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Olara Otunnu (Click for full size. 11K)

Fighting "Men." These child soldiers in Liberia are typical of the youth engaged in conflict in more than two dozen locations around the world. (Click for full size. 11K)

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Olara Otunnu, the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict recently appeared on the Stanley Foundation's public radio program, Common Ground. Otunnu spoke with Executive Producer Jeff Martin. Common Ground is heard each week on more than 100 public radio stations across the US. A full transcript of this program, #9904, is available on the Common Ground Web site: www.commongroundradio.org

Olara Otunnu
[My office is responsible for] all aspects of the victimization of children in situations of conflict—children who are killed; children who are displaced. The largest number of refugees and those who are displaced within their countries are children. Children who are traumatized as a result of being exposed to violence. Children who are used as child soldiers. Children who are sexually abused. Children who suffer disproportionately from the impact of land mines. So all of those aspects come within our mandate.

In your report to the General Assembly that you did earlier this fall you talked early on about a breakdown of values. Can you expound on that a little bit?

Otunnu
There are two pillars, two normative pillars, pillars of standards on which we can fasten the claim for the protection of children. The one is the standards which have been developed internationally. Especially in the last fifty years beginning with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Convention, the Convention of the Rights of the Child, to even very recently the Rome Treaty on the statute of the International Criminal Court. So there is a whole repertoire of very impressive international standards providing for the protection of children. That's one level.

But locally, within most societies, are local value systems that speak to the same ethos, the protection of children and the welfare of children. It provided taboos. It provided the does and don'ts even in situations of conflict. And what we are seeing is that the international norms, by and large, have not taken root. They are not being applied on the ground. The local values, which called people to order for so long within their own societies, have been undermined radically. In some cases they have collapsed altogether because of prolonged exposure to conflict. The result then is an ethical vacuum. It is a free-for-all in which women, children, and the elderly all become fair game in this absolutely ruthless struggle for power in so many situations of conflict in the world.

Do you have any idea why this has happened?

Otunnu
Well, I think it is in part because most of the conflicts today happen within countries. They are civil wars. And the conflict, the struggle, and the fighting between brother enemies and sister enemies and neighbors, and compatriots tend to be the worst. You are pitting communities against communities, neighbors against neighbors. And with this comes the phenomenon of demonization, where you are not simply seeking to disable the enemy army as tends to be in situations of interstate conflict [but] where you've got set armies fighting each other. You tend, increasingly, to be seeking to annihilate the so-called enemy community—whether you define it along ethnic, religious, or regional lines.

But also the number of parties involved in conflict, it isn't two sides. Often there are many parties within a conflict, with a varying degree of autonomy and authority over those who fight for them. Hmm? So that the level of organization and authority varies a lot in these situations. There's been a qualitative shift in the very nature and conduct of warfare. And that explains why, if you look at World War I which was a particularly blood conflict in Europe, thousands of people were sent in and died. The percentage of civilian casualties was about 5 percent. It was a bloody war, soldier-on-soldier violence. World War II, where too, a bloody, bloody conflict, including the aerial bombardment of Europe. You know, it was the end of war. The figure rose up sharply to over 45 percent. But today, in the kind of conflicts I am describing to you in some thirty theaters of conflict around the globe, fully ninety percent of the casualties in these conflicts are civilian populations. It has the world upside down. Most of these are woman and children. Most of these are deliberate targeting of homes, civilian sites, and civilian populations. You see?

Let's talk a little bit about child soldiers. How young are some of these kids, and how do they get involved? How do they get started? How do they get recruited?

Otunnu
Well, the reasons vary. Some of them are forced, quite often kidnapped. Many are enticed through deception. But also there are those who are attracted by ideological maneuvering, ideological manipulation. They are told, "You are fighting for a cause, for self-determination, for democracy, for the rights of our people, for our religion." There are many ways by which they are attracted. But there are also those who simply go to the fighting groups because everything else has broken down. There is no economic system in place. Schools are not functioning; the family has broken up. And these organized fighting groups look more attractive than the alternative. They provide food. They provide a gun which gives instant power. So there are many reasons. There are political reasons. There are economic and social reasons, but there are also ideological reasons in addition to children who are simply forced to go and fight. As you may know, today we estimate that 300,000 children below the age of eighteen are under arms around the globe. So that is the kind of situation which we are facing.

In terms of their ages, it varies. But most of the children I've seen in the field from the various places I've been, they would be, some are barely ten, twelve. Others are thirteen, fifteen. Of course, when you ask any of these kids "How old are you?" they all say, "Twenty-one." Because somebody has primed them to say twenty-one.

Finally, we just have a couple of minutes left. I wonder if you'd talk about the long-term effect of children in conflict.

Otunnu
It is the future of our society which is being blighted when children are involved in conflict. When children are abused in conflict situations. Take children who take up guns and fight. They lose their innocence, they lose their youth. They become instruments of destruction and atrocities. And later to try to heal them from that is very, very difficult.

Take children who lose out on schooling. Even when the war has ended, how to reintroduce them to productive lives. How to work out some vocational training for them. Very difficult.

Take just the sheer trauma that children suffer being exposed to this, and how that can live with them for so long. In many ways, these children who are exposed to violence can then become the vehicle for transferring violence from one generation to another, unless we are able to heal them and cut the cycle.

So the ways in which a society is affected economically, socially, and politically is enormous. The future of our society and our civilization is very much at stake if we do not protect children from the impact of war.