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Transitional and Generational Justice: Children Involved in Armed Conflicts

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Current Issues in Transitional Justice

Part of the book series: Springer Series in Transitional Justice ((SSTJ,volume 4))

Abstract

The debate between restorative and retributive justice has never been felt so strongly than in relation to the crimes perpetrated by children in armed conflicts in Africa. The society in which these children have perpetrated the crimes demands justice in the form of punishment. For the victims, children, alike adults, have taken part in the commission of a range of atrocities and therefore ought to face the might of lady Justice. In contrast, the international community, especially the United Nations, is loath to put these children to trial. No individual who at the time of the commission of the crime was below 18 years of age has been prosecuted in an international criminal tribunal. This chapter explores what would be the result of the trial of a child soldier in order to find out whether such a trial would promote transitional and generational justice, bringing together the society at large. In this quest particular attention is paid not only to the legal but also to the political and sociological framework.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), 1577 UNTS 3, November 20, 1989, Art. 1.

  2. 2.

    Save the Children, Forgotten Casualties of War: Girls in Armed Conflict, 2005, 11.

  3. 3.

    Susan McKay, “Reconstructing Fragile Lives: Girls’ Social Reintegration in Northern Uganda and Sierra Leone”, Gender and Development 12(3) (2004): 23.

  4. 4.

    Florence Tercier Holst-Roness, “Violence against Girls in Africa during Armed Conflicts and Crises”, Second International Policy Conference on the African Child: Violence against Girls in Africa, International Committee of the Red Cross, Addis Ababa, May 11–12, 2006, 13.

  5. 5.

    Bhavani Fonseka, “The Protection of Child Soldiers in International Law”, Asia-Pacific Journal on Human Rights and the Law 2(2) (2001): 69.

  6. 6.

    Jo Boyden, “Children’s Experience of Conflict Related Emergencies: Some Implications for Relief Policy and Practice”, Disasters 18(3) (1994): 260.

  7. 7.

    Frank Faulkner, “Kindergarten Killers: Morality, Murder and the Child Soldier Problem”, Third World Quarterly 22(4) (2001): 494.

  8. 8.

    See Expert Group Meeting of the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW) in collaboration with UNICEF on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination and Violence Against the Girl Child, Florence, Italy, September 25–28, 2006, The Girl Child and Armed Conflict: Recognizing and Addressing Grave Violations of Girls’ Human Rights, UN Doc EGM/DVGC/2006/EP.12 (September 25–28, 2006), 3. Similarly, Schmidt contends that children make rational choices based on the “[limited] information they possess and their [limited] ability to weigh one choice against another …” Alice Schmidt, “Volunteer Child Soldiers as Reality: A Development Issue for Africa”, New School Economic Review 2 (2007): 60.

  9. 9.

    Afua Twum-Danso, Africa’s Young Soldiers: The Co-Option of Childhood, 2003, accessed February 14, 2014. http://www.issafrica.org/uploads/Mono82.pdf.

  10. 10.

    Barry Goldson and John Muncie, “Towards a Global ‘Child Friendly’ Juvenile Justice?” International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice 40 (2012): 59.

  11. 11.

    Goldson and Muncie, “Towards a Global”, 58–59.

  12. 12.

    Schmidt, “Volunteer Child Soldiers as Reality”, 57.

  13. 13.

    United Nations Secretary General, Report on the Establishment of a Special Court for Sierra Leone, UN Doc. S/2000/915, October 4, 2000, para. 7.

  14. 14.

    UNSG, Report on the Establishment of a SCSL, para. 32.

  15. 15.

    Amnesty International, Child Soldiers. Criminals or Victims? AI Index: IOR 50/02/00, December 2000.

  16. 16.

    Amnesty International, Child Soldiers. Criminals or Victims? 6–7.

  17. 17.

    Paris Commitments to Protect Children Unlawfully Recruited or Used by Armed Forces or Armed Groups, 2007, accessed February 16, 2014, http://www.icrc.org/eng/assets/files/other/the-paris-commitments.pdf, operative para. 11. (italics added)

  18. 18.

    Paris Commitments, operative para. 11.

  19. 19.

    UNSG, Report on the Establishment of a SCSL, para. 35. See also Amnesty International, Child Soldiers. Criminals or Victims? 7.

  20. 20.

    Letter from Save the Children Sweden to the UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, November 8, 2000, quoted in Ilene Cohn, “The Protection of Children and the Quest for Truth and Justice in Sierra Leone”, Journal of International Affairs 55 (2001): 14.

  21. 21.

    Michael Custer, “Punishing Child Soldiers: The Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Lessons to Be Learned from the United States’ Juvenile Justice System”, Temple International and Comparative Law 19(2) (2005): 458.

  22. 22.

    Letter from Human Rights Watch to the Members of the UN Security Council cited in Cohn, “The Protection of Children and the Quest”, 14–5.

  23. 23.

    United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, “Children and Justice during and in the Aftermath of Armed Conflict”, Working Paper No. 3, September 2011, 27.

  24. 24.

    Expert of UN Secretary-General (by Graça Machel), Impact of Armed Conflict on Children, UN Doc. A/51/306, August 26, 1996, para 248.

  25. 25.

    Shastry Njeru, “Dealing with the Past: The Youth and Post-War Recovery in Southern Sudan”, African Journal on Conflict Resolution 10(3) (2010): 35.

  26. 26.

    Luz E. Nagle, “Child Soldiers and the Duty of Nations to Protect Children from Participation in Armed Conflict”, Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law 19(1) (2011): 45.

  27. 27.

    Prosecutor v. Furundzija, ICTY (Trial Chamber), IT-95-17/1-T, Judgment, December 10, 1998, para 288.

  28. 28.

    Goldson and Muncie, “Towards a Global”, 58.

  29. 29.

    Cited in John R. Morss, “The Status of Child Offenders under International Criminal Justice: Lessons from Sierra Leone”, Deakin Law Review 9(1) (2004). See also Ilene Cohn, “The Protection of Children in Peacemaking and Peacekeeping Processes”, Harvard Human Rights Journal 12 (1999): 187.

  30. 30.

    UNSG, Report on the Establishment of a SCSL, para. 35. See also Morss, “The Status of Child Offenders.”

  31. 31.

    Nagle, “Child Soldiers and the Duty of Nations”, 30.

  32. 32.

    Nagle, “Child Soldiers and the Duty of Nations”, 38. See also Michael Wessells, “Psychosocial Issues in Reintegrating Child Soldiers”, Cornell International Law Journal 37 (2004): 513–4.

  33. 33.

    See Chen Reis, “Trying the Future, Avenging the Past: The Implications of Prosecuting Children for Participation in Internal Armed Conflict”, Columbia Human Rights Law Review 28 (1997): 633–5.

  34. 34.

    Alison Dundes Renteln, “The Child Soldier: The Challenge of Enforcing International Standards”, Whittier Law Review 21 (1999): 200.

  35. 35.

    Alcinda Honwana, “Innocents et coupables. Les enfants-soldats comme acteurs tactiques”, Politique Africaine 80 (2000): 59 (translation by author).

  36. 36.

    Save the Children Federation—USA, Children, Genocide, and Justice: Rwandan Perspectives on Culpability and Punishment for Children Convicted of Crimes Associated with Genocide, Final Report of a Pilot Project on Children, Genocide, and Justice, 1995, 14 cited in Cohn, “The Protection of Children in Peacemaking”, 187.

  37. 37.

    UNSG, Report on the Establishment of a SCSL, para 38.

  38. 38.

    Augustine S. J. Park, “‘Other Inhumane Acts’: Forced Marriage, Girl Soldiers and the Special Court for Sierra Leone”, Social and Legal Studies 15(3) (2006): 330.

  39. 39.

    United Nations General Assembly, Resolution 44/33: United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (Beijing Rules), UN Doc. A/RES/40/33, November 29, 1985.

  40. 40.

    Amnesty International, Child Soldiers. Criminals or Victims? 7–8.

  41. 41.

    Nienke Grossman, “Rehabilitation or Revenge: Prosecuting Child Soldiers for Human Rights Violations”, Georgetown Journal of International Law 38 (2007): 348–9.

  42. 42.

    Noëlle Quénivet, “Girl Soldiers and Participation in Hostilities”, African Journal of International and Comparative Law 16(2) (2008): 219–25.

  43. 43.

    For a definition of direct participation, see Yves Sandoz, Christophe Swinarski and Bruno Zimmermann (eds), Commentary on the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions (Martinus Nijhoff: Geneva, 1987), para. 1944, and Prosecutor v. Rutaganda, ICTR (Trial Chamber), ICTR-96-3-T, Judgment and Sentence, December 6, 1999, para 99.

  44. 44.

    Stuart, Maslen, “Kinder sind keine Soldaten—politische und rechtliche Aspekte des Phaenomens Kindersoldaten”, in Kinder im Krieg, Bericht der Konferenz vom 25 August 1999 (Bonn: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 1999) 25.

  45. 45.

    See Nils Melzer, Interpretive Guide on the Notion of Direct Participation in Hostilities under International Humanitarian Law, (2009), accessed February 16, 2014. http://www.icrc.org/eng/assets/files/other/icrc-002-0990.pdf.

  46. 46.

    Ilene Cohn and Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, Child Soldiers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 45.

  47. 47.

    Barbara Fontana, “Child Soldiers and International Law”, African Security Review 6(3) (1997): 52.

  48. 48.

    See Prosecutor v. Akayesu, ICTR (Appeals Chamber), ICTR-96-4, Judgment, June 1, 2001, paras 430–445. See also Rule 151 of the Study on Customary International Humanitarian Law spells out that “individuals are criminally responsible for war crimes they commit”. Jean-Marie Henckaerts and Louise Doswald-Beck, Customary International Humanitarian Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2006).

  49. 49.

    Statute of the Special Court for Sierra Leone Established by an Agreement Between the United Nations and the Government of Sierra Leone Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1315 (2000).

  50. 50.

    Grossman, “Rehabilitation or Revenge”, 335–8.

  51. 51.

    Marco Sassòli, “State Responsibility for Violations of International Humanitarian Law”, International Review of the Red Cross 87 (2002): 411–2.

  52. 52.

    Custer, “Punishing Child Soldiers”, 449.

  53. 53.

    UNSG, Report on the Establishment of a SCSL, para. 35. See also discussion in Diane Marie Amann, “Calling Children to Account: The Proposal for a Juvenile Chamber in the Special Court for Sierra Leone”, Pepperdine Law Rev 29 (2011–2002): 180.

  54. 54.

    Expert of UN Secretary-General (by Graça Machel), Impact of Armed Conflict on Children, paras 249–51. See also Chapdelaine C. Feliciati, “Restorative Justice for the Girl Child in Post-Conflict Rwanda”, Journal of International Women’s Studies 7(4) (2006): 25.

  55. 55.

    United Nations Security Council, Resolution 827: Statute of the International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991, UN Doc. S/827/1993, May 25, 1993, Updated version, accessed February 16, 2014. http://www.icty.org/x/file/Legal%20Library/Statute/statute_sept09_en.pdf and United Nations Security Council, Resolution 955: Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. UN Doc. S/Res/955, November 8, 1994, updated version, accessed February 16, 2014. http://www.unictr.org/Portals/0/English/Legal/Statute/2010.pdf.

  56. 56.

    See for example Human Rights Watch, Lasting Wounds: Consequences of Genocide and War for Rwanda’s Children, Volume 15, No. 6(A) March 2003, 18–40.

  57. 57.

    ICTY Statute, art. 1 and ICTR Statute, art. 1.

  58. 58.

    Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. July 17, 1998, 2187 UNTS 3.

  59. 59.

    “The jurisdiction of the Court shall be limited to the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole.” Art. 5(1) Rome Statute.

  60. 60.

    “The Court shall have jurisdiction in respect of war crimes in particular when committed as part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes.” Art. 8(1) Rome Statute.

  61. 61.

    See discussion in Amann, “Calling Children to Account”, 167–85.

  62. 62.

    Statute of the SCSL, Art. 7.

  63. 63.

    Amann, “Calling Children to Account”, 173.

  64. 64.

    Special Court for Sierra Leone, Public Affairs Office, Press release, Special Court Prosecutor Says he Will not Prosecute Children, November 2, 2002. See also David Crane, “Prosecuting Children in Times of Conflict: The West African Experience”, Human Rights Brief 15(3) (2008): 15.

  65. 65.

    Article 8 of the Criminal Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina as cited in Cecile Aptel, Children and Accountability for International Crimes: The Contribution of International Criminal Court, Innocenti Working Paper, August 2010, 22 footnote 117.

  66. 66.

    UNTAET, Regulation 2001/25 on the Amendment of UNTAET Regulation No. 2000/11: On the Organization of Courts in East Timor and UNTAET Regulation No.2000/30: On the Transitional Rules of Criminal Procedure, UNTAET/REG/2001/25, September 14, 2001, Section 45.

  67. 67.

    Judicial System Monitoring Programme. The Case of X: A Child Prosecuted for Crimes against Humanity. Dili, Timor Leste, January 2005.

  68. 68.

    Nagle, “Child Soldiers and the Duty of Nations”, 37.

  69. 69.

    Nagle, “Child Soldiers and the Duty of Nations”, 38.

  70. 70.

    Amnesty International. Democratic Republic of Congo: Massive Violations Kill Human Decency. AI Index: AFR 62/011/2000, May 31, 2000, 1.

  71. 71.

    Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, “Verlorene Kindheit—Kindersoldaten in der Demokratischen Republik Kongo. Völkerrechtliche und politische Strategien zur Beendigung des Einsazes von Kindern als Soldaten”, Conference. October 23, 2003, 36.

  72. 72.

    United Nations. “Government Committed to Child Protection”. Press Release, New York/Bujumbura, March 13, 2007.

  73. 73.

    Judie Kaberia, “Experts Say International Efforts to Prosecute Crimes at National Level Have Largely Failed”, February 4, 2014, accessed February 16, 2014. http://iwpr.net/report-news/icc-criticised-over-lack-local-trials.

  74. 74.

    Matthew Happold, “Excluding Children from Refugee Status: Child Soldiers and Article 1F of the Refugee Convention”, American University International Law Review 17 (2002): 1146. See also Matthew Happold, Child Soldiers in International Law (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005) 143.

  75. 75.

    Andrew P. Simester and George F. Sullivan, Criminal Law: Theory and Doctrine (Oxford: Hart, 2000) 541.

  76. 76.

    Claire McDiarmid, “What Do they Know? Child-Defendants and the Age of Criminal Responsibility: A National Law Perspective”, In International Criminal Accountability and the Rights of the Children, ed. Karin Arts and Vesselin Popovski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 86.

  77. 77.

    Nagle, “Child Soldiers and the Duty of Nations”, 35.

  78. 78.

    UNSR of the SG for Children and Armed Conflict, “Children and Justice”, 35. See also Morss, “The Status of Child Offenders.”

  79. 79.

    Marsha L. Hackenberg, “Can the Optional Protocol for the Convention on the Rights of the Child Protect the Ugandan Child Soldier?”, Indiana International and Comparative Law Review 10(2) (2000): 454. See also discussion in UNSR of the SG for Children and Armed Conflict, “Children and Justice”, 36 and McDiarmid, “What Do they Know?”, 86 and 89–90.

  80. 80.

    McDiarmid, “What Do they Know?”, 94.

  81. 81.

    United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, Report, UN Doc. CRC/C/46, December 18, 1995, para 218.

  82. 82.

    United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 10, UN Doc. CRC/C/GC/10, April 25, 2007.

  83. 83.

    “[C]hildhood, adolescence and adulthood are…socially defined statuses which include social expectations that differ across cultures.” Ed Cairns, Children and Political Violence (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 166. See also Mary-Jane Fox, “Child Soldiers and International Law: Patchwork Gains and Conceptual Debates”, Human Rights Review 7 (2007): 43; Wessells, “Psychosocial Issues”, 513; Aptel, Children and Accountability, 21; David Rosen, “Child Soldiers, International Humanitarian Law, and the Globalization of Childhood”, American Anthropologist 109(2) (2007): 297.

  84. 84.

    Nancy Kendall, “Gendered Moral Dimensions of Childhood Vulnerability,” Childhood in Africa 2 (2010): 32; see also David Rosen, “Social Change and the Legal Construction of Child Soldier. Recruitment in the Special Court for Sierra Leone”, Childhood in Africa 2(1) (2010): 52.

  85. 85.

    Amann, “Calling Children to Account”, 179.

  86. 86.

    Daniel Helle, “Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict to the Convention on the Rights of the Child”, International Review of the Red Cross 839 (2000): 797.

  87. 87.

    Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), June 8, 1977, 1125 UNTS 3.

  88. 88.

    Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts (Protocol II), June 8, 1977, 1125 UNTS 609.

  89. 89.

    Fontana, “Child Soldiers and International Law,” 52–3.

  90. 90.

    UNSR of the SG for Children and Armed Conflict, “Children and Justice,” 34; Grossman, “Rehabilitation or Revenge,” 341–2.

  91. 91.

    United Nations General Assembly, Resolution 54/263: Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict and on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, UN Doc. A/54/RES/263, March 16, 2001.

  92. 92.

    Grossman, “Rehabilitation or Revenge,” 342.

  93. 93.

    Preparatory Committee on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court, Report of the Intersessional Meeting from 19 to 30 January 1998 in Zutphen, The Netherlands, UN Doc. A/AC.249/1998/L.13 (1998), footnote 234 relating to art. 68[A].

  94. 94.

    Richard S. Clark and Otto Triffterer, “Article 26: Exclusion of Jurisdiction over Persons under Eighteen,” in Commentary on the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, ed. Otto Triffterer (Baden Baden: Nomos, 1999) 499.

  95. 95.

    Amnesty International, Child Soldiers. Criminals or Victims? 6.

  96. 96.

    Happold, Child Soldiers in International Law, 155. See also Suzannah Linton and Caitlin Reiger, “The Evolving Jurisprudence and Practice of East Timor’s Special Panels for Serious Crimes on Admissions of Guilt, Duress and Superior Orders,” Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law 4 (2001): 172.

  97. 97.

    Prosecutor v. Erdemovic, ICTY (Appeals Chamber), IT-96-22-T, Judgment, 7 October 1997, Joint Separate Opinion of Judge McDonald and Judge Vohrah, para 66.

  98. 98.

    Art. 31(1)(d) Rome Statute. See discussion in Gerhard Werle, Principles of International Criminal Law, TMC Asser Institute: The Hague, 2005, 146 and Happold, Child Soldiers in International Law, 156–8.

  99. 99.

    UNTAET, Regulation 2001/25.

  100. 100.

    Judicial System Monitoring Programme, The Case of X. Duress was however not used during the trial because the accused’s guilty plea was accepted.

  101. 101.

    For a discussion on the distinction between duress and necessity, see Prosecutor v. Erdemovic Appeal Decision, ICTY (Appeals Chamber), Judgment, 7 October 1997, Separate Opinion of Judge Cassese, para 14.

  102. 102.

    Art. 31(1)(d) Rome Statute.

  103. 103.

    See Werle, Principles of International Criminal Law, 145.

  104. 104.

    Custer, “Punishing Child Soldiers,” 470.

  105. 105.

    Happold, Child Soldiers in International Law, 158.

  106. 106.

    Honwana, “Innocents et coupables,” 75–6.

  107. 107.

    Prosecutor v. Joseph Leki, SPSCET, 5/2000, Judgement, June 11, 2001 cited in Judicial System Monitoring Programme. Digest of the Jurisprudence of the Special Panels for Serious Crimes. Dili, Timor Leste, April 2007, 119–20. The same arguments were made in further cases before the SPSCET, see Linton and Reiger, “The Evolving Jurisprudence,” 1–48.

  108. 108.

    See Happold, Child Soldiers in International Law, 158.

  109. 109.

    Werle, Principles of International Criminal Law, 148. For a similar view, see Nagle, “Child Soldiers and the Duty of Nations,” 39.

  110. 110.

    For a discussion on the definition of “voluntary”, see Noëlle Quénivet, “The Liberal Discourse and the ‘New Wars’ of/on Children,” Brooklyn Journal of International Law 38(3) (2013): 1071–7.

  111. 111.

    Hackenberg, “Can the Optional Protocol?” 422. See also Njeru, “Dealing with the Past”, 33–4.

  112. 112.

    Nagle, “Child Soldiers and the Duty of Nations”. 40.

  113. 113.

    Cassese separate opinion on para 17.

  114. 114.

    See for example UNSR of the SG for Children and Armed Conflict, “Children and Justice,” 10; Harry G. West, “Girls with Guns: Narrating the Experience of War of FRELIMO’s ‘Female Detachment’,” Anthropological Quarterly 73 (2000): 188.

  115. 115.

    United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict. Written Submissions, Situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the Case of The Prosecutor v. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, Submitted in Application of Rule 103 of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence. ICC-01/04-01/06-1229-AnxA 18-03-2008 2/10 CB T, March 17, 2008.

  116. 116.

    Art. 31(1)(d) Rome Statute.

  117. 117.

    Custer, “Punishing Child Soldiers,” 470.

  118. 118.

    Honwana, “Innocents et coupables,” 67.

  119. 119.

    Faulkner, “Kindergarten Killers,” 495.

  120. 120.

    Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. “Sexual Exploitation of Child Soldiers: An Exploration and Analysis of Global Dimensions and Trends” (by Lisa Alfredson), accessed February 14, 2014, http://reliefweb.int/report/world/sexual-exploitation-child-soldiers-exploration-and-analysis-global-dimensions-and, 7. See also Maslen, “Kinder sind keine Soldaten,” 25; Maria Teresa Dutli, “Captured Child Combatants,” International Review of the Red Cross 278 (1990): 421.

  121. 121.

    Faulkner, “Kindergarten Killers,” 499; Maslen, “Kinder sind keine Soldaten,“ 24; Honwana, “Innocents et coupables,” 65.

  122. 122.

    Faulkner, “Kindergarten Killers,” 499.

  123. 123.

    See examples in for example Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, “Verlorene Kindheit,” 9; Njeru, “Dealing with the Past,” 29–50; UNSR of the SG for Children and Armed Conflict, “Children and Justice,” 10; Crane, “Prosecuting Children in Times of Conflict,” 12.

  124. 124.

    Nagle, “Child Soldiers and the Duty of Nations,” 10.

  125. 125.

    Amnesty International, Child Soldiers. Criminals or Victims? 2.

  126. 126.

    Amnesty International, Child Soldiers. Criminals or Victims? 6.

  127. 127.

    Custer, “Punishing Child Soldiers”, 470.

  128. 128.

    Prosecutor v Furundzija, para 284.

  129. 129.

    Prosecutor v. Erdemovic, ICTY (Trial Chamber), IT-96-22-T, Sentencing Judgment, November 29, 1996, para 111.

  130. 130.

    Morss, “The Status of Child Offenders.”

  131. 131.

    Amnesty International, Child Soldiers. Criminals or Victims? 6.

  132. 132.

    Fonseka, “The Protection of Child Soldiers in International Law,” 71.

  133. 133.

    Tercier Holst-Roness, Violence against Girls, 13. See also Fonseka, “The Protection of Child Soldiers in International Law,” 72.

  134. 134.

    Crane, “Prosecuting Children in Times of Conflict,” 12. For a full picture, see Faulkner, “Kindergarten Killers,” 495.

  135. 135.

    Redress, Victims, Perpetrators or Heroes? 7.

  136. 136.

    Tercier Holst-Roness, Violence against Girls, 13; Redress, Victims, Perpetrators or Heroes? Child Soldiers before the International Criminal Court, September 2006, 7.

  137. 137.

    United Nations General Assembly. Resolution 45/11: United Nations Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty (Riyadh Guidelines). UN Doc. A/RES/45/11, December 14, 1990.

  138. 138.

    See for example United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children, Annual Report, UN Doc. A/67/230, August 3, 2012, para 14(b).

  139. 139.

    Judicial System Monitoring Programme, The Case of X.

  140. 140.

    Paris Commitments, operative para 11.

  141. 141.

    UNSR of the SG on Violence against Children, Annual Report, para 14(c).

  142. 142.

    Statute of the SCSL, art. 7(1).

  143. 143.

    See also UNSG, Report on the Establishment of a SCSL, para 37.

  144. 144.

    Preparatory Committee on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court, Report of the Intersessional Meeting, art. 68[A].

  145. 145.

    Amann, “Calling Children to Account,” 184. See also Wessells, “Psychosocial Issues,” 513. Such a process can also be reached via truth and reconciliation commissions (see UNICEF. “Children and Transitional Justice. Truth-Telling, Accountability and Reconciliation.” (UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre and Human Rights Program, Harvard Law School, March 2010).

  146. 146.

    This can also be undertaken through community dialogues too. See Wessells, Michael, “Child Soldiers, Peace Education, and Postconflict Reconstruction for Peace,” Theory into Practice 44(4) (2005): 367.

  147. 147.

    Grossman, “Rehabilitation or Revenge,” 351. See also Aptel, Children and Accountability, 29.

  148. 148.

    Nagle, “Child Soldiers and the Duty of Nations,” 41.

  149. 149.

    Wessels, “Psychosocial Issues,” 515.

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  1. Faculty of Business and Law, University of the West of England, Frenchay Campus, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol, BS16 1QY, UK

    Noëlle Quénivet Ph.D., L.L.M.

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  1. Southern Cross University School of Law and Justice, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

    Natalia Szablewska

  2. University of Lincoln Law School, Lincoln, United Kingdom

    Sascha-Dominik Bachmann

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Quénivet, N. (2015). Transitional and Generational Justice: Children Involved in Armed Conflicts. In: Szablewska, N., Bachmann, SD. (eds) Current Issues in Transitional Justice. Springer Series in Transitional Justice, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09390-1_3

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