Read here policy and practical recommendations for those who work with children in organised armed violence.
RECOMMENDATIONS
1. Recognition: The growing involvement of children and youth in organised armed groups outside of situations of war is a distinct problem that needs to be recognised by both international child protection agencies and national governments. Recognition of children and youth in organised armed violence is important because the accepted definition of this phenomenon determines the treatment of those involved. An accepted definition is also an important step toward focusing on the involved child or young person’s needs and welfare, rather than just the armed group to which they belong, when deciding strategies for treatment.
2. Specific and integrated municipal/regional policies based on local diagnosis: Although they share numerous commonalities in causality, organisation, function and setting, organised armed groups are distinct entities in different environments. The findings from this study offer greater understanding of their nature and provide a model for the design of local interventions and municipal level strategies to treat the problem. However, there is no quick fix or uniformly applicable remedy. Specific policies for specific manifestations of this problem are needed. Policies should be based on local diagnosis that:
• Identifies the local manifestation of organised armed violence;
• Identifies structural risk factors that are causal and/or contributory to the establishment and continued dominance of local armed groups;
• Identifies the risk group that are most involved;
• Identifies risk factors and influences that are causal and/or contributory to children and youth ‘choosing’ to join local armed groups.
Once this is complete, a strategic and integrated policy that concurrently treats the structural risk factors (Recommendation 3) and develops local level resilience amongst children and youth (Recommendations 4 to 6) should be designed and implemented at the municipal/regional level.
3. Treatment of structural risk factors: Structural risk factors that are causal and/or contributory to the establishment and continued dominance of local armed groups must be addressed. These may be different in each setting. However, recommendations follow for the treatment of the structural risk factors that were found to be common in all or most case studies.
Socio-economic inclusion of populations within distinct urban areas: organised armed groups flourish in geographically distinct urban enclaves of poverty that are often distanced from the state via the provision of differentiated or inadequate public services to the local population. These areas need investment in infrastructure and local residents need health, education and employment programmes for their full socio-economic inclusion. Until these areas are an integrated part of the cities that surround them, armed groups will continue to have geographical and logistical bases.
(At the time of publication, recognition of the problem amongst some international agencies was beginning to take place. For example, the involvement of armed child workers in Rio de Janeiro’s drug factions was reported in the Brazil section of the 2004 Child Soldiers Global Report, www.child-soldiers.org).
Fast track educational inclusion and job opportunities for all youth: a high percentage of youth in the local population with disproportionately low levels of education and disproportionately high levels of unemployment is common to all areas where armed groups are dominant, almost all youth members being unemployed school dropouts. Youths need to know they will have access to jobs in the future if they are to be encouraged to stay in school. Combining education courses with paid part-time work placements is one way of ensuring young people finish their education rather than seek illicit enterprises, including joining an armed group.
Community policing: in all areas where groups are active the presence of state security forces is of a limited or differentiated nature. A reliance on reactive and repressive policing policies within these areas has led to poor relations between the local community and police. In some areas, security forces are not present at all, which encourages armed groups to become an openly armed presence. Within both such scenarios local residents are more likely to support dominant armed groups in their communities than the police. The police need to be a constant and respected presence within the community if they are to gain the support of local residents and stop armed groups becoming an openly armed fixture.
Deal with corruption and impunity: most armed groups benefit greatly from corrupt low-level state officials, especially the police. It is fundamental that corruption within such areas of the state apparatus is dealt with in order to lessen the dominion of armed groups within the territories where they are active, and end the impunity exercised by their members. It is also important to stop corrupt police officers being a source of illicit firearms and confiscated drugs. Policing is necessary, illegal violence by state forces is not: reliance solely upon a repressive and violent state apparatus against group members and non-involved residents of the communities in which they are active often serves to turn the community against the state and support or protect local armed groups. Abuse of authority may also lead to armed groups becoming increasingly armed, organised and violent in their response to state action.
Policing is necessary; however, it is fundamental that the police act within the boundaries of the law both because it is the law, and in order to gain the community’s support. Police abuse of power must be publicly dealt with by government. Gun control: extensive access to small arms is common to all groups due to lax state gun control and the illicit arms trade. In Northern Ireland, stringent gun control by the government in the form of arms seizures and prosecutions, and the control exerted by paramilitaries themselves in order to maintain their power base in communities, has effectively kept guns out of the hands of children and youths and meant that firearms-related deaths stayed relatively low during the last few years of the conflict and since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. As this example clearly demonstrates, gun control is crucial to lowering group access to small arms, and consequently the number of gun deaths.
Drug policy reform: in nine out of ten countries covered by this study, groups make their profit from the illegal drug trade. Access to illicit economies such as drug trafficking makes armed groups financially self-sufficient and provides the necessary funds to buy arms and bribe government/state officials. Governments have been unsuccessful in stopping drugs from entering illicit markets and repression has served to push prices up, greatly increasing violent competition between drug traffickers as well as their profits, and leading to the employment of increasingly militarised tactics by both drug trafficking groups and the police. Furthermore, police abuse of power is often carried out under the aegis of ‘drug control’, wherein the demonisation of drugs and drug traffickers is such that the use of excessive force by the police, and even the summary executions of drug traffickers, becomes accepted practice. Alternative drug policies could have a major impact on the employment of children and youth in organised armed violence. Cross-country policy comparisons of non-repressive drug policy should be carried out and promising alternatives identified.
By limiting the degrees to which the above risk factors affect specific areas, it may be possible to make armed groups a less present, active and dominant local force, or to transform. Type 1 groups into Type 2 or 3 groups. Treating structural risk factors should be done in an integrated manner, and concurrently to building resilience at the local level (Recommendations 4 to 6) 4. Build resilience through a network of community-based prevention interventions: Integrated networks of community based prevention interventions should be established at the municipal/regional level. Interventions should be based on local diagnosis and designed to identify and successfully engage the most at-risk children and youth, affecting their personal contexts by providing sufficient options and supportive influences for them to respond to prevalent risk factors within their environment without joining local armed groups. Local community-based organisations, such as existing grassroots NGOs or local churches, should receive training to coordinate prevention projects locally, and act in an integrated fashion via participation in the network. Network participation can be encouraged through members having access to training, funding opportunities and other forms of support.
5. Build resilience through a network of community based and institutional rehabilitation programmes: In addition to prevention, children and young people must be offered ways out of armed groups when they choose to leave or when they are apprehended by the authorities. Rehabilitation programmes at community level for those that choose to leave and within closed institutions should follow a similar methodology to prevention programmes; having sufficient options and supportive influences to respond to prevalent risk factors is as important to build resilience amongst children and youth already involved as it is for those ‘choosing’ not to join. Similar to prevention projects, community-based rehabilitation projects should be based on local diagnosis of the problem, be coordinated by specially capacitated and existing local organisations (where possible), and co-ordinated strategically via a network of local organisations/government at the municipal/regional level. Projects in the community must also design the correct strategies to safely contact involved children and young people within affected communities, and be integrated with state rehabilitation programmes within closed facilities in order that young people can continue to be rehabilitated after leaving detention.
6. Reform the juvenile justice system: For children and young people that do not opt to leave organised armed groups, the only window of opportunity for prolonged contact with them is their possible apprehension and detention within the juvenile justice system. In many of the countries covered by this study, juvenile detention centres are overcrowded, violent and abusive, and have inadequate facilities to successfully rehabilitate youth offenders. Youth detention facilities are in need of drastic reforms in order to stop the maltreatment of inmates and offer the necessary educational, job training and rehabilitation programmes.
7. Focus on inclusion rather than just repression: The application of the law by the police is necessary to deal with organised armed violence. However, government dependence upon solely repressive legislative, military, policing and incarceration policies for the treatment of organised armed violence has failed to treat the root causes of the problem and has been unsuccessful in counteracting the existence of armed groups, their dominion over local territories, populations and resources or the participation of children and youth within them. Furthermore, in areas where such policy has been relied upon, public health statistics do not demonstrate a fall in the firearms-related homicide rates over time; on the contrary, in many cases this has risen considerably within these localities since 1979. Increasingly militarised action from governments has so far only led to an increasingly militarised response from armed groups. Rather than just relying on repressive and military tactics, policing and legislative policies must focus on prevention and rehabilitation in order to offer involved children and youths the necessary support to opt for alternatives to armed group membership.
8. Disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration: The similarities in causality and function between children and youth working for politically-oriented armed groups in armed conflicts and children and youth in organised armed violence is considerable. Disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) are therefore applicable to both situations of war and organised armed violence. Organisations working with DDR of child soldiers and CAAC (Children Affected by Armed Conflict), and those with reintegration projects of child and youth armed group members in non-war situations have much to learn from one another. Knowledge of good practice examples of prevention, rehabilitation and DDR interventions in both situations should be exchanged and compared for the advancement of sound methodological practice and the design, development and implementation of ‘ddr’ programmes in urban non-war situations.
9. Engage groups in dialogue wherever possible: In order to ensure significant participation, wherever possible, and especially with Type 1 and 2 groups, group leaders should be contacted and encouraged to assist in the design of disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration programmes for their members. A number of projects have successfully engaged armed youth actors in social projects and reintegration programmes, and in El Salvador and Guatemala for example, pandillas have even requested meetings with government representatives, and vice-versa. Including those youths open to discussion in how to lessen their participation in gun violence will greatly improve the success of programmes with that objective. Different methods of negotiation and dialogue may be needed for Type 3 groups. These may be similar to conflict resolution tactics with armed groups in situations of armed conflict, and these techniques need to be learned, adapted and evaluated by those working with organised armed violence for their use in non-war situations. Conflict resolution between groups should also be focused on by the authorities in order to limit gun violence.
10. Monitoring legally recognised armed groups: Some ethnic-militia and vigilante groups in Nigeria and the Civilian Volunteer Organisations in the Philippines are legally recognised. In addition to DDR programmes for child members, these groups need to be closely monitored by government to ensure they are not armed, do not act outside of the law and do not use child labour.
11. Need for better and more specific violence-related data: An independent and unified global data bank that records comparable violence-related data is needed if the levels of violence in which armed groups are involved are to be recorded and monitored. This includes public health statistics such as detailed and comparable firearms-related homicide data relevant to the profile of group members within the specific communities in which armed groups are active.
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The evidence presented here suggests that the involvement of children and youth in organised armed violence is a growing phenomenon with diverse and distinct manifestations that share a significant number of commonalities. These commonalities are a great help to understanding these groups and their members better, and advancing methodological and practical approaches to treat this increasingly serious problem.
The number and size of organised armed groups, the rise in child and youth participation within them, and the ever growing use of firearms amongst youth as a tool for dispute resolution and economic and social advancement, may lead one to imagine this is a hopeless and intractable situation. However, small grassroots projects are showing what is possible in terms of prevention and rehabilitation; techniques that if applied correctly can be more successful than simply relying on repression to lower firearms-related mortality rates in the long-term, or prevent those previously arrested for involvement in armed groups from re-offending in the short-term.
The challenge for professionals working on this theme is whether the lessons learnt from such successful community-based interventions can be applied on a scale that can affect the problem on a neighbourhood or even citywide level. What is for certain, however, is that to substantially improve the chances of success, governments and the police must be willing to work together with relevant civil society organisations, community representatives and even involved youths themselves.
