Children associated with terrorist groups in the context of the legal framework for child soldiers

Abstract

The high profile case of nineteen-year-old Shamima Begum, who ran away from her home in London when she was fifteen to join the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and was discovered, heavily pregnant, in a camp for internally displaced persons in early 2019, refocused attention on the issue of children who join terrorist organizations.[1] Upon her arrival in Syria in 2015, Begum quickly married a Dutch IS fighter and they had three children together, all of whom died in their infancy, the third succumbing in the squalor of the camp just as Begum was stripped of her British citizenship. Political and legal opinion are divided over whether Begum is a victim or a perpetrator, or in either instance a security risk, and if, where and how she should face justice.[2] There has been little serious consideration of whether Begum should be characterised as a former child soldier and whether such a characterisation carries special implications in the context of terrorism.

This article aims to provide a preliminary assessment of the extent to which the phenomenon of children who are recruited or born into terrorist groups fits within the legal and conceptual framework concerning the recruitment and use of child soldiers. As both ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist group’ lack universally accepted definitions, reliance is placed on United Nations, regional and national sanctions lists to identify relevant organisations. This article will focus on the activities of Islamic State (IS or ISIL) in Syria and Iraq, and Boko Haram in Nigeria to illustrate the factual context. Recruitment and exploitation of children by terrorist groups is not a new occurrence. Indeed, one of the first cases to be instituted before the International Criminal Court (ICC) concerned the activities in Uganda of Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) – a group included in the US State Department’s Terrorist Exclusion List and designated a terrorist group by the African Union in 2011.[3] While Kony remains at large, the trial of the alleged former commander of LRA’s Sinia Brigade, Dominic Ongwen, once himself a child soldier, is ongoing before the ICC.[4] The ICC does not distinguish between armed groups and terrorist groups so long as the elements for the crimes under the 1998 Rome Statute are met.[5] The distinctions become more apparent when the issue of ‘foreign fighters’ and the possibility of domestic prosecutions under anti-terror legislation are considered. As the Begum case illustrates, there is an absence of international consensus on how to approach ‘former foreign child fighters’ and their children who are born into terrorist groups.

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for Nina H.B. Jørgensen: orcid.org/0000-0003-3499-8289

Catalogue record

Export record