IJCentral: International Justice Central

THE HAGUE — Using children as soldiers was “particularly abusive” as their ignorance of death made them fearless, a UN expert told the war crimes trial Thursday of Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga in The Hague.
Children under 15, had “an under-developed notion of death”, Radhika Coomaraswamy, a special UN representative for children in armed conflict, told the International Criminal Court.
“The lack of the concept of death makes them fearless in battle, often thinking of it as a game and rushing straight into the line of fire,” she testified.
“For this reason ... it is particularly abusive to utilise children.”
Lubanga, 49, went on trial a year ago charged with war crimes for using children under the age of 15 to fight for his militia during the 1997-2002 civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
He pleaded not guilty.
After a delay of several months, the trial was set to have resumed with the opening of Lubanga’s defence case on Thursday, but continued instead with the court calling Coomaraswamy as an expert witness.
She testified that in tribal conflicts, children easily fell prey to romantic notions of dying for their community.
“Children are easily exploited by those kinds of imageries of romantic death and heroic death,” Coomaraswamy said.
She urged the court not to give too much credence to the fact that many child soldiers had in fact volunteered to fight.
“I heard so many stories of children who ... told me they felt they had no choice but to join an armed group in order to feed themselves due to dire poverty or because they were maltreated by family members.
“The court should see children as a special category, creating a framework that protects their vulnerability.”
Prosecutors allege that Lubanga’s militia abducted children as young as 11 from their homes, schools and football fields and took them to military training camps where they were beaten and drugged. The girls among them were said to be used as sex slaves.
The child soldiers were allegedly deployed in combat between September 2002 and August 2003.
The prosecution allege that Lubanga was driven by a desire to maintain and expand his control over the Congo’s eastern Ituri region, one of the world’s most lucrative gold-mining areas, where rights groups say inter-ethnic fighting has claimed 60,000 lives over the last decade.
The prosecution wound up its case on July 14 after calling 28 witnesses, including former child soldiers, over 74 days of hearings.
After Coomaraswamy’s evidence, the court is set to hear from another expert witness and three victims, including two alleged former child soldiers, before the start of the defence case on an unannounced date.
Coomaraswamy told the court that its willingness to prosecute child conscriptors has resulted in several armed groups approaching the UN to negotiate plans for the release of child
soldiers, “most recently in Nepal, where the release of 3,000 children is about to begin today”.

source:  AFP