South Sudan’s government army is abducting children by force to use as child soldiers, sometimes just meters from armed UN peacekeepers mandated to protect civilians, a new investigation has revealed.
A report released today by New York-based research organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that troops under the command of Johnson Olony, who is loyal to Salva Kiir’s SPLA-Juba faction, is recruiting children as young as 13 from inside and outside the UN base in Malakal, Upper Nile state.
HRW found about 25 accounts of child recruitment in the area during a visit to Malakal in late January. The HRW investigators spoke with parents and relatives of abducted children, and with other children who escaped recruitment or whose friends were recruited. Adults who were recruited alongside children also confirmed the practice.
“Groups of armed and unarmed men, some in uniforms, forcibly recruit[ed] both adults and children outside the gate of the base, which is also a busy market area, in late December 2014 and January 2015,” HRW said.
“One child said he saw his friend, a 17-year-old, being taken by force from outside the gate in mid-January 2015 together with other young men,” the report said. “Another mother told Human Rights Watch that some small boys told her that men had taken her 15-year-old son from outside the UN gate.” The second incident was later confirmed when the mother called her son and he answered from a military barracks.
Young boys who wait in the market outside the gate with wheelbarrows to transport goods for pay are especially at risk of being abducted by Olony’s recruiters. A 14-year-old wheelbarrow boy said: “You run to the gate into the POC when you see them.”
Besides the gate, recruiters also targeted children by a pond close to the UN base and from other nearby areas. One woman said recruiters took her 11-year-old brother from the pond just before Christmas. Another woman said that in January recruiters captured her 13-year-old son at the riverside, where he was carrying goods for traders.
Another mother said: “My son…was captured by the army in Malakal town. I don’t know where he was captured, he was going to go and see his family and was taken on the way.”
Some of the abducted children were immediately sent to the front lines. One man over 18 years of age said he was abducted and placed in a truck with six “small” children whom he believed to be around ages 13 to 15.
“When we got to Koka [the battle area] we were told to go to fight, given weapons, and attack together with other soldiers,” he said. “We were given uniforms, almost immediately told to fight … all of us.”
The report also noted instances of children leaving the UN’s base to voluntarily join armed groups.
“One mother said that both her sons, one 13 and one 14, had voluntarily joined Olony in late December 2014,” HRW said. “Another mother followed her 13-year-old son to a military barracks after he left the UN base. “He refused to come home,” she said.”
The report did not comment on what actions UN peacekeepers did or did not take to protect the children from abduction. The gate at the Malakal base is guarded by armed UN peacekeepers, and peacekeepers carry out patrols in Malakal town during the daytime.
In Bentiu last year, Mongolian peacekeepers mobilized two Armored Personnel Carriers to rescue a child being abducted by armed forces outside the UN base’s gate. It is not known if peacekeepers in Malakal took similar measures at the gate, or at the pond and river.
Leadership of Kiir’s SPLA-Juba as well as the SPLA-In Opposition of Riek Macha have repeatedly committed themselves to not using child soldiers, but both sides are accused by human rights and child welfare organizations of recruiting thousands of boys and girls under 18 to fight in the ongoing civil war.
File photo: Gen. Johnson Uliny arrives in Juba, 13 June 2013 (Sudan Tribune)