Abstract
Child soldiers are not only victims but also perpetrators international crimes. This chapter argues that the concept of child soldiers challenges a number of binary models such as child/adult, good/evil and victim/perpetrator upon which criminal justice processes and society more generally rely. Although the predominant narrative frames children as innocent, dependent and in need of protection, international law does not prohibit the prosecution of child soldiers for international crimes. Should they face justice, they can rely on several grounds for excluding criminal responsibility, including duress which is mentioned as the most appropriate defence since child soldiers are often forced to commit atrocities and viewed as victims. This chapter then explains the method and methodology adopted for this study and sets out the scope of the book which is to examine whether child soldiers can successfully invoke the defence of duress when prosecuted for international crimes.
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- 1.
UNCRC 1989, art. 1. Van Bueren notes that ‘[t]raditionally a child has been defined as a comparative negative: a child is an individual who is not yet an adult. It is a definition which is laden with religious, cultural, physical and psychological practices and beliefs.’ Van Bueren 1998, 33. For a discussion on the concept of a child under international law, see Nair 2017, 41–42.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
Faulkner 2001, 494.
- 5.
McKay 2004, 23.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
Almohammad 2018, 21.
- 10.
Wessells 2006, 71.
- 11.
Tercier Holst-Roness 2006, 13.
- 12.
- 13.
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
- 17.
Much alike Eichmann who became the face of the crimes linked to the Holocaust, Ongwen is that ‘person [who] becomes a stand-in for all the perpetrators connected to the same tragedy, and the world stares, hoping to grasp how this nightmare, this stain on humanity, could have happened’. Mohamed 2015, 1160–1161.
- 18.
Branch 2017, 38.
- 19.
See, for example, Branch 2017, 38.
- 20.
- 21.
- 22.
Rauschenbach 2018, 294.
- 23.
Branch 2017, 39 and 41.
- 24.
Hinton 2008, 288.
- 25.
Fisher 2013, 73.
- 26.
Klasen et al. 2015, 181.
- 27.
- 28.
- 29.
UNICEF Paris Principles 2007.
- 30.
‘[A] child soldier is any child—boy or girl—under the age of 18, who is […] recruited or used in hostilities by armed forces. […] Child soldiers are used for forced sexual services, as combatants, messengers, porters and cooks […]. The majority are boys, but a significant proportion overall are girls.’ Machel 2001, 7.
- 31.
UNGA 1996.
- 32.
ICC Lubanga 2008, paras 17–26.
- 33.
- 34.
It is however different on the national level as the great majority of legal systems provide for criminal responsibility of those under the age of 18.
- 35.
- 36.
- 37.
Moynagh 2014, 660.
- 38.
- 39.
Drumbl 2015.
- 40.
Drumbl 2014–2015, 626.
- 41.
McDiarmid 2016, 329 (italics in original).
- 42.
- 43.
- 44.
Leveau 2013, 64.
- 45.
Happold 2008, 72.
- 46.
- 47.
Konge 2010, 55.
- 48.
Singh 2007, 211.
- 49.
- 50.
See, for example, Singer 2005, 155.
- 51.
- 52.
Although a universal minimum age of criminal responsibility does not exist, General Comment No. 10 to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, at para. 32, provides that an age of criminal responsibility below the age of 12 is not an acceptable international standard. See Cipriani 2009, 58; Grossman 2007, 339; Nagle 2011, 35.
- 53.
See Ursini 2015, 1023–1048.
- 54.
- 55.
- 56.
- 57.
- 58.
Cassese et al. 2013, 227.
- 59.
SCSL Statute 2002, art. 7(1).
- 60.
ICTY Orić 2006, para. 400. See Schabas 2016, 592. Triffterer and Clark commenting on article 26 of the ICC Statute posit that ‘Only the jurisdiction of the ICC is excluded. As can be seen from the historical development of this article, criminal responsibility may not be excluded for persons under eighteen in general.’ Triffterer and Clark 2016, 1036.
- 61.
- 62.
For a list of various elements, see, for example, Cassese et al. 2013, 20–21; Werle and Jessberger 2014, 32 and Naqvi 2010, 31. For a short review of some definitions, see Scaliotti 2001, 113–114. For a comprehensive discussion of the definition and development of crimes under international law, generally see Heller 2017.
- 63.
See ICTY Tadić 1995, para. 57.
- 64.
See, for example, US Hostages Trial 1948, 1241.
- 65.
See, for example, US Hostages Trial 1948, 1241.
- 66.
In the case of international crimes defined in a narrow sense, see below, ‘universal jurisdiction [is] nowadays acknowledged in the case of international crimes’. ICTY Tadić 1995, para. 62.
- 67.
- 68.
- 69.
For example, the UNGA 2016 (para. 4) was created with a view to collect evidence to be preserved for a future tribunal.
- 70.
- 71.
Article 31 is not without criticism. For example, Knoops notes that ‘The absence of a general part of ICL is not remedied by the provisio of Article 31 of the ICC Statute, whose heading misleadingly suggests a complete compilation of all defences. Apart from its clear supplementary function-stemming from its starting text “in addition to other grounds for excluding criminal responsibility” several major defences are not included in the provisio, such as consent of the victim.’ See Knoops 2008, 23–24.
- 72.
- 73.
- 74.
- 75.
See Scaliotti 2001, 111.
- 76.
Merkel 2002, 441.
- 77.
Dressler 1988–1989, 1332.
- 78.
- 79.
Ibidem.
- 80.
Ibidem.
- 81.
Rauschenbach 2018, 292–296.
- 82.
See Derluyn et al. 2015, 35.
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- 84.
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Nortje, W., Quénivet, N. (2020). Introduction. In: Child Soldiers and the Defence of Duress under International Criminal Law. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20663-5_1
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