I. SUMMARY

Age was a determining factor in who received demobilization benefits from the government [child soldiers were excluded], but did not play a role in the decision to recruit these children in the first place.

-Angolan human rights activist, November 28, 2002.

I was taken away in 1999 when I was thirteen-years old. At first, I was used to transport arms, supplies, and other materials. Later, I was shown how to fight. We shot with AK-47s and other weapons. I was the youngest in my troop of about seventy, children and adults. We were on the front lines and I was sick, with bouts of malaria and often not enough to eat. I was in the troop only because they captured me in the first place. This wasn't my decision.

-Manoel P., former UNITA child soldier, December 3, 2002.

An agreement reached between government armed forces and the largest opposition group, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola, UNITA), brought peace to mainland Angola in April 2002. Some 100,000 adult combatants from UNITA moved with their families into quartering areas. Five thousand of these were integrated into the national police and armed forces; the rest into a formal demobilization program. Most adult fighters eighteen and older received demobilization and photo identification cards, a travel authorization certificate, a five-month salary based on military rank, and food assistance. They are also to receive a transport allowance and a reinstallation kit upon return to their home communities. But boy and girl soldiers, seventeen and younger, were not included in the demobilization program and received only an identification card and food aid distributed by the international community to family units attached to the soldiers.

The current demobilization program discriminates against children, many of whom carried out the same duties as adults during the conflict. It compounds the injustice these children have faced: the use of children in armed conflict is explicitly prohibited by the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, and participation by children in armed conflict is among the worst forms of child labor as defined in the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention. As a party to these instruments, the government of Angola has a general obligation to provide for the care, protection, recovery, and reintegration of children who are affected by armed conflict.

The lack of direct assistance to former child¹ combatants and the failure to include them in demobilization programs jeopardizes the rights of boys and girls who served in the war and is a step back from previous practices in Angola. Following the Lusaka Protocol of 1994 which brought a temporary cessation to the fighting, approximately 9,000 boy combatants from UNITA and the government were enrolled in a demobilization program. Although this program was only partially successful and did not include girl soldiers, it stands in sharp contrast to the lack of formal assistance to those children who served in the last years of the war.

No official figures exist for how many children fought with UNITA and the government in the last resumption of the war from the period 1998 to 2002. The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers estimates that 7,000 children served with UNITA and government forces, Angola Armed Forces (Forças Armadas Angolanas, FAA).² Child protection workers in Angola have suggested that as many as 11,000 from the two sides may have lived and worked in combat conditions. Some children received weapons and arms training and were active in the fighting. Many others acted as porters, cooks, spies, and wives to UNITA soldiers. Whatever their duties, the work they performed was hazardous and has had an emotional impact on many of them.

Children interviewed for this report spoke of the hardships they experienced in serving under the UNITA command during the war. Tasked with the dangerous duty of running messages to and from the front, they described combat conditions and fear of "disappearing" or death. The role a child might play with UNITA was roughly determined by size; smaller children served as cooks, domestics, and food gatherers, while more physically developed children carried arms and fought in battle. Human Rights Watch researchers spoke with one boy who was eleven years old at the start of his service with UNITA. He told us, "I suffered a lot in the war. I had to carry heavy equipment, arms and ammunition, and work on the front lines."³

Girls served with UNITA as domestics, assistants, and "wives" to soldiers. Women and girls were also forcibly given as "comfort women" to visiting guests in UNITA-held areas in the war. After the war, many of these girls were young mothers living in the quartering areas, with or without their "husbands". Other girls were living with family members and not as easily identifiable as a distinct group. In the demobilization process following the Lusaka Protocol, girls were not included in any formal programming. Girls who lived and worked in combat conditions are presently receiving no specific assistance and there is a great risk that their needs will once again be overlooked.

Boys and girls also spoke about the strict command structure of UNITA and the harsh punishments for the infraction of rules. Soldiers whipped the children for not following orders or forced them to carry heavy loads. Other punishments were hazardous duties including collecting firewood and food in FAA-held areas. One child spoke of being held in cold water for several hours for shirking duty. Many of these same commanders, demobilized in 2002, controlled information and access to camp inhabitants in the quartering areas although children were unanimous in asserting that the physical abuse had ended.

International organizations provided basic food and medical care to residents in many of the quartering areas. But the poor state of the roads, coupled with the rainy season from December to April which caused some deeply laid landmines to resurface, hampered delivery and cut off some areas from assistance. For logistical ease, food aid was distributed to family units by way of a designated head of household. Child soldiers did not qualify as heads of households and had to attach themselves to a family, related or not, to receive a share. Boys and girls explained that in some instances, families provided an insufficient portion to them and that they were often the last to get something to eat. Although they stated that life had much improved since the end of the war, they were still lacking basic items in the camps. Children expressed the need for additional clothing, blankets, shoes, and school materials.

The government of Angola also used child soldiers during the war despite national legislation that prohibited their conscription. Many were rounded up and forced to fight for the FAA during recruitment drives in government-held areas. Some boys received arms training and fought in the front lines. Others worked as radio operators and mechanical repairmen. Working with international agencies, the government released some boys that were stationed in the capital, Luanda, in 2002. Observers working in the provinces told Human Rights Watch that underage soldiers were still serving with the FAA in rural areas largely out of sight of the international community and that a full demobilization needed to occur.⁴ For example, one journalist told Human Rights Watch that he interviewed a fourteen-year-old boy serving with the FAA in Kwanza Sul province in mid-2002.⁵

Children who have been released from the FAA have received no benefits as former fighters. They have been placed with their families or relations in their home areas, but lack proper food and shelter, health care, and educational opportunities in contravention of Angola's commitment to provide for the care and recovery of victims of armed conflict. Social workers have emphasized that the plight of these children is so bad that many have expressed a preference to return to the armed forces where at least they were guaranteed something to eat and a dry place to sleep.

The thousands of former UNITA child soldiers who will move from the camps to transit centers and back to their home regions in 2003 will likely face many of the same difficulties faced by those already released from the FAA. While in the camps, these children had access to food assistance and some health care-a luxury that many children in Angola do not have. Children interviewed for this report spoke with concern about the future and coming to grips with their violent pasts, underlining the need for specific psychosocial counseling and community integration.

Some community-based government programs for rehabilitation of children have been planned with support from the international community. The programs promote family and community rehabilitation but do not single out child soldiers reportedly because such identification hinders their reintegration. While these programs may strengthen community cohesion in the short-term, the failure to target former boy and girl soldiers specifically in a recognized program suggests that many of these children and their special needs for recovery and rehabilitation will be overlooked. Further, it assumes that these former child soldiers have family and community to assist them, which is not always the case. Finally, continued peace and stability in the countryside in part depend on the successful reintegration of those who bore arms. If child combatants are left out of the process, there is a risk that at least some of those children could again become fodder for elements seeking to destabilize Angola's transition to peace.

After decades of civil war, Angola's infrastructure lies in ruins. Landmines litter the countryside and hospitals, health clinics, and schools were destroyed in the fighting. A lack of qualified professionals in the interior mean basic health and education services are not available to the majority of the population. Although these fields have been identified as priorities for 2003, the government must deliver on its promises to secure the progressive implementation of the rights to education and the highest attainable standard of health. The ultimate success of programs for the reintegration of former child combatants into their communities is contingent on their ability to access basic social services.

Angola assumed the chairmanship of the Southern African Development Community in October 2002 and, as of January 2003, a seat on the United Nations Security Council. Increased international prominence should be linked to increased accountability to and benefits for its people at home. The international community must apply pressure on the government of Angola to fulfill its obligations to its citizenry. While United Nations agencies and non-governmental organizations can and should continue to play a role in development and humanitarian activities, the government bears the primary responsibility for ensuring the rights to education and health and for providing for the rehabilitation of those who were child soldiers.

This report highlights the plight of children who fought in the civil war and the absence of programs addressing their specific needs. Almost every child in Angola, however, has been affected by the conflict. The government should as a matter of priority work to ensure the rights to education and the highest attainable standard of health for all children. As children under eighteen represent 60 percent of the population of the country, a peaceful and prosperous future for Angola depends on it.

Methods
This report is based on research conducted in Angola in November and December 2002. We conducted interviews in the capital, Luanda, and in the two provinces of Bié and Moxico. Human Rights Watch researchers interviewed former child soldiers from UNITA and the FAA. Former boy soldiers were interviewed individually and girls were interviewed in groups. Confidential, private interviews with girls could not be arranged with authorities in the camps. The information presented on sexual abuse of girls is from previous Human Rights Watch research in 1998 and 1999, interviews with aid workers working with girls in the camps, and private interviews with boy soldiers.

We also met with former and current military leaders, national and international non-governmental organization (NGO) representatives, members of the clergy, United Nations employees, and government officials. The names, identities and locations of children interviewed for this report have been changed or withheld for their protection.

¹ In this report, the word "child" refers to anyone under the age of eighteen. Article 1 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child defines a child as "every human being under the age of eighteen years unless, under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier. Convention on the Rights of the Child, G.A. Res. 44/25, U.N. Doc A/RES/44/25.

² Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, Global Report on Child Soldiers 2001, June 12, 2001.

³ Human Rights Watch interview, December 3, 2002.

⁴ Human Rights Watch interviews, Bié, November 28 and Moxico, December 2, 2002.

⁵ Human Rights Watch interview, Luanda, November 20, 2002.