The Culpability of Former Child Soldiers

February 28, 2021 by Digital Editor

Demobilized Child Soldier

By: Amy Zhan

The United Nations estimates that one in six children or 357 million girls and boys live in areas affected by armed conflict, with 149 million children living in high-intensity conflict zones. Some are born into war-torn areas, strife with battle-related skirmishes and deaths every day, and have never known any differently. Some are injured and maimed by hidden mines and wayward shrapnel, with one boy, going under the false name of Dennis, being injured at the young age of six in his home in Ukraine. And yet others still are forcibly recruited as child soldiers and coerced into committing horrible atrocities.

According to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, no child under the age of 18 may be recruited into armed forces or armed rebel groups, with international humanitarian law recognizing the recruitment of child soldiers under 15 to be a war crime. But despite these international verdicts, hundreds of thousands of children are estimated to be affected by this terrible human rights violation. Although it is difficult to pinpoint exact numbers, World Vision states that at least “21,000 cases of grave violations against children were verified in 2017” and children as young as eight years of age are “reported to be associated with armed groups.” These child soldiers are used as “fighters, cooks, suicide bombers, human shields, messengers, spies, or for sexual purposes.”

The Children and Justice During and in the Aftermath of Armed Conflict report states that: “Children are often desired as recruits because they can be easily intimidated and indoctrinated. They lack the mental maturity and judgment to express consent or to fully understand the implications of their actions…” These children suffer from physical, developmental, and mental health conditions. Some are even forcibly fed drugs that can change their temperament and negatively impact their personality. The consequences of being a child soldier are devastating.

This is why it is so complicated for the international community to determine the culpability of child soldiers in the crimes they commit as children and often later as adult combatants–for they are victims and perpetrators alike. This is what makes the case of Dominic Ongwen, who was about 9 years old when he was abducted and recruited into the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), so tough to grapple with. It is difficult not only because he was a child soldier himself but also because he became one of the LRA’s most loyal members and climbed the rank to become a top commander, who ordered terrible atrocities himself.

After a four-year trial, Ongwen was convicted on February 4, 2021 of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Ongwen, who is now 46, faces the possibility of life in prison for “charges including rape, forced marriages, torture, enslavements, and murder.” According to Judge Schmitt, Ongwen “‘gave instructions to loot food, abduct people, burn down the camp and the barracks…’” and ordered that “‘an old woman who could not carry her load … [to be] strangled … [and] … her throat cut.’” He was also involved in the recruitment of child soldiers himself.

Ongwen’s defense team argued that he “suffered from mental disorders and confusion about his identity” and that he “had been so brutalized…that he never learned to distinguish right from wrong.” The prosecution, on the other hand, stated that he “relished his role” in the LRA. Ongwen’s dual status as a victim and a perpetrator makes this case morally difficult for the international community. It is likely that Ongwen’s childhood experience of being abducted by and indoctrinated into the LRA largely shaped his psyche, and it may also be true that he “relished his role” as a commander.

But we still need to take his status as a child soldier into consideration in his future sentencing. In their decision to convict him, the judges did not “cite his childhood experiences as a mitigating factor.” It is certainly true that Ongwen is guilty of committing terrible atrocities over his more than 25 year fighting career, and he must be held accountable for his actions. But it is also true he was a child abducted and raised in a terribly violent and cruel environment that turned into a “‘fighting machine.’” And so, this must also be a part of the equation when deciding his sentencing. Even a terrible violator of human rights was once an innocent boy, swept up by the circumstances of a conflict beyond his control.


Amy Zhan is a 2L at the Georgetown University Law Center, where she is a Staff Editor for the Georgetown Journal of International Law. She graduated from Harvard University in 2017, with a degree in Government and Economics. Prior to law school, Amy spent two years working as an internal consultant for Fidelity Investments.