Sudan’s army to create unit to remove children from its ranks
December 23, 2008 (KHARTOUM) — On the same day that a senior UN official said there are 6,000 child soldiers in Darfur, the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) on Monday signed a memorandum of understanding with the UN’s children fund (UNICEF) to create a Child Rights Unit in the SAF to enforce the 2007 Sudan Armed Forces Act, which sets 18 as the minimum age for armed forces recruitment.
Ted Chaiban, the outgoing head of UNICEF in Sudan, asserted that the national army, allied militias, the police and Darfur’s Central Reserve Police all used child soldiers.
“An 11-year-old in this sort of situation basically looses their childhood. It dehumanizes them,” said Chaiban.
Accordingly, the new Child Rights Unit will help SAF educate personnel about Sudan’s child protection laws. UNICEF will give the unit funding, training and technical support.
Chaiban also said that all of Darfur’s main rebel groups used children. “All the armed factions and groups in Darfur have used children. The number of children (as soldiers) that we estimate exist in Sudan is 8,000 children. Of the 8,000 children, we estimated that 6,000 are in Darfur,” said Chaiban. He cited figures Sunday that 2.3 million children have been affected by the conflict in Darfur, which amounts to roughly half of those bearing the humanitarian consequences of the conflict.
Rights groups and UN officials have repeatedly leveled accusations against the Justice and Equality Movement in particular for recruiting child soldiers, but the group vehemently denies the charges and says it abides by international legal norms. In 2006, the Sudan Liberation Movement led by Abdel Wahid Al-Nur freed about 100 children.
Although not all of the child soldiers are used in combat roles, Chaiban stressed that even using children in support roles is forbidden by international agreements. The official noted that the child soldiers are generally aged between 15 and 17, although some were as young as 11.
The agreement was also signed by the National Council for Child Welfare (NCCW). UNICEF stated, “the Memorandum is the outcome of an initial and successful cooperation between UNICEF, NCCW and SAF which began in early 2008 with the training of 180 SAF officers in the Darfur states and in Khartoum State.”
UNICEF Representative Ted Chaiban, a national of both the United States and Lebanon, was appointed to lead the agency in Sudan in 2005. Next month he will leave Sudan to lead UNICEF’s programme in Ethiopia.
Speaking on Sunday in Khartoum, he said, “Strengthening this protective environment for children takes time. Too often, not least in periods of post-conflict transition, the focus is on delivering services for children rather than developing the systems and structures that guarantee those services as a basic right.”
Chaiban called Darfur “a dangerous and unhealthy place for a child to grow up in.”
(ST)