Amnesty Research Mission to Chad: 20 May - June 2, 2010

Photo: Detail from a mural by demobilized child soldiers at transition centre in N'Djamena.

One of the concerns that we have been looking into during the course of our mission is recruitment of child soldiers.  It has been common knowledge for several years that child soldiers are widely recruited in eastern Chad – by the Chadian military, by armed Chadian opposition groups and by the armed groups fighting the Sudanese military in Darfur. 

There have been promises made by the Chadian government to keep children out of its military.  Various armed groups have made similar promises.  The UN funds programs for demobilizing and rehabilitating children who have been recruited.  So are children now safe in eastern Chad?

It became clear very quickly that children are far from safe – and that the pressure and the enticement of joining in the fighting are still considerable.

We needed look no further than the faces of so very many of the Chadian soldiers patrolling the streets of Abéché and other parts of eastern Chad during over the past week.  Many certainly looked to be no more than fourteen years old at best.

We have been able to document a number of cases of past recruitment.  In Gaga Refugee Camp we spoke with the teacher of a boy who had been part of the military attack that the Justice and Equality Movement, a Darfuri armed group, tried to mount against the Sudanese capital Khartoum in May 2008.  That attack was repelled quite easily by the Sudanese government.  The boy was detained and badly tortured in Sudan before finally being seen by the Red Cross and then released.  He is back with his family in Gaga Camp, but is deeply troubled.

At Bredjing Camp we interviewed three teachers and one student who were rounded up in a major recruitment drive by the Sudan Liberation Army 3 years ago.  Some 3000 recruits from a number of the Darfur refugee camps were taken over the span of several days.  One of the teachers, who was 25 years old at the time, was teaching his class of 51 boys when SLA fighters burst in and forced everyone out, including some boys as young as 9 years of age.  They all described being beaten, threatened and kept in terrible conditions.  Eventually most were able to escape.  The SLA did not have enough food for all the new recruits, nor enough guards to hold onto them all.

All three of the teachers, themselves young men, are back in Bredjing Camp and have continued to work in the schools, even if that puts them at risk of being rounded up in some future recruitment campaign.  As one of the teachers put it, “we have to feed their minds or they will go off to fight.” 

That is something we heard at every turn in the camps.  Primary education is widely available in all of the Darfur refugee camps and an impressive number of children – boys and girls – are enrolled.  But it ends with grade eight, and there is almost nothing available after that.  At precisely the age when children would be most susceptible to a call to join the army or run away with a rebel group, the one thing that might dissuade them – a chance to continue with their studies – disappears.  Everyone – students and teachers in the camps, organizations running the schools, and UN agencies – was very clear.  The best way to confront the recruitment of child soldiers is to make secondary school education widely available.

Today in N’Djamena we spent time in a transition centre for demobilized child soldiers, operated by CARE and UNICEF.  We spoke with a 16 year old boy, who had joined one of the Chadian armed groups when he was 11 years old and remained a faithful combatant for three years, rising to the rank of captain and commanding around 200 fighters.  He participated in four battles before the leader of his group decided to join the Chadian government in 2007.  Another young man joined one of the Chadian groups when he was 15.  He was not forced but joined because he was tired of the humiliation his ethnic group was experiencing in eastern Chad.  He eventually became part of the rebel push that led to terrible fighting in N’Djamena in February 2008.  He was badly injured in that attack and showed us the entry and exit scars from a bullet wound to his back.  He now dreams of going back to the east to be reunited with his family but does not want to do so until he has been able to find work, earn some money and go back with a sense of pride. 

A Chadian government poster on the wall of the transit centre proclaims “Non à l’enrôlement des enfants” (No recruitment of children).  There is still far to go before those will be more than words on a poster.