THE CHADIAN government and a Darfur rebel group backed by it both continue to recruit child soldiers, a human rights group has said, writes Mary Fitzgerald, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Human Rights Watch (HRW) yesterday issued a letter to the UN Security Council working group on children and armed conflict, urging it to put pressure on Chad to take "measurable, concrete steps" to demobilise children from its armed forces and cease continued recruitment.
The working group is due to discuss violations of children's rights in Chad at a meeting today.
A year ago, the working group asked the Chadian government to cease the use of child soldiers but, HRW noted, efforts to comply have been largely ineffective.
"Improving child protection in Chad depends on concrete actions on the ground, beginning with the government's implementation of the recommendations made by the Security Council," said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at HRW. "The Security Council should demand that the Chadian government cease child recruitment and release children from the ranks of the armed forces."
Far from demobilising children, the government continues to recruit them, the organisation noted. "In June 2008, a Human Rights Watch fact-finding mission found recruitment of children into the Chadian National Army . . . to be routine in displaced persons sites in eastern Chad." The organisation also documented instances of forced recruitment in one camp.
The letter notes that children in camps housing Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad are also subject to recruitment, primarily by the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), a Darfuri rebel group supported by the Chadian government.
In June, JEM was singled out in a report on child soldier recruitment published by Waging Peace, a British human rights organisation. The group said it had filmed testimony from refugee camps in Chad to back its claim that support for JEM was dwindling among Darfuri refugees because it recruited boys who had been kidnapped and trafficked from the camps.
JEM's director of training and strategic planning, Abdullahi el-Tom, who is also an academic at NUI Maynooth, rejected the report's findings. He told The Irish Times claims JEM recruited child soldiers were "totally unfounded and false".
Both UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon and the UN's special rapporteur on children and armed conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, have expressed concern about the recruitment of child soldiers in the region, with Ms Coomaraswamy noting she was "aware of ongoing recruitment of children by JEM".
"We expect to see a new round of fighting later this year, and children are sure to be on the front lines," said HRW's Ms Gagnon. "What is far less certain is how many child soldiers will die in combat before peace is reached in Chad, and how many have already lost their lives."
More than 400 Irish troops have deployed to eastern Chad as part of an EU mission known as Eufor. The mission has a UN mandate to protect civilians, including Darfuri refugees and displaced Chadians, living in camps near the border with Sudan.