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Indian Springs
Juvenile Crimes
Child Soldiers CP
Jan/Feb ‘11
The resolution discusses crimes that occur within US jurisdiction, which is not exclusive
to our borders. Alternate interpretations are nonsense because they conflate political boundaries
with geographic ones—a criminal who flees to another country to seek asylum can still be
extradited and citizens traveling abroad charged with crimes are often tried in the US.
Additionally, international crimes can still qualify as “felonies”; a felony is defined by MerriamWebster as “a crime for which the punishment in federal law may be death or imprisonment for
more than one year.” International war crimes have empirically been punished domestically as
felonies. Human Rights Watch1:
New legislation adopted on September 15, 2008 will permit the United States to prosecute foreign military
commanders who recruit child soldiers abroad, Human Rights Watch said today. The Child Soldiers Accountability Act
passed the House of Representatives unanimously on September 8 and was adopted by the Senate today
. The law makes it a federal crime
to knowingly recruit or use soldiers under the age of 15 and permits the United States to bring
charges under the law against both US citizens and non-citizens who are in the United
States. The law imposes penalties of up to 20 years, or up to life in prison if death
results, and allows the United States to deport or deny entry to individuals who have knowingly recruited children as soldiers. Children are currently used in armed conflicts
in at least 17 countries. Recruiters prey upon children, who are often the most vulnerable potential recruits and the most susceptible to threats and coercion. Child soldiers are used
as combatants, porters, guards and spies, and for other duties. The recruitment and use of children as soldiers was recognized in 1998 as a war crime under the jurisdiction of the
International Criminal Court. In 2007, four former military commanders from Sierra Leone were convicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone for recruiting and using children
as soldiers. Rebel and military commanders from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda have also been charged under the International Criminal Court with recruiting
and using child soldiers, though none have yet gone to trial.
[Next, the US domestically prosecutes adults for war crimes committed abroad—empirically
proven in Iraq. Otterman2:
Bush administration officials announced April 7th a two-part plan for prosecuting the Iraqi president and senior members of his regime.
Officials said Iraqis
who have committed war crimes in the current war will be tried in U.S.-run courts.
For crimes against the Iraqi people committed before the current war, the United States will help returning Iraqi exiles and citizens to establish an Iraqi-run process. What war
crimes would the United States prosecute? U.S.
officials have already begun to document Iraqi fighters'
violations of the international rules of war [such as]. Iraqi soldiers could be prosecuted for mistreating,
torturing or executing American prisoners of war, posing as civilians, using non-combatants as human shields, and
faking surrenders. The United States may also attempt to prosecute Iraqi officials for war crimes committed against U.S. forces in the 1991 Gulf War,
officials said.
]
1
Human Rights Watch. US: Congress Acts to Prosecute Recruiters of Child Soldiers: No Safe Haven for Exploiters
of Children. September 14, 2008. http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/09/14/us-congress-acts-prosecute-recruiterschild-soldiers
2
Otterman, Sharon. “IRAQ: Prosecuting War Criminals.” Council on Foreign Relations. 2003.
http://www.cfr.org/publication/7814/iraq.html#p2
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Indian Springs
Juvenile Crimes
Child Soldiers CP
Jan/Feb ‘11
Thus, the counterplan:
A. Text: The United States Federal Government should not prosecute child soldiers,
reversing the precedent set by the Omar Khadr case, and should instead increase
funding for demobilization efforts and community based rehabilitation for these
children. Madar3, 11/5 explains the Khadr case:
It’s not hard to see why my superlative-loving friend felt this way: we were covering the case of
Omar Khadr, a 15-year-old
Canadian captured after a firefight with U.S. forces outside Kabul in July
2002,tortured and interrogated for a few months at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, then transported to
Guantánamo[,]. He just reached a plea agreement that will avoid a trial before
a military commission at Gitmo for five “war crimes.”Four of them, freshly invented for the occasion,
are not recognized as war crimes in any other court on the planet. (Khadr pled guilty to all charges and will get at least one year more at Gitmo -- in solitary -- then
perhaps be transferred to Canada for a remaining seven years.)Aside from Khadr and about 130 other prisoners who may one day see a trial, Guantánamo also holds
47 more War on Terror prisoners who are expected to be “detained” indefinitely without being tried at all. This was one of the radical policies of George W. Bush
and Dick Cheney that is now cheerfully defended by the human rights grandees in Barack Obama’s State Department. Gitmo and all other places without habeas
corpus rights are indeed dismal places -- and there
[This] is certainly something disgusting about the first conviction of a
child soldier since World War II.All the same, I couldn’t help but wonder if my vehement Kollegin had ever visited a
homegrown federal prison like the one in Terre Haute, Indiana (whose maximum security wing was copied down to the smallest detail at Gitmo’s Camp 5), or even
your run-of-the-mill overcrowded state lock-up, the kind you pass on the highway without even noticing that you’ve done so, or one of the crumbling youth
detention facilities in New York State which, as we lawyers who have represented youth offenders know, are hellish. Such prisons may lack the exotic setting of
Gitmo’s Camp Delta, but they should not be forgotten. At the risk of sounding boosterish, it so happens that a great many of America’s unsung domestic prisons
also routinely abuse inmates, Guantánamo-style, are unable or unwilling to prevent inmate rape, employ long-term, sustained solitary confinement (which gives
waterboarding a run for its money), and in actual practice are often beyond the rule of law. Confessions, true or false, obtained through violence and threats, aren’t
restricted to Guantánamo either. They are not all that hard to find in our contiguous 48 states. And for the rest of our prison system, where are the outraged German
journalists? Why are no British “law lords” calling the federal supermax in Florence, Colorado, a “legal black hole” as law lord Johan Steyn termed Guantánamo.
Alas, in so many ways Guantánamo is not the exception but far closer to the rule of our criminal justice system, and the case of Omar Khadr, rather than being an
anomaly of the War on Terror, is in all too many ways positively all-American. To be sure, taking a child soldier you’ve captured in a foreign land, whose
[His] interrogation entailed stringing him up half-naked in a five-foot-square
cell with wrists chained to the bars at eye level and a hood clamped tightly over his face, then prosecuting him for
“murder” because he allegedly tossed a grenade on a foreign battlefield, does present some legal issues that don’t ordinarily come up in Spokane or
.
Chillicothe
B. Competition:
1. Mutually exclusive: The AC treats juveniles who commit violent felonies the
same as adults while the CP does not. Adults who commit war crimes are
3
Madar, Chase [Chase Madar is a lawyer in New York. He reviews and reports for the London Review of Books,
Le Monde Diplomatique, the American Conservative Magazine and CounterPunch]. What's Wrong with Prosecuting
a Child Soldier? Chase Madar: The Case of Omar Khadr is a Worrying Challenge to the U.S. Justice System.
November 5, 2010. CBS News.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/04/opinion/main7023770_page3.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody
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prosecuted according to U.S. federal law, but children who commit war crimes
are not prosecuted.
2. Net Benefits: If the CP solves AC harms while avoiding its disadvantages, prefer
the CP.
C. Solvency: The CP solves 100% of the aff because the counterplan does the aff
advocacy within the geographical boundaries of the U.S. while excluding child
soldiers. Jail sentences can never solve child soldiering because it only attaches
increased stigma to those who are imprisoned; when released, former child soldiers
will inevitably reproduce their past violence. Jail does not teach an abused person
how to peacefully exist in society, only further re-entrenches norms of domination
and suffering. And, prosecution itself can be extremely damaging to the rehabilitation
process. Grossman4:
Further,
prosecuting children under age eighteen is inconsistent with the underlying goals of the CRC: to [does not]
promote the best interests and well-being of the child. The default rule for the age of the child is
eighteen, differing only when he or she attains majority earlier under the domestic law applicable to the child. The CRC specifically states that the best interests of
the child "shall be a primary consideration" in all actions concerning the child. It further specifies that States Parties should undertake all feasible measures to care
for and protect children in armed conflict, and that states must seek to promote physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration of child victims of
armed conflict. Recovery and re-integration is meant to take place "in an environment which fosters the health, self-respect and dignity of the child." The CRC itself
states that States Parties should promote the establishment of measures for children accused of violating penal law "without resorting to judicial proceedings." It
proposes a variety of dispositions including counseling, vocational training, and other alternatives to institutional care to ensure that "children are dealt with in a
manner appropriate to their well-being and proportionate both to their circumstances and the offence." The CRC discourages the use of deprivation of liberty as an
adequate disposition, stating that it "shall only be used as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time."
interest of former child soldiers. They
Trials are not in the best
are less likely to promote their well-being and social
reintegration than primarily rehabilitative measures or other post-conflict accountability methods. From a practical
standpoint, many post-conflict, transitional governments cannot prosecute children while upholding the procedural safeguards of the CRC. For example, the twenty
percent of the judiciary that survived the conflict in Rwanda simply could not expediently process the thousands of children that were detained while protecting their
rights. In June 1996, 1741 children were being held in detention "in dreadful conditions" in Rwanda, and 550 of these children were under fifteen years old. Two
years later, children still lacked legal assistance, and no child-specific legal procedures were in place. According to the Africa News Service, only 1500 of the
approximately 4000 children accused of participating in the Rwandan genocide had been released from detention by November 14, 2001.
Even if a
child is pardoned or provided with a disposition other than a deprivation of liberty after undergoing a trial, the
process itself may threaten the child's psychological healing by making him or
her
re-live trauma, delaying the return of any semblance of normalcy, and making it more difficult for him or her
to reintegrate into society, particularly if the trial is public. While telling the truth about perpetrating or being a
Grossman, Nienke [B.A., Harvard College; J.D., Harvard Law School]. “Rehabilitation or revenge: prosecuting
child soldiers for human rights violations.” Georgetown University Law Center. 2007.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Rehabilitation+or+revenge%3A+prosecuting+child+soldiers+for+human...a0164221050
4
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Juvenile Crimes
Child Soldiers CP
Jan/Feb ‘11
victim of a crime may be [key to] an integral part of the psychological recovery process, without adequate support and care, it may be damaging for a child;
an
adversarial process like a trial is likely to aggravate a child's distress, instead
of providing a supportive environment for healing. On the other hand, "done well, determinations of moral
culpability for abuses committed both against and by children can advance the child's moral development and reinsertion. Although it may thwart a victim's
legitimate desire for justice, putting child soldiers on trial endangers their reintegration and rehabilitation into society.
Expanding aid stabilizes the environment of child soldiers, allowing them to
reintegrate into society. Young5:
It is also difficult to identify child soldiers among members of armed forces.
Using an age threshold is a positive first
step, but should take social and cultural values into account so it will not be an arbitrary cutoff. In addition, identifying and demobilizing girls accompanying
armed forces presents special challenges, since girls may serve as sex slaves, servants, or soldiers. Some girls may have become pregnant and borne children of their
own during their time with the armed forces. Each of these roles carries specific social stigmas that these girls must engage during the rehabilitation process. Finally,
when child soldiers are identified, the international community can use centralized and decentralized (local, community-based) methods to demobilize, rehabilitate,
and reintegrate them. There is no one right way to rehabilitate or reintegrate demobilized children, but the international co mmunity can most effectively implement
a bottom-up approach to this process. International organizations,
states, and international NGOs should focus on providing
community and family members with the resources and capacities they need to successfully
reunite and reintegrate former child-soldiers with their communities. This is an
important part of the rehabilitation process, since it is difficult for a child to deal with
emotional issues of abuse, for example, before they even know where or with whom they will
be living. In addition, these international actors should help provide sustained financial resources and
technical assistance to institutionalize formal and informal educational and vocational training
programs for demobilized child soldiers. These programs can build capacity for former child soldiers
to better take advantage of economic, political, and social opportunities following the
reintegration process. With broader missions beyond just formal education, schools can also serve as bases for local interventions by
becoming centers to mobilize community members and resources.
Community-based approaches empirically succeed. Young 26:
However, in his
[Psychologist Neil Boothby’s] evaluation of the same Lhanguene Center
in Mozambique, Psychologist Neil Boothby is much more[was] positive.Boothby agrees that the Lhanguene Center served mainly
as a political tool (to publicize the atrocities committed by the rebel group, Renamo) and had negative side effects, such as reinforcing the idea that children would
not be welcomed back to their families or communities. Despite the challenges though,he found that
the centralized family tracing
and reunification program was very successful, and all of the boys’ families were eventually located. By
working with community leaders and the NGO Save the Children,government
5
social workers successfully funded and
Young, Aaron. Preventing, Demobilizing, and Rehabilitating Child Soldiers in African Conflicts. Duke University,
Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy. Presented at the Center on Rights Development at the University of
Denver's Graduate School of International Studies. April 13, 2007.
http://www.du.edu/korbel/cord/symposia/2007/young07.pdf
6
Ibid.
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Juvenile Crimes
Child Soldiers CP
Jan/Feb ‘11
implemented
long-term programs, including apprenticeships and reconciliation projects, to rehabilitate the
former child soldiers. Centralized methods can be viewed in stark contrast to the indigenous rehabilitation methods Honwana also
documents, which focus on reuniting children with their families and leaving the past behind them. Moreover, trauma centers focus on the children as individuals,
whereas community-based methods focus on the broader social environment.
[In contrast] in Angola, Honwana writes, children
faced general problems in the reintegration phase that were created by the lack of
resources and institutions. Former child soldiers were given a care package with some clothing, currency, and food, but upon arriving
back in their communities were unable to resume life where they had left off years before.
vocational training programs,
Without resources or educational or
many children ended up on the streets or in occupations comparable to slavery. In Sierra
Leone, for example, former child soldiers were sent to work in the diamond mines for little or no pay because they had no other economic opportunities after the
war.
Funding threatens the future success and growth of reintegration and rehabilitation
programs—US help is needed. IRIN7:
A programme to rehabilitate more than 7,000 child soldiers who fought in Sierra Leone's
decade-long civil war
is in danger of stalling because of a serious shortfall in funding, the UN
. UNICEF said that US $1.4 million is needed immediately and
children's fund (UNICEF) warnedon Tuesday
a further $2.5 million would be required in the "near future" if their critical reeducation and re-training programmes were to be completed."We are now going to close these
courses less than halfway through," UNICEF's Executive Director Carol Bellamy said in a statement. "We will have thousands of youth on the streets many of
whom have toted guns who have had a taste of success in school and to whom we are handing the bitter pill of failure. We have war on the borders of this still
fragile country," she said. "If we can't show proof of the dividends of peace to children how can we prove the dividends of peace to adults," Bellamy added.
UNICEF's representative in Sierra Leone, Aboubacry Tall, said the two-year-old child soldier re-integration programme had already scored many notable successes.
"Around 98 percent of former child fighters and separated children have returned to their communities," he said. Hundreds of villages had been strengthened with
the resources to welcome the children lost to war and to help them adjust to village life again, Tall said. Thousands of young minds once engaged by fighting had
been re-engaged by training programmes that promise a future, he added. ButTall warned thatthe job remains incomplete. UNICEF warned that the threat to the
rehabilitation programme in Sierra Leone comes at a time when the use of child soldiers is once more surging across Africa, particularly in Liberia, theDemocratic
Republic ofCongo, Uganda and Burundi.
U.S. funding is key—without increased funding, lack of U.N. efforts and international
support guarantees continued child soldiering. Singer8:
Unfortunately,
there are typically few mechanisms in place after conflicts end to deal with the issues
unique to child combatants. In most peace settlementsand post-conflict recovery programs, child soldiers are
either forgotten or lumped together under the general grouping of “ex-combatants.” The result
is that children usually get shortchanged in the support they need, not only to their detriment but also to the detriment of broader peace prospects. For example,
its first
in
Sierra Leone operation in the mid-1990’s, the United Nations earmarked $34 million to disarm,
demobilize,
and reintegrate ex-combatants. However, only $965,000 of this already
7
The Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) [the humanitarian news and analysis service of the United
Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs]. Sierra Leone: Child soldier rehabilitation programme
runs out of cash. July 22, 2003. http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=45097
8
Singer, Peter. “Children at War.” 2005. http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520248762
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Juvenile Crimes
Child Soldiers CP
Jan/Feb ‘11
small amount was directed toward the tens of thousands of child soldiers in Sierra
Leone, despite the fact that they made up the bulk of the fighters in the war
never fully stuck and
. As a result of the failures of the peace process, the original settlement
the fighting began again, with most of the ex-child combatants
simply rejoining the warring groups.
And, US funding is key because of world perception of the US as a global leader—U.S.
funding sends a message against cultures of violence. McManimon9 05:
Rehabilitation and reintegration of child soldiers into their communities is crucial in ensuring
both lasting peace and
stable communities. Just as the decommissioning of arms is now seen as a crucial--though often missing--component
in cease-fires and peace accords, the resettlement and reintegration of child soldiers and other combatants should be critical elements. Children's basic needs must
be addressed, along with education and family reunification. For instance, Christian Children's Fund (CCF) and the United Nations Children's Fund
(UNICEF), with help from the U.S. Agency for International Development, have developed localespecific
programs to demobilize and return Angolan children home. To continue and expand this work,
Congress should increase funding for the rehabilitation and reintegration of
child soldiers. The U.S. should also be willing to grant asylum to former child soldiers unable to return home and to
disarmed and demobilized
youngsters fleeing wars or conscription. Washington refuses to admit that the U.S. has its own child soldiering problem. But 17-year-olds in the U.S. armed forces
are only one aspect of a greater problem: a tolerance and even
glorification of violence in U.S. culture that leads
many youth to engage in different types of warfare in U.S.streets and schools.What must be recognized is
that this
tolerance of violence is ultimately connected to Washington’s failure to
condemn unequivocally all use of children as soldiers.
Thus,
this culture of violence has
ramificationsnot only in countless U.S. communities but alsofor hundreds of thousands of children—
around the world. As public concern grows over youth violence, we must be sure that the efforts to end violence
especially child soldiers—
perpetrated by and against children extend to all the world's children.
D. Net Benefits:
Deontological Benefits
[(__) Child soldiers aren’t morally culpable because they are victims forced into military
service, through both direct and indirect means.Young10 3:
Some
child soldiers are forced into service; others [or] join conflicts due to economic or
social pressures. In the latter cases, children have few perceived opportunities to make a
living outside of roles in conflict, and typically have some ideological or perceived monetary incentive to serve. For example,
children joining the FARC-EP, the UC-ELN, or the AUC in Columbia are often bribed or have familial links
9
Shannon McManimon and Rachel Stohl. "Use of Children as Soldiers." Foreign Policy in Focus. October 5, 2005.
http://www.fpif.org/reports/use_of_children_as_soldiers
10
Ibid.
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Juvenile Crimes
Child Soldiers CP
Jan/Feb ‘11
to the guerillas or military forces. These children are not coerced into service per se, but they generally come from extremely poor backgrounds,
lack basic educations, and perceive few other economic or social opportunities.
Children are easily manipulated and thus may incorrectly perceive rebel armies or
rogue government militaries as positive opportunities for their lives. Since they have
little control over these conditions, they are not morally culpable for their actions and
thus cannot be prosecuted through the criminal justice system. ]
(__) Child soldiers aren’t culpable because they are often abducted—they had no choice.
Young11 3:
The LRA recruits many children in northern Uganda, often forcibly. This problem has continued to worsen. The LRA abducts
children from homes, schools, and off the streets in northern Uganda to fight against the
government, or, in the case of many young girls, serve as servants or sex slaves for LRA commanders and their households. These girls fit into
UNICEF’s definition of child soldiers.
Some children are sold to Sudan in exchange for arms, or else executed
to “toughen up” other abducted children. Recruited children’s families and neighbors
are often murdered to eliminate any incentive for the children to escape the LRA.
Sometimes the children themselves are forced to kill their own family members and
neighbors,
to reinforce the perception that they may never again return to their
homes.
(__) Child soldiers aren’t culpable—psychological studies show their understanding of
the political world is fundamentally non-existent. Grossman12 2:
Psychological studies show
a child's understanding of the world is fundamentally altered during
adolescence, suggesting he or she does not possess the same abilities to act
independently or appreciate the rights of others as an adult and should be shielded from
liability for crimes arising from war. A child's grasp of the political world changes
dramatically between ages twelve or thirteen and fifteen or sixteen; a child's cognitive mode changes, his or
her authoritarian views of the political system sharply decline, and
he or she achieves a capacity for ideology. While older
children are capable of shifting back and forth between concrete examples and abstract generalizations or principles, younger children are generally limited to
concrete examples. Younger children are usually incapable of imagining social reality in the abstract;an early adolescent: enters adolescence with only the weakest
sense of social institutions, or their structure and functions, or of that invisible network or norms and principles which link these institutions to each other.
Furthermore, the
failure to achieve abstractness does not permit him to understand,
11
Ibid.
Grossman, Nienke [B.A., Harvard College; J.D., Harvard Law School]. “Rehabilitation or revenge: prosecuting
child soldiers for human rights violations.” Georgetown University Law Center. 2007.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Rehabilitation+or+revenge%3A+prosecuting+child+soldiers+for+human...a0164221050
12
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except in a most rough and ready way,
those concepts essential to political thought—such ideas as authority, rights,
liberty, equity, interests, representation, and so on.
(__) Child soldiers aren’t culpable because they are unable to question authority.
Grossman13 3:
Younger
children also have adifficult[y]time understanding the concept of individual and minority
rights juxtaposed with state power. Although adults are not shielded from liability for war crimes and crimes against humanity because
they were following orders
, if children do not know how to question state or organized authority or
understand the concept of rights
, they should not be held criminally accountable for following
orders.Similarly,significant changes in moral development may also occur during adolescence, supporting the idea that holding children
accountable for violations of the laws of war may be inappropriate when they
are too young to hold independent moral views. Although not every person passes through every stage of
moral development at the same age, or ever, Lawrence Kohlbergand Carol Gilligansuggest the sequence of stages is universal across at least three cultures: Taiwan,
the US, and Mexico. Generally, post-conventional thought, or
"a major thrust toward autonomous moral
principles which have validity and application apart from authority of the groups or persons who hold them and apart from the individual's identification
with those persons or groups"
first appears at adolescence. One example of the shift from conventional to post-conventional
thinking in a child's understanding of motives for rule obedience occurs at stage 5A: 1. Obey rules to avoid punishment. 2.Conform to obtain rewards, have favors
returned, and so on. 3. Conform to avoid disapproval, dislike by others. 4. Conform to avoid censure by legitimate authorities and resultant guilt. 5A. Conform to
maintain the respect of the impartial spectator judging in terms of community welfare. 5B. Conform to avoid self condemnation.
If a child does
not understand that he or she may choose to disobey an order to protect community welfare or to
avoid self-condemnation, it may be inappropriate to hold him or her accountable
for crimes when ordered by a supervisor or in the context of collective armed action.
Utilitarian Benefits
(__) Child soldiers are inculcated with violence—intergenerational effects cause future
militarization of society worldwide and guarantee political instability. Wessells14:
The nature of armed conflict has changed greatly in recent years. The end of the Cold War ushered in an era of ethnopolitical conflicts that are seldom fought on
well-defined battlefields. Conflicts are increasingly internal, and they are characterized by butchery; violence against women, and atrocities sometimes committed
by former neighbors. More than 80 percent of the victims are noncombatants, mostly women and children. Increasingly children serve as combatants or as cooks,
informants, porters, bodyguards, sentries, and spies. Many child soldiers belong to organized military units, wear uniforms, and receive explicit training, their
lethality enhanced by the widespread availability of lightweight assault weapons. Other children participate in relatively unstructured but politically motivated acts
of violence, such as throwing stones or planting bombs.
The use of children in armed conflict is global in
scope—a far greater problem than suggested by the scant attention it has received. Child soldiers are found from
Central America to the Great Lakes region of Central Africa, and from Belfast in the
13
Ibid.
Wessells, Mike [Professor of Psychology at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia, is a former president of the
Division of Peace Psychology of the American Psychological Association. He has done extensive consulting on
conflict resolution and healing the wounds of war, particularly in Sierra Leone and Angola]. Child Soldiers. Bulletin
of Atomic Scientists. November/December 1997. http://pangaea.org/street_children/africa/armies.htm
14
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north to Angola in the south. The problem defies gender boundaries. Girls are often forced into military activity-in Ethiopia, for
instance, girls comprised about 25 percent of opposition forces in the civil war that ended in 1991. Typically, sexual victimization is a part of soldiering for girls,
many of whom are forced to become "soldiers' wives." After the conflict ends, families and local communities may reject the girls as impure or unsuitable for
marriage. Desperate to survive, many former girl soldiers become prostitutes. The use of child soldiers violates international norms. The U. N. Convention on the
Rights of the Child (CRC), signed in 1989 and ratified by more than 160 nations, establishes 15 years as the minimum recruitment age. In fact, most countries have
endorsed an optional protocol that boosts the minimum recruitment age to 18 years. But in the face of armed conflict, military units in some nations-whether
governmental or rebel-often pay little attention to age. In Grafton Camp, children were encouraged to draw, and many drew pictures that reflected their war
experiences. One showed a house being shelled by artillery. Soldiers fired at the house and at people in the street, who were fleeing. Inside the house was a man
who had been shot. Blood flowed from his midsection. I asked the artist, a small-for-his-age boy of nine, to tell me about the picture and what it showed. He
explained that soldiers (the rebel forces) attacked his village, bombed his house, and came inside and shot his parents. The bleeding man was his father. I did not ask
why he had not painted his mother, who had also been murdered. How old was he when his parents were killed? "Seven," he said. I asked him what happened after
the attack. "My parents died-the soldiers told me to go with them so I did." I asked what he had done in the military. He had "carried things." When I asked if he had
killed anyone, he said "No." But when asked if he would have killed someone if told to do so, the strength of his desire to survive showed. "Yes," he said. He would
have done "what he had to do." When asked what he wanted for the future, he said, "I only want to go to school."
Child soldieringviolates the
fundamental rights of children, exploits youth for political purposes, subjects them to slaughter and the ravages of war, and
immerses them in a
system that sanctions killing. And it also poses formidable security risks for others. A society that mobilizes andtrains its young
for war
weaves violence into the fabric of life, increasing the likelihood that violence and
war will be its future. Children who have been robbed of education and
taught to kill often contribute to further militarization, lawlessness, and violence. The
use of child soldiers also threatens fragile cease-fires and blocks reconciliation and peace. Not
infrequently,
conflict [often] continues at the local level even after a cease-fire has
been signed. Child soldiers are pawns in local conflicts because they provide
a ready group for recruitment by warlords, profiteers, and groups that foment political instability.The problem
is especially severe in developing countries, in which children constitute
nearly half the population and in which children are often reared in a system that mixes
war, poverty, violence, hunger, environmental degradation, and political instability.
The impact of child soldiering outweighs <AC impact> because A) it’s the root cause of
conflict—Wessells indicates that child soldiering integrates norms of violence into
society by inculcating children from the time they are young and guarantees future
militarization and violence for generations to come and B) it’s the only way to produce
sustainable change—Wessells indicates that conflicts cannot be resolved because child
soldiers continue local conflicts, increasing the chance of escalation and causing political
instability. This is also empirically confirmed by the Singer solvency evidence—
insufficient funding for efforts to reintegrate former child soldiers caused the peace
settlement in Sierra Leone to collapse, and fighting began again with former child
soldiers rejoining the warring factions.
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And, African instability results in nuclear war. Deutsch15 writes:
The Rabid Tiger Project believes that
a nuclear war is most likely to start in Africa. Civil wars in
the Congo (the country formerly known as Zaire), Rwanda, Somalia and Sierra Leone, and domestic
instability in Zimbabwe, Sudan and other countries, as well as occasional brushfire and other wars
(thanks in part to "national" borders that cut across tribal ones) turn into a really nasty stew. We've got all too many rabid tigers and potential rabid tigers, who are
willing to push the button rather than risk being seen as wishy-washy in the face of a mortal threat and overthrown.
Geopolitically
speaking, Africa is open range. Very few countries in Africa are beholden to
any particular power.South Africa is a major exception in this respect - not to mention in that she also probably already has the Bomb.
Thus,
outside powers can more easily find client states there than, say, in Europe
where the political lines have long since been drawn, or Asia where many of the countries (China, India, Japan) are powers unto themselves and don't need any
"help," thank you. Thus, an
African war can attract outside involvement very quickly. Of course, a
proxy war alone may not induce the Great Powers to fight each other.
But an African nuclear strike can ignite a
much broader conflagration, if the other powers are interested in a fight.
Certainly, such a strike would in the first place have been facilitated by outside help - financial, scientific, engineering, etc. Africa is an ocean of troubled waters,
and some people love to go fishing.
15
Deutsch, Jeffrey [president of Deutsch Research and an alumnus of Bell Labs]. The Nuclear Family Has Become
Over-Extended. November 18, 2002 http://list.webengr.com/ pipermail/picoipo/2002- November/000208.html
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Frontlines
Contents
Additional Cards ........................................................................................................................... 12
A2 Minors aren’t prosecuted ........................................................................................................ 13
A2 Age is arbitrary........................................................................................................................ 14
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Additional Cards
Child soldiers are exposed to despicable social conditions. Becker16 describes in an interview:
Q: What is life like for child soldiers in the Burmese military? A:
Conditions are desperate. Children are often used to
perform heavy labor to benefit their commanding officers. If they complain or can’t
carry out their assignments, they are often beaten. Conditions in conflict areas are
also deplorable. The food and shelter is very bad, and many soldiers often steal food
and other supplies from villagers. They also face the danger from attacks by antigovernment insurgents, landmines and diseases like malaria and TB. Another factor
is that for children under 18, they have no access to schooling.
Q: What human rights abuses, if any, do
child soldiers in Burma commit? A: We know that child soldiers are involved in combat operations, and that they operate in ethnic conflict areas. There, as Human Rights Watch
and many other groups have documented, human rights violations are perpetrated with impunity by the Burmese army, and child soldiers are involved.
Former child
soldiers have told us that they either observed or participated in burning of villages,
forced displacement, the use of civilians for forced labor and even massacres.]
The use of child soldiers is high in the modern world due to increased conflicts and lighter
weaponry. Perelman17:
The use of child soldiers, once rare, has exploded in the past two decades as a result of the
proliferation and increasing ferocity of civil conflicts in places such as Afghanistan, East Timor and Liberia,
coupled with the growing availability of lightweight, easy-to-operate weapons. Journalists
and human-rights groups have documented armies of youngsters abducted, drugged and trained in killing and torture. All told,
there are currently some
300,000 child-soldiers under age 16 in the world today, according to the United Nations. The
recent study in England found that girls seized at ages as young as 8 are forced to work as combatants, porters, cleaners and cooks for armed groups in countries from Colombia to
Sri Lanka. They all serve additionally as sex slaves.
Becker, Jo [advocacy director in the Children’s Rights Division of New York-based Human Rights Watch]. The
Plight of Child Soldiers in Burma: An Interview with Jo Becker. November 2, 2007. The Irrawaddy News Magazine.
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2007/11/01/plight-child-soldiers-burma
17
Perelman, Marc [currently a Paris-based journalist for the TV station France 24; previously the diplomatic
correspondent of the Forward newspaper in New York]. Use of Child Soldiers Sparks Global Debate. May 6, 2005.
The Jewish Daily Forward. http://www.forward.com/articles/3412/
16
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A2 Minors aren’t prosecuted
(___) Madar empirically denies this argument.
(___) This is just false—the international community has not agreed to minimum age for
culpability. Grossman18:
At what age the duty to prosecute applies to international humanitarian crimes such as crimes against humanity and war crimes
committed by children appears unresolved under the statutes of recent human
rights tribunals and the Rome Statute. Although the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda do
not address the minimum age of criminal responsibility, both stress the importance of prosecuting and punishing those responsible; their
silence does not
necessarily preclude prosecution of children under these mechanisms. The Report of the SecretaryGeneral on the Establishment of a Special Court for Sierra Leone
The Special Court for Sierra Leone is an independent judicial body set up
to "try those who bear greatest responsibility" for the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Sierra Leone after 30 November 1996 during the Sierra Leone Civil
War. , however,
explicitly allows for all persons aged fifteen and above to fall under the
jurisdiction of the Court. The Rome Statute does not include persons under eighteen at the time of commission of a crime within its jurisdiction,
although it is a war crime to conscript or enlist children under age fifteen into armed forces.
(___) Even if minors are not prosecuted in the real world, it does not matter because the CP
merely addresses a hypothetical question of jurisdiction and presents a model for handling it.
Grossman, Nienke [B.A., Harvard College; J.D., Harvard Law School]. “Rehabilitation or revenge: prosecuting
child soldiers for human rights violations.” Georgetown University Law Center. 2007.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Rehabilitation+or+revenge%3A+prosecuting+child+soldiers+for+human...a0164221050
18
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A2 Age is arbitrary.
Even if age is arbitrary, it is the best criterion. Grossman19:
The international community should set the minimum age of responsibility at eighteen years old for serious crimes arising from armed conflict. As more and more children
participate directly in armed conflict and in human rights violations, practical concerns, unfortunately, require a concrete policy delineating which children, if any, should be held
responsible for international crimes. The CRC, the Beijing Rules, and the Machel Report all call for the establishment of a minimum age of criminal accountability.
Although the setting of any minimum age of criminal responsibility is somewhat
arbitrary and may be over and under-inclusive in terms of moral culpability, the cut-off chosen should
maximize opportunities for rehabilitation for former child soldiers and protect as many young people as
.
possible from long deprivations of liberty in chaotic post-conflict states It should also be in accord with the general purposes of the CRC--protection and promotion of children's
rights--and consider the psychological and moral development of children. The Machel Report states that a child's "emotional, mental and intellectual maturity" should be taken
into account, instead of "subjective or imprecise" criteria such as personality or puberty.
criminal accountability
Choosing the age of eighteen as the lower limit for
recognizes the state of adolescents' psychological and moral
development, and refraining from prosecuting persons below this age promotes the
underlying rehabilitative goals of the CRC.
Grossman, Nienke [B.A., Harvard College; J.D., Harvard Law School]. “Rehabilitation or revenge: prosecuting
child soldiers for human rights violations.” Georgetown University Law Center. 2007.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Rehabilitation+or+revenge%3A+prosecuting+child+soldiers+for+human...a0164221050
19
14