(New York, October 28, 2005) — In anticipation of renewed fighting with rebel forces, the Ivorian government is recruiting Liberian children alongside hundreds of other former combatants in Liberia’s civil war, Human Rights Watch said today.
|
The Ivorian government is bolstering its military manpower by recruiting children who fought in Liberia’s brutal civil war. The international community must do all it can to ensure that these children are demobilized and that their recruiters are prosecuted.
|
“The Ivorian government is bolstering its military manpower by recruiting children who fought in Liberia’s brutal civil war,” said Peter Takirambudde, executive director of the Africa division of Human Rights Watch. “The international community must do all it can to ensure that these children are demobilized and that their recruiters are prosecuted.”
In October, Human Rights Watch interviewed 19 Liberian ex-combatants, including three children aged 13 to 17. All of them had been approached by Liberian and Ivorian recruiters to join a fighting “mission” on behalf of Côte d’Ivoire’s government. Several of those interviewed, including the children, said that they themselves were involved in the recruitment of additional fighters. After Liberia's civil war ended in 2003, some 101,000 combatants—including 11,000 children—were disarmed and demobilized under a United Nations-sponsored program.
Children were among those who described to Human Rights Watch how they attended meetings in Liberia in September and October, during which former Liberian commanders offered them US$300 to $400 to go to Côte d’Ivoire to fight on behalf of the Ivorian government. Many described being given money, rice and clothing to encourage their friends to join.
Most of those interviewed had crossed into Côte d’Ivoire in September, but came back to Liberia to cast their votes in the country’s October 11 general election. They also returned to identify additional recruits, for which they were promised additional remuneration. According to their accounts, Liberians are recruited from Nimba county and the southeastern counties of Grand Gedeh and River Gee, counties which border government-controlled areas of Côte d'Ivoire.
Interviewees said that after crossing into Côte d’Ivoire, they were taken to one of three militia bases in the west of the country: Toulepleu, Blolequin and Guiglo. They said each of these bases housed several hundred Liberians, most of whom, like them, had fought with the Liberian rebel group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), during Liberia’s civil war. The majority of those interviewed said they received food, uniforms and, in some cases, weapons from Ivorian military personnel at the bases. Many described seeing dozens of Liberian children inside militia bases in Côte d’Ivoire.
Several interviewees identified two Ivorian military officers, one a colonel and the other a sergeant, who appeared to be coordinating recruitment on behalf of the Ivorian government. One ex-combatant gave a detailed account of a meeting of Liberian commanders in Guiglo in the first week of September, in which they were briefed on the military mission being planned.
In the past year, Human Rights Watch documented two other periods of intense recruitment of Liberians to fight alongside the Ivorian government: last October, just prior to a government offensive against the rebel New Forces (Forces Nouvelles), and again in March, before the parties met for peace talks in South Africa.
Almost all of those interviewed had registered in 2004 for education or skills-training programs being administered by the Liberian Disarmament, Demobilization, Rehabilitation and Reintegration Program. However, the U.N. and Liberian-administered program is currently facing a funding shortfall of US$10 million needed to cover the reintegration of some 43,000 ex-combatants.
Several educational and vocational programs for ex-child combatants have opened in towns close to the border, but children said that pressure from the economic situation of their families had forced them to abandon the programs. Commanders appeared to have exploited this and used it as a tactic to encourage the child ex-combatants to fight in Côte d'Ivoire.
Human Rights Watch makes the following recommendations:
• The U.N. peacekeeping missions in both Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire should step up their monitoring of the recruitment and use of children by both the Ivorian government and New Forces rebels, and they should make their findings public. All information on recruitment and child soldier use should be provided to the monitoring and reporting mechanisms established under resolution 1612 (2005) by the U.N. Security Council.
• The Liberian and Ivorian governments and the New Forces rebels should conduct thorough investigations and prosecute those involved in the recruitment and use of child soldiers.
• The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, who announced on January 20 that he would send a team to Côte d'Ivoire to lay the groundwork for a possible investigation of war crimes, should include the recruitment and use of child soldiers in the scope of the ICC investigation. Under the ICC statute, the recruitment and use of children under the age of 15 is a war crime.
• The U.N. Sanctions Committee for Côte d’Ivoire should immediately activate travel and economic sanctions against individuals identified as responsible for the recruitment and use of child soldiers, pursuant to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1572.
