The issue of "Child Warriors" (Philippine speak for "Child Soldiers") is a perennial punching bag for the Armed Forces of the Philippines, or AFP, as well as for the New People'a Army, or NPA, with each side wasting great time and energy accusing the other of reprehensibly using "children" in armed combat. However, the dynamic is non-existent in both organisations. It is used as a propaganda exercise. In International Law there is an important genre known as LOAC (pronounced "Low-Ack"), an acronym representing the "Laws of Armed Conflict." Within LOAC the 1989 United Natioms Convention on the Rights of the Child defines the minimum age for soldiers- or rather, defines a "child" as anyone 17 or younger (Article I), but in terms of "Child Soldiers," the minimum age for front line combat soldiers- because outside of that narrow role there is absolutely no minimum age- is 18 or older for conscription but anyone 15 or older can voluntarily participate in front line combat (OPAC, or, Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, ratified May 25th, 2000). Conceivably you could dress a five year old in jungle camouflage and have him man an armed checkpoint but then you run into another genre, IHL, or International Humanitarian Law in which the "Rights of Children" are attended to in reams of Politically Correct verbiage.
To clarify, the minimum age for a front line combat soldier was, for decades, 14.5, or 14 years and six months for the decimally challenged amongst us. Then, in 1989, the UN authored a new Convention, the aforementioned "CROC," or, "Convention on the Rights of the Child," in which the age was raised to 15 years. So, the AFP is well within its rights to recruit 15 year old paramilitary soldiers in its CAA programme, right? Wrong...well...sort of... In "OPAC," the "Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict," Part IV, Article 1, only national militaries can recruit people 17 or younger. Paramilitaries are forbidden. But, according to the AFP the CAA programme is a Military Reserve, not a paramilitary. It is true that AFP cadres technically command each CAA detachment but it is also true that most CAAs never even receive their proscribed 45 days of military training. It would no doubt be a challenging case to prosecute were the Philippine Government to ever be called onto the carpet for the issue. The best defence the Government could offer is that CAA Regulations bar anyone under the age of 18 even being enlisted so that a 17 year old technically couldn't even join a rear echelon position (CAA being "Citizens Active Auxiliary" though usually the "C" is said to designate "Civilian," a faux paux that even the AFP has grown accustomed to making. The CAA are geographically fixed detachments composed of citizens living within a detachment's operational area. The best known form of CAA is the "CAFGU," pronounced "Kaf-goo," the Citizens Armed Forces Geographical Unit).
In the AFP's defence, it isn't that the AFP seeks anyone younger than 18. Indeed, I reckon that even if confronted with someone under the stated minimum age most any member of the AFP would be unwilling to accept them. However, there are times when an AFP officer has no choice but to enlist such people although it is extremely rare. Insurgency in the Philippines is strongest in the remote countryside. On Mindanao the NPA concentrates its expansionist agenda within the Lumad demographic, the Lumad being the one size fits all generic label applied to the 18 Animist Hilltribes of Austronesian stock. There are still today many Lumad villages existing off the grid. Existing in unrecognised communities there is no civil registration in terms of births, weddings, deaths, and so forth. Without birth certificates there is no way in which to ascertain one's age and so this is done via one's word and the judgement of the AFP cadre in charge of organising a CAA detachment within that community. Extant law in fact holds that age must be ascertained as best as can reasonably be expected. As such, dealing with Hilltribes, it is the "Datu," or Chief's word that serves as the "proof."
There are other ways in which recruits may circumvent the age guidelines, such as a local Datu having a 16 year only son, nephew, or grandson that he wants enlisted, the datu compels the cadre by refusing to allow the detachment to exist unless the cadre complies, and other similar scenarios.
As for the NPA, until the late 1990s the organisation openly recruited males and females as young as 14 despite the political wing, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) Poltiburo (Political Bureau, aka the Executive Committee)having issued a directive that nobody under 18 must be recruited into the NPA's Guerilla Fronts, the front line units. The directive had no teeth and so recruitment of young teenagers continued until 1999 when the AFP suceeded in getting the Manila-based national media to co-operate in its propaganda campaign against the NPA, thereafter the "Child Warrior" became one of two AFP propaganda mainstays (the other being the AFP-manufactured issue of landmines). This changed with external sources joining the fray in that same year. UNICEF issued a report claiming that 3% of all NPA guerillas were "children."
That same year the NPA received a stern rebuke from the CPP's Military Commission, the entity serving as an interface between the CPP Central Committee and the NPA National Command. Now the minimum age for recruitment was firmly established at age 18. However, IF the NPA wished to recuit 9 year olds legally it could (according to the AFP it recruits nine year olds, at least that was the silly story told by the 10ID (Infantry Division) when it claimed a little girl it murdered was a guerilla). Laws dealing with minimum ages in the military merely apply to national governments, and then only if the government agrees to sign a voluntary agreement. These agreements, CROC, OPAC, Rome Statute, and so on can be abrogated simply by written notice of the nation wishing to withdraw.
Aside from the NPA, all Philippine insurgent organisations have, within recent memory, actively recruited children as young as 11. Although the BIAF, or Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces as the MILF military wing is known, now takes a stance that at least externally rejects the recruitment of children, it still enlists them. Although not very common, it is also not very rare to find BIAF guerillas in their very early teens. The MILF defends this by correctly noting that BIAF camps have never been conventional military camps. They are not properly defined and in most cases, neither are they properly protected. Within boundries haphazardly defined by the MILF/BIAF itself, several villages exist much like any other Philippine villages except for the MILF serving as the here all-end all power in villagers' lives. Shari'a Courts, courts administering Islamic Law, are administered by the MILF. People are whipped, executed, and so forth. Schools teach only MILF and Islamic principles and so the MILF/BIAF has created a state within a state. Each family is compelled to offer one male and one female to the organisation, with 12 being the minimum age for males, 11 for females.
Currently the ARMM, or, Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao regional government has just awarded 20 BIAF Child Soldiers an educational package as it tries to lure more and more youth from a life of kill or be killed but the ARMM can only do this with foreign funding so that there isn't much hope that the BIAF will stop this practice. The MILF, as I noted, swears it won't do it anymore but then adds that children living in BIAF camps must be taught to defend themselves in the face of "external" aggression, as in the Philippine Government trying to merely re-establish its sovereign rights.
The ASG, or, Abu Sayyaf Group, is one organisation- and I used the word "organisation" VERY loosely- that makes no apologies about employing whichever male wishes to join them. On November 14th, 2011, the AFP's 4th Scout Ranger Battalion was once again operating in the municipality of Sumisip, in Basilan Province. Encircling a small camp under sub-Kumander Abdulbaki Ismanul, in Barangay Tongsengal, the soldiers began slowly crawling forward, uphill when they were detected. During the ensuing firefight the AFP was able to capture three Abu Sayyaf guerillas:
1) Al Mahdi Arshad, age 22
2) Abdul Baklis Manul
one of whom was 12 years old:
3) Abduhaya Pantasan
In doing so the AFP also managed to capture two M16s, one of which had an M203 grenade launcher, as well as one M14. In addition, twelve full magazines were captured, five M16, seven M14, and one ICOM walkie talkie. Not taking any chances since the 4th Battalion's Intelligence Unit was caught torturing an Abu Sayyaf guerilla this past summer, the battalion quickly turned the 12 year old over to the DSWD, or, Department of Social Welfare and Development as they are mandated to do.
Mandated or not, quite often youth are tacticaly interrogated, often brutally, and then incarcerated side by side with adults. It is only within the last 6 years that the Philippines has begun separating juvenile inmates from adults, yet hundreds are still not segregated. Children as young as 5 years old are held in large adult cells, and I need not describe the hellish life that awaits such children. At DSWD the young guerilla is ostensibly trained and counseled so as to have at least an opportunity to salvage his life. Of course in reality no real dedicated programme exists for de-programming such youth. Their counseling is with untrained paraprofessionals and their de-programming isn't via any established protocols and so naturallt these young people end up with little prospects outside the gross violence they have become accustomed too.
No comments:
Post a Comment