In her recent book Child Soldiers in Africa Alcinda Honwana states “Children’s involvement in armed conflict is not a recent phenomenon. In the past, young people have been at the forefront of the political conflict in many parts of the world, even when it has turned violent. Today, however; the problem has grown to such magnitude that it has attracted public notice” [1]. The number of children are not, she argues, the only reason to take notice: “also that children are more deeply involved; in some places, they form a substantial proportion of combatants.” Then she notes “Analysts of war have pointed out that most contemporary civil wars represent a “total societal crisis.” But this is not news.
A quick look at demographics of the African continent makes her observations like pointing to the white elephant in the room. In a conflict zone where more than a third of the population is under the age of 15, there will be a higher number of fighters of a younger age. for example, in Uganda a full half of the population is under the age of 15. That means one in two people drafted for service at random are children. Such a demographic may be “terrible” but the fact that ‘children’ are more deeply involved in warfare when they represent a substantial proportion of the population is not surprising.
And so the outcry against child soldiers represents an application of western sociel roles for prepubescents onto African conflicts. This can be seen in the ambiguous use of the word child. Child could have two meanings in this context: between birth and puberty, or someone not yet of legal age. If the Honawa intends the former then one can expect people of this young age to have a larger role in society than in a western society, because they represent a higher percentage of society. Thus they fill vital roles that there are not ‘adults’ to fill. Aye, Alternatively, if she means the latter meaning of child, then how does she define them as not of ‘legal majority’ when they are filling other roles in society? These ‘children’ are filling social roles as soldiers independent and often far from family. What precisely makes these children? Indeed, her cultural bias against children taking on responsibility comes out all too strongly:
Isolated cases that occur in white, middle-class settings seem more shocking, such as the columbine school shootings or the murder of a Dartmouth college couple by two Vermont teenagers. Even younger children can commit murder: for example, three-year-old James Bulger was killed by two ten-year-olds in the United Kingdom. Incidents of Children killing children are troubling. The systematic, organized use of children to wage war is even more appalling. [2]
This moral position is not the way to end child soldiering, even though the position is right in the fact that heinous killing should never be condoned, for people are worth keeping alive. For to make a moral argument that demands societies involved in “total societal crisis” to not take advantage of soldiers to fight in these crisis is preposterous. Instead, if one believes the use of prepubescents in war is an untenable reality, one should fight to change the demographics of the continent. Such a drive would necessitate better living conditions, and higher mean income, because these would both provide and require better access to staples, and would lessen ‘societal crisis’. Thus decrying use of children in war, without taking note of the demographic sitation, will never have the desired effect of abating the problem. And so we should focus our screaming elsewhere, on societal destroying problems, such as poverty and disease leaving parentless children who will not have the opportunity to experience ‘the innocence of childhood’, and thus are more employable.
Honwana, Alcinda . Child soldiers in Africa
HDR world demographics of children under age 15: http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/indic/indic_44_1_1.html
