Mapping Report > Section II. Inventory of Specific Acts of Violence > CHAPTER II. Acts of violence committed against children > B. Specific case of children associated with armed groups and forces (CAAFAG)
The wars in the DRC were also marked by the systematic use of children associated with armed groups and forces (CAAFAG) by all parties to the conflict.1245 According to child protection agencies working in the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) of children, at least 30,000 children were recruited or used by the armed forces or groups during the conflict.1246 These statistics make the DRC one of the countries in the world with the highest incidence of CAAFAG.1247
Although international attention with regard to CAAFAG peaked during the conflict in Ituri in May 2003, with the temporary deployment of a European multinational force, the recruitment and use of CAAFAG was already undoubtedly commonplace in the DRC from 1996 onwards. While sources also indicate that children are likely to have been recruited and used as CAAFAG prior to 1996, this phenomenon took on a hitherto unprecedented scale at the start of the AFDL/APR insurrection in eastern Zaire.
Although the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child does not define the term “recruitment and use of children as soldiers”, nor the term “direct participation in hostilities”, the commonly accepted definition of CAAFAG is that which was given at a conference organised by UNICEF in South Africa in 1997. The “Cape Town Principles” define CAAFAG as follows:
“any person under 18 years of age who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity, including but not limited to cooks, porters, messengers and anyone accompanying such groups, other than family members. The definition includes girls recruited for sexual purposes and for forced marriage. It does not, therefore, only refer to a child who is carrying or has carried arms”.1248
This broad definition is important given the multitude of roles that children play within armed groups. The inclusion of non-combatants is crucial, particularly during post-conflict periods. It was taken up in the Operational Framework for CAAFAG of the National Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration Programme in the DRC.
1. Legal framework
Prohibition of child recruitment in international law
A number of international human rights and humanitarian law treaties ratified by the DRC explicitly prohibit child recruitment. The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions (applicable to internal and international armed conflicts) require States that have ratified them to refrain from recruiting children under the age of 15. The DRC has also ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, which prohibits any recruitment or use of children under the age of 18 by armed groups and bans the forced recruitment and participation of children under 18 in the regular army. Finally, the Security Council adopted five resolutions on children and armed conflict, condemning the recruitment of children by armed forces and groups.1249
Although these treaties establish an obligation on ratifying States and armed groups to refrain from recruiting and using children, they do not establish these as acts entailing individual criminal responsibility. The States party to treaties are, however, required to take the necessary measures to prevent these acts, which implicitly calls on them to criminalise child recruitment, in order to investigate and prosecute such cases.
Criminal responsibility for child recruitment in international law
The Rome Statute of the ICC, ratified by the DRC in 2002, made significant progress in this area by expressly recognising as a war crime any conscripting or enlisting of children under the age of 15 into the national armed forces or into armed groups or of using them to participate actively in hostilities, in either international or internal armed conflicts.
In May 2004, the Special Court for Sierra Leone ruled that the recruitment of children under the age of 15 into the armed forces or their use as participants in the hostilities could be considered a crime under customary international law, for which a person could be held individually criminally responsible, and this since at least 1996.1250
Thomas Lubanga, the first defendant to have been transferred to the ICC, is accused of war crimes for having enlisted children under the age of 15 into the ranks of the Forces patriotiques pour la libération du Congo (FPLC). He is also accused of having involved these children in the fighting in Ituri between September 2002 and August 2003. The ICC is also accusing Germain Katanga, one of the commanders of the Forces de résistance patriotique en Ituri (FRPI) and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, one of the leaders of the allied forces of the Front des nationalistes et intégrationnistes (FNI) of war crimes for having involved children enlisted in their movement in the fighting in Ituri. Bosco Ntaganda, former deputy head of the General Staff of the FPLC, the armed branch of the UPC (Union des patriotes congolais) is accused by the ICC of having used his authority to implement the FPLC’s policy regarding the enlistment and conscription of children under 15 and of having involved them actively in the hostilities in Ituri from July 2002 to December 2003. Ntaganda is also accused of having exercised de jure and de facto authority in the Bule, Centrale, Mandro, Rwampara, Irumu, Bogoro and Sota child soldier training camps. Finally, he is also accused of having taken part in FPLC attacks in which child soldiers were involved.
Child recruitment under Congolese law
Up until 2009, the recruitment and use of children was not established as a crime in the DRC’s criminal code. Child abduction and slavery were, however, considered as such. In June 2000, Decree Law 066 ordered the demobilisation and family or socio-economic reintegration of children associated with the armed forces or groups, girls and boys, under the age of 18.
This failure to criminalise the recruitment and use of children has resulted in few soldiers being convicted of such actions, even on charges of child abduction and enslavement. Even when a conviction was handed down, in the Jean-Pierre Biyoyo case, for example, it had no effect on his promotion within the Congolese military hierarchy. In fact, Jean-Pierre Biyoyo was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel in the Congolese Army after receiving a death sentence from a military court in March 2006 for desertion and fleeing abroad in times of war, organizing an insurrection movement, and the arbitrary arrest and illegal detention of children. 1251 Moreover, on 10 January 2004, the Congolese Head of State appointed five former warlords from Ituri district to the post of general in the national army. Four of the five new generals – Jérôme Kakwavu, Floribert Kisembo, Bosco Ntaganda and Germain Katanga – had been identified in different reports as being responsible for serious human rights violations, in particular the recruitment and use of CAAFAG. As for Bosco Ntaganda, he was reintegrated into the Congolese Army in January 2009, despite an ICC arrest warrant dated 22 August 2006 for war crimes relating to the enlistment and use of child soldiers in the hostilities.
Yet, over the same period, the new law of January 2009 on child protection criminalised the recruitment and use of children in armed forces and groups and in the police force (Articles 71 and 187) and, for the first time, set out penalties for this (between 10 and 20 years in prison).
See also:
1244 With regard to children involved in armed conflicts, the Paris Principles adopted in 2007 by UNICEF preferred the term “children associated with armed forces or armed groups” (CAAFAG) to the more simplistic “child soldiers” as this approach also enables girls recruited for sexual purposes to be included. The acronym CAAFAG does not therefore refer exclusively to children who are armed or who have carried weapons.
1245 The fact that some armed groups are not mentioned in this chapter does not mean that they did not recruit CAAFAG.
1246 United Nations Mission in the DRC, Child Protection Section, La justice et le recrutement et l’utilisation d’enfants dans des forces et groupes armés en RDC, 2005. Available from: www.unhcr.org/refworld/pdfid/46caaafcd.pdf.
1247 AI, Children at War, 2003.
1248 UNICEF, “Cape Town Principles and best practices on the prevention of recruitment of children into the armed forces and on demobilisation and social reintegration of child soldiers in Africa”, 27-30 April 1997. Because of the need to update the Cape Town Principles and obtain their approval outside the sphere of actors specialising in the defence of children’s rights, two documents were produced and adopted in February 2007 in Paris: “The Paris Commitments” to protect children from unlawful recruitment or use by armed forces or armed groups, and “The Paris Principles” on children associated with armed forces or armed groups, which contains more detailed directions for people responsible for programme implementation. The DRC was represented at the Conference and adopted both documents.
1249 Resolutions 1261 (1999) 1314 (2000), 1379 (2001), 1460 (2003), 1539 (2004) and 1612 (2005).
1250 The Prosecutor v. Samuel Hinga Norman, Case No. SCSL-2004-14-AR729E, Court of Appeal of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, “Decision on Preliminary Motion Based on Lack of Jurisdiction (child recruitment)”, May 2004, p.27
1251 Biyoyo was tried and convicted by the Bukavu garrison Military Court on 17 March of desertion and fleeing abroad in times of war, organizing an insurrection movement, and the arbitrary arrest and illegal detention of children in South Kivu in April 2004.
