JANUARY 3, 2025 – When Charles was 12, the Revolutionary United Front rebel forces came through his home, the Kono District of Sierra Leone. They were marching for Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, and building an army by forcing citizens to join them. They were particularly interested in children and, during the 11-year civil war, 40-50% of the RUF forces and 20% of the government forces were children ages 9-18. Charles remembers:
“You’d see them in groups, take a girl and go into the room and they come back out, three men, all sweating, and you heard the girl crying and shouting. Sometimes you just hear a gunshot, like bam. Part of their method for getting children to do what they wanted to do was to force us to take drugs. Those few of us who pretended we didn’t understand guns and how to use them they used as laborers, but the others had to do terrible things: the rebels instructed children to kill, burn houses, loot and cause many other mayhems. You can never unsee these atrocities.”
The U.S. Government recognizes child soldiering as a form of human trafficking. Child soldiering occurs when a governmental armed group (including police or other security forces), paramilitary organization, rebel group, or other non-state armed group unlawfully recruits or uses children — through force, fraud, or coercion — as combatants or in support roles. Such support roles include children serving as cooks, porters, guards, messengers, medics, servants or spies.
Children are also used as sex slaves, which occurs when armed groups force or coerce children to “marry” or be raped by commanders or combatants. Both male and female children are often sexually abused or exploited by members of armed groups and suffer the same types of devastating physical and psychological consequences associated with sex trafficking. In 2014, Boko Haram, an extremist Islamic sect in Nigeria, kidnapped over 200 girls from a school in Chibok.
One survivor, named Habiba, tells of being captured at age 15, locked in a cage for four months, and forced to marry a soldier. She escaped, two months pregnant, and was found on the streets a year later, caring for her baby and two orphans who were boys kidnapped by Boko Haram to be used as child soldiers. Other survivors also told stories of torture, rape and sexual slavery. One survivor described three girls who attempted to flee but were caught, flogged and thrown into a hole. “They told us whosoever cries or begs for them not to be slaughtered will be slaughtered along with them,” she said.
Each year, as required by the Child Soldiers Prevention Act, the U.S. Department of State compiles a list of foreign governments identified during the previous year as having government armed forces, police, or other security forces, or government-supported armed groups that recruit or use child soldiers. A wide range of sources is used to create the list, including firsthand observation by U.S. government personnel, research and credible reporting from various United Nations entities, international organizations, local and international non-governmental organizations, and international and domestic media outlets.
The 2024 Trafficking In Persons Report lists the following 17 countries: Afghanistan, Burma, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Libya, Mali, Russia, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Turkiye, Venezuela and Yemen. Pursuant to CSPA, governments identified on the list are subject to restrictions on some kinds of security assistance, such as Foreign Military Financing, International Military Education and Training, and commercial licensing of military equipment. These restrictions commence in the fiscal year following the government being listed in the TIP Report. Beginning Oct. 1, 2024, and effective throughout Fiscal Year 2025, these restrictions will apply to the previously listed countries, absent a presidential waiver, applicable exception, or reinstatement of assistance pursuant to the terms of the CSPA.
You can read two stories from survivors of child soldiering at the U.S. Department of Defense Combating Trafficking in Persons Survivor Voices of Human Trafficking webpage.
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