Re-recruitment of child soldiers

The renewed fighting this month in Sierra Leone has inevitably raised fears of re-recruitment and fresh abductions of child soldiers by both sides in the conflict, humanitarian agencies told IRIN. There has been a confirmed case of rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) re-recruiting ex-child combatants in the northern town of Makeni. Some 40 of the 180 children in the town’s interim care centre (ICC) were taken back into RUF ranks by their former commanders. In Lunsar, in the west of the country, fear of being re-recruited by the RUF led to the emptying of the ICC and a harrowing journey by two separate groups of children, the aid agency Caritas International said. Between 9 and 14 May, 236 children escaped from the town on foot before they were rescued and transported to Lungi, across the Sierra Leone River from Freetown. Caritas International said a further 303 ex-child soldiers in Lunsar were taken into the bush by their guardians as part of a protection effort by the community. The picture, however, has been different in the eastern town of Daru. There, the RUF did not obstruct the relocation by road of 41 children from the ICC to Bo in the south and Kenema in the southwest. Save the Children Fund (SCF) said the children had asked to be moved. Both sides in the renewed fighting are known to be recruiting children. Among pro-government forces at Masiaka, east of Freetown, children ranging from 7-14 years have been seen carrying guns and foraging for food. According to one UN assessment mission they constituted 25 to 30 percent of the Sierra Leone Army/Civil Defence Force militia seen in the town. However, militiamen said the children had volunteered as fighting spread to their villages along the main road to Masiaka. “No one fully knows what’s happening over re-recruitment, but the safety of children is very precarious at the moment,” Ibrahim Sesay of Caritas told IRIN. During Sierra Leone’s nine-year conflict, approximately 5,000 children were abducted and conscripted into fighting forces. Some 1,600 were demobilised under the peace process that began in July 1999 with the signing of the Lome accord between the government and the RUF. However, the return to war jeopardises work aimed at reuniting the former child soldiers with their families, and threatens to force yet more children into carrying guns on the frontline, humanitarian sources fear.