Emerging African Voices: A Study of Contemporary African Literatu ...

The predicament of child soldiers in international humanitarian and human rights law falls primarily under the jurisdiction of the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC, 1989) and the Optional Protocol to the CRC on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (Optional Protocol, 2000).⁹ Echoing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR, 1948), the CRC seeks to protect the child's “full development of his or her personality” (Preamble). Other key provisions include: the child's right to a name, nationality, and family (Article 7); the duty of public and private institutions to consider “the best interests of the child” (Article 1); the recognition of the child's right to freedom of expression, thought, conscience and religion (Articles 13 and 14); and, complicating the issue of who may define and articulate the “best interests” stipulated in Article 1, protection for “the child who is capable of forming his or her own views [of] the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child” (Article 12). Speaking directly about child soldiers, the CRC stipulates fifteen as the minimum age for armed service (Article 15) and calls on States to “promote physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration of a child victim of…armed conflicts” (Article 39). The Optional Protocol reinforces the Straight-18 definition of a child by raising the minimum age for recruitment from fifteen to eighteen and asserting that those under eighteen should not “take a direct part in hostilities” (Articles 1, 2, and 3), although it does permit “voluntary recruitment into [states'] national armed forces under the age of 18” (Article 3).¹⁰ Further defining who is a child soldier, many analysts adopt the principles articulated in UNICEF's Cape Town Annotated Principles and Best Practices of 1977 of a child soldier as “any person under 18 years of age who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force in any capacity, including but not limited to cooks, porters, messengers, and those accompanying such groups, other than purely as family members.” The definition continues, more or less controversially depending on whether one seeks protection or prosecution for child soldiers, “Girls recruited for sexual purposes and forced marriage are included…It does not, therefore, only refer to a child who is carrying or has carried arms.”