Rehabilitation for Sri Lankan Child Soldiers

In a joint statement between the United Nations and the Sri Lankan government, the government has said that it will rehabilitate child soldiers who were involved in the Sri Lankan civil war.

"(President (Mahinda) Rajapakse reiterated his firm policy of zero tolerance in relation to child recruitment. In cooperation with the UNICEF, child-friendly procedures have been established for release, surrender and rehabilitation of the child soldiers," the government said in a joint statement at the end of Ban Ki-moon's two-day visit to the island nation on Saturday.

"The objective of the rehabilitation process, presently underway, is to reintegrate former child soldiers into society as productive citizens," the statement said.

"The secretary-general (Ban Ki-moon) expressed satisfaction on the progress already made by the government in cooperation with the UNICEF," it added.

Foreign Policy has a short article outlining some of the myths regarding child soldiers. For instance:

"Our Current Approach to Ending Child Soldiering Is Working."

You wish. The international community primarily deals with child soldiers through deterrence (prosecuting the adult recruiters) and demobilization (taking away the children's guns and sending them home). Neither approach goes far enough.

In the first case, prosecutors hope to set an example for future would-be offenders. But most recruiters think they will not get caught. Others, knowing that only those who lose the fight get hauled before international courts, desperately employ child soldiers to avoid defeat. Still others assume they will be granted amnesty after a cease-fire. The Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda is a perfect example. Elusive warlord Joseph Kony has employed child soldiers since the 1990s without being captured, and Ugandan officials privately admit that they might need every carrot they can get (including amnesty) to negotiate a successful peace agreement.

Sending children home via disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) programs is another favorite method of post-conflict planners. These programs are meant to get children and adolescents out of armies and back where they belong -- in schools or in jobs. But here again, results are mixed. Many organizers make the mistake of excluding girls from their programs. They often fail to understand the local economy and therefore train children for the wrong professions. In Liberia, for example, too many ex-combatants were educated as carpenters and hairdressers. Nor do the programs target the roots of intergenerational violence that will long outlast the active fighting. DDR initiatives are often too short term to do much more than superficial training, as even officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development will admit.

The biggest challenge of all in ending child soldiering lies in the types of conflicts that employ the young. Children tend to be recruited in brutal, long-running civil wars, the kind that simmer for years or even decades. Unfortunately, these wars constitute the main form of armed conflict today. Until they stop, the recruitment of children never will.

The article is by Scott Gates and Simon Reich, co-editors of the forthcoming book Child Soldiers in the Age of Fractured States.