Linking Children and Security in Southern Africa

While child soldier action plans and programmes provide linkages between children and security, the limitations of a one-size-fits-all approach should not be ignored.

Published on 16 April 2012 in ISS Today

Sandra Adong Oder, Senior Researcher, Conflict Management and Peacebuilding Division, ISS Pretoria

The historic agreement on 12 March between the United Nations (UN) and South Sudan’s army, the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), on a revised action plan regarding their commitment to ridding the army of child soldiers, is a bold move. According to a UN press release, it will ensure that a transparent system is in place for disciplinary action against those in command in the SPLA who recruit children. It also aims to improve communication among commanders to make sure that the practice of child recruitment is halted and responsibility for child protection is understood on all levels.

However, eliminating child soldiers promises to be far more difficult than it seems. Already, on 24 March the SPLA deputy chief of general staff Pieng Deng Kuol told the Sudan Tribune that there were children in its ranks during the civil war who were not recruited into the army but were released in 2001.

Much of what is happening in South Sudan is symptomatic in many African countries that experience the child soldier phenomenon. One common feature is a continuous denial of the existence of child soldiers in national armies and within rebel ranks. In such situations, as with South Sudan, action plans drawn up at a higher level tend to remain UN and NGO-led and are inadequate to address the scale of the problem. These action plans are usually hampered by bureaucratic lethargy and the inefficiency of a weak and under-capacitated civil service, ensuring failure. The UN has, in the recent past, reportedly signed similar agreements with the Chadian National Army and with the Armée Populaire pour la Restauration de la Républic et la Démocratie (APRD) in the Central African Republic. If such considerations are not seriously tackled, these countries will find themselves lagging behind so conspicuously that effective consensus about what needs to be done to redress the situation of child soldiers will never be achieved.

It is thus critical that action plans are integrally linked to post-conflict reconstruction programmes that explicitly address the systematic causes and consequences of child soldier recruitment and use. For, if the conditions for military recruitment remain firmly in place, then ensuring the success of such action plans will remain an unresolved question, and if effective answers continue to elude the multitude of actors who will continue to inject resources in white elephant projects, failure is a likely outcome. Simply put, working in the area of child protection is complex and a function of many actors and factors, and any measures to address the complex phenomenon need to be carefully thought through, preferably from a longer-term perspective.

Within the framework of child protection, it is no longer feasible to exclude other parts of Africa that are not experiencing conflict, for the very same factors that have led countries to violent conflict could easily erupt in southern Africa. While the use of child soldiers in southern Africa may seem remote, the current situation in South Sudan creates an opportunity for southern Africa to step back and take a more preventative approach to ensuring that children’s demands for security, adequate material comfort and access to service delivery are met. In effect, a preventative approach is crucial. The situation of children in southern Africa in the provisioning of security can be adequately addressed through learning from experiences from elsewhere in three important respects.

Firstly, in southern Africa, while there is no armed conflict except in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), there is a precarious situation of insecurity in the context of children and their security needs. Further, discussions on children and security debates are scarce. While the state is responsible for guaranteeing the fundamental rights and freedoms of all, especially children, it is the security sector and the security agencies themselves that arguably condone the abuse and violations of human rights law, often acting with impunity and beyond the reach of control or oversight. The use of force by security agencies is often excessive and disproportionate. In the DRC, the exposure of children to military operations and protection challenges raised by the changing nature of conflict presents problems of its own.

The region needs to make the linkages between the rights of children and security a reality, and acknowledge that there are specific and special protection issues associated with children in southern Africa that need to be recognised and integrated into reform processes, policy orientation and analysis in security matters. It should embrace collaboration as a means of maximising the positive impact that prevention, accountability and restorative programmes have on children.

Undoubtedly, the region draws its work from the normative framework of the Convention on the Rights of the Children and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, which are both comprehensive and offer the highest standard of protection and assistance to African children. The protection standards however should go beyond the usual guarantees of health, education and welfare, and should include guarantees relating to civil and political rights including freedom of expression, religion, association, assembly and privacy. Further, the special protection applies to all children in southern Africa, within a country’s jurisdiction and includes aliens, refugees and displaced children, and equally to children who may be in a country illegally.

Secondly, in order to offer tangible measures, the region should aim to start a conversation around reframing child protection in southern Africa by looking at the existing gaps in child protection systems, specifically in its legal and normative frameworks and its regional peace and security architecture, and emphasise a systems-building approach to child protection that focuses on prevention, coordination and integrated responses.

Lastly, children’s security does matter, and the best way of advancing this important element of the security agenda is through strengthening the existing security governance framework, in particular, with a focus on engaging civil society and reinforcing the human rights perspective of security.

Governments in southern Africa bear the primary responsibilities for the protection of children. In this regard, a number of steps must be taken to build a protective environment for children, before, during and after conflict. A preventative approach as a first step is clearly what is needed. As shown in South Sudan, the reactive approach to ensuring that children are not abused is a rather costly one.