Thursday, February 14, 2008
Girl Children as Soldiers
Something new to think about:
In situations where child soldiers are used, roughly one third are female (meaning around 300,000 globally). Wow. You learn something new every day.
And for all of you who are about to protest: "But I study the topic of child soldiers, and I haven't seen anything about girl child soldiers", then here's the thing: It's a fairly new topic of research. In fact, I had the honour of attending a talk today by Diana Castillo, an academic from Colombia.
So why do we hear so little about this?
- There are no treaties dealing specifically with female child soldiers
- All treaties assume that child soldiers are male
- And even so, when there is a lack of weapons, the boys are given priority, and thus, without weapons, girls are often not recognised in battle, although essentially, they are unarmed combatants
And why should we treat it as a separate problem to child soldiers in general? Diana gave a few accounts from the girls and women she interviewed... very moving! But the main point is this: Girl children get raped. In a patriarchal society, they are also less likely to gain recognition, as we have seen from the treaties concerning them.
So, these girls are also psychologically affected... they are expected to return to society and start behaving like "other girls" immediately, but that is ignoring the fact that despite all that - they still went through formative years in the context of war.
What happens when they come out of the war context? Many of them 'become normal' by having a child... and this means, in effect, that there is a serious effect on the education of women, as they then have to either work to support or stay home to look after the kids! Thus, skills they may have learned in the army, such as medical aid or mechanics, are most likely lost forever!
The only 'comforting' thought, if any, is that for example in the Philippines, the Moros, who are an Islamic nationalistic group accord their girl-child soldiers much more respect than anywhere else - you see some (but very rare) girls rise in the ranks. They are not raped or used as sex slaves. Under the protection of the Koran. What I wonder, though, is that why they aren't sacred for being children?
We are, of course, thinking of places such as Nicaragua, Haiti, Colombia, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, The Philippines, etc, when we talk about these things - but a fellow coursemate made a good comment - Whilst we easily criticise the behaviour of cultures 'distant' from the 'western' culture, we are ignoring the fact that in countries like USA, it's ok to recruit 15 year olds to the army!
And that lead me to think of the slight disappointment that I felt, reading Neil Gaiman and Michael Reeve's children book, Interworld... in it, a 16 year old boy decides to go to war... and his mother sees him off, sadly, as a mother does - but without raising the question of age... Well, it's a science fiction/fantasy book, of course, but it scares me to think that the thought of children going to battle is not an off-limits area in popular culture!
Anyhow, definitely an area worth more research!
fon @ 5:00 AM link to post * *