News Updates by CSRF Researchers

CSRF Meets With Child Soldier Initiative

CSRF’s Director of Research Kate Davey caught up with one of CSRF’s partners, Child Soldier Initiative Director Shelly Whitman while she was in New York.

Kate learned CSI is pursuing exciting new research on child pirates in cooperation with the Dalhousie Marine Piracy Project. Specifically, CSI is looking at the use of child soldiers for the purposes of piracy and reactions to dealing with child soldiers as pirates. Director Whitman explained that CSI is producing this research by looking at evidence from Somalia, West Africa, Asia and Latin America. Anyone interested in learning more about this project, may contact CSI directly.

CSI is also offering a workshop entitled Girls Affected by Armed Conflict from April 20-22 at the Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. The workshop will explore creative ways to express experience, including using spoken word and body mapping, and look at how it can be therapeutic. It is looking for participants that have been affected by armed conflict to attend. If would like more information, you are encouraged to contact them through their website.

Lastly, White Pine Pictures is producing an upcoming documentary on the work of Child Soldier Initiative.

CSRF values our partnership with CSI and looks forward to working with them in the future.

Al-Shabab, Islamist Terrorist Group, Recruiting Children in Somalia and Kenya

By Kate Davey, Director of Research Projects

According to Shabelle Media, Al-Shabab “Warriors of Shabab” have been recruiting children as soldiers with promises of cell phones or taking them by force to fight against the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in Somalia.

Al-Shabab, a Somali Islamist militant group with al-Qaida ties, was classified as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States in 2008.  This is the same group that recently posted a video on Youtube in which Ahmed Iman Ali, a man known for recruiting children to al-Shabab in Nairobi, speaks in Swahili recruiting Muslim youths in Kenya to al-Shabab.

Radhika Coomaraswamy, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, visited Somalia in November 2011 where she received a promise from the Somalia President and Prime Minister  to end the recruitment of child soldiers into government forces. In her trip to Somalia, Coomaraswamy also met with former al-Shabab child soldiers and stated the importance of reintegration of child soldiers, “They must be transferred rapidly to civilian child protection actors, and be separated as soon as possible from adult al-Shabaab ex-combatants in order to begin the transition back to civilian life.”

Photo Courtesy of Mr. Mataan Ali Hassan, Somali Child Rights Organization (SOCHRO-Uganda), 2010.

REPORTS IN THE PRESS ABOUT CHILD SOLDIER ISSUES