Child soldiers refer to fighters who are deployed in a (civil) war and have not yet reached the age of eighteen. According to a treaty of the United Nations General Assembly, the minimum age at which soldiers may be deployed was set at eighteen years in 2002, while soldiers may be recruited from the age of sixteen.
Al-Shabaab sometimes recruits child soldiers at a very young age
Previously, the age at which children could be deployed was fifteen years old in accordance with the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. But in Somalia, children as young as ten years old or even younger are sometimes recruited by Al-Shabaab as child soldiers. After training, they are often sent to the front line where they even serve as protection for adult fighters.
Shelter and food attractive to children
Recruiting children is actually far too easy because they can be manipulated. When recruited by force, they cannot sufficiently resist violence if they are dragged along. It is often also attractive to be recruited because the army provides shelter and food for children in dire circumstances as orphans, refugees, victims of a broken family or from very poor slums.
Favorable properties for battle
As soldiers, children have favorable qualities for combat due to their short height, agility and obedience, among other things. Because they can hardly realize what death means, many children are fearless. If they do experience hesitation and fear, there are examples of them being given drugs. Furthermore, they are cheaper than adults and can make do with less food. Due to technological advances, more and more light weapons are available that can be easily handled by children. Even machine guns can be operated by children.
Child soldiers face horrific actions
Child soldiers can also easily be deployed for all kinds of assignments because they offer little resistance. This applies to less risky assignments such as messenger, camp guard, cook’s assistant or carriers of weapons, ammunition and provisions. But many children are deployed in the battle, where they act as a kind of minesweepers in the vanguard and often die or undergo severe mutilation. Children are also used for suicide attacks. Children face even the most brutal acts such as beheading, cutting off limbs and burning people alive. And children are often victims of rape.
Way back impossible
Sometimes children are forced to commit atrocities against their own villagers or family members. By carrying out these atrocities against people they know, it becomes impossible for them to ever return to their own village and their ties are often cut off forever. In cases where return is possible and a child deserts, the family becomes the victim of massacres and an entire village may even be massacred to prevent the child from passing on important information to the enemy.
Al-Shabaab also recruits girls
It is estimated that Al-Shabaab has 1,800 child soldiers in its ranks, including very young children. Al-Shabaab also recruits girls and trains them in intelligence gathering and transporting explosives or uses them to help at the front. Girls are also married off to rebels.
Boyfriends and parents are sometimes executed
The children are promised money and mobile phones and many children are also bluntly forcibly recruited without these promises. To instill fear in them, they are forced to watch their friends being executed. It also happens that parents who protect their children are murdered.