate their supporters. 

Promoting democratic transitions in conflict-prone countries is another way to reduce the likelihood that child soldiers will be used in subsequent conflicts. Ending Saddam Hussein’s policies on recruiting children into the Iraqi military was certainly one of the positive aspects to come out of Iraq’s democratic transition. The recent international pressure applied to force the coup leaders in Guinea Bissau to step down and let a democratic government return could help prevent child soldiers from being drawn into future conflicts within the country, as they previously had been.

Interceding in civil wars before they become bloody conflicts of attrition can also have a preventive effect. The 1994 genocide in Rwanda is a constant reminder of the devastation from doing nothing. The international community’s inaction left hundreds of thousands dead and allowed the practice of using child soldiers to disseminate into the conflicts taking place in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo for another decade.

The last recommendation, and easiest one to implement, is for the international community to deny military aid to governments that employ child soldiers. In 2010, for example, the US sent military aid to Chad and Yemen, even though the Obama administration knew their governments used child soldiers. Such aid only encourages this practice and undermines international efforts to stop it.

The underlying factors that give rise to child soldiers may be costly and difficult to address, but they are not intractable. The civil war and the LRA’s reign of terror that roiled Uganda from the late 1980s to 2007 was a tragedy. But limiting our efforts to prevent the use of child soldiers only to that case would be a travesty.
 
Bryan Early is an assistant professor in the Political Science and Public Administration & Policy departments in the Rockefeller College at the University at Albany, SUNY. Robert Tynes is the research director for the Project on Violent Conflict in the Rockefeller College at the University at Albany, SUNY.

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