David M. Crane's Remarks to House Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security

David M. Crane is a Professor of Law at Syracuse University and a former Founding Chief Prosecutor in the Special Court for Sierra Leone.  Professor Crane's remarks are in support of the Child Soldiers Accountability Act of 2007.

Mr. Chairman thank you for this opportunity to address this committee on what I feel to be an important international issue that impacts our country and its security and that is the scourge of children used as soldiers in armed conflict.  Before I begin I would like to note that I have submitted my testimony in writing earlier and would ask that it be submitted into the record at this time.  Thank you.

I would like to begin with a quote from an important report to the Secretary General of the United Nations in 1996 regarding the child soldier problem we as civilized nations face today and for which we are considering this important legislation, S. 2135, the Child Soldiers Accountability Act of 2007. 

These statistics [related to the impact of armed conflict on children] are shocking enough, but more chilling is the conclusion to be drawn from them:  more and more of the world is being sucked into a desolate moral vacuum.  This is a space devoid of the most basic human values; a space in which children are slaughtered, raped, and maimed; a space in which children are exploited as soldiers; a space in which children are starved and exposed to extreme brutality.  Such unregulated terror and violence speak of deliberate victimization. There are few further depths to which humanity can sink.

For the first time in history those who bear the greatest responsibility for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious violations of international humanitarian law that took place during recent wars have been charged with the use of child soldiers under the age of 15 into an armed force.

The use of children in armed conflict is an age old issue. Modern international norms, however, have identified and outlawed their use. International tribunals, such as the Special Court for Sierra Leone, of which I was its founding Chief Prosecutor, are now on the cutting edge of international criminal law in holding accountable those warlords, commanders, and politicians who turn to children, some as young as six years old, to carry out orders that in some cases result in war crimes and crimes against humanity. Only in the past ten years has the international community begun to grapple with this international problem.

I have seen atrocity beyond description perpetrated by child soldiers while seeking justice for the victims of the ten year armed conflict in Sierra Leone started by three heads of state:  Muammar Ghadaffi of Libya, Blasé Campare of Burkina Faso, and of course Charles Taylor of Liberia (indicted by me and sitting in the dock on trial for 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, to include the unlawful recruitment of children under the age of 15 into an armed force, an historic first).  This conflict destroyed an entire generation of children, perhaps as many as 35,000 in that small struggling country.

A favourite tactic to induce children to join their force was for the rebels to move in and surround a village.  The children were made to kill their parents and then were driven into the bush and forced to serve as soldiers, in many instances for years.  The numbers are not fully known, but it was in the thousands.  These children, ranging from six to eighteen years of age, roamed the battlefields hopped up on cocaine or marijuana destroying their own country.  Over time the various warring factions became their home and their families. Many forgot their real names or even where they came from. All sides to the conflict in Sierra Leone used children. 

A forty-two year old secretary, living in Sierra Leone, told a Human Rights Watch researcher, in an interview on May 20, 1999, about child soldiers used in the invasion and destruction of Freetown in January of that same year:  We feared them.  They were cruel and hard hearted; even more than the adults. They don’t know what is sympathy; what is good and bad.  If you beg an older one you may convince him to spare you, but the younger ones, they don’t know what is sympathy, what is mercy.  Those who have been rebels for so long have never learned it. 

When the conflict staggered to its bloody conclusion in 2002, just shortly before my arrival in country, an entire nation lay in ruins.  These child fighters found themselves with no families, little to no education, and a society unable to assist them in starting to rebuild their lives.  Many were physically and psychologically damaged.  The lost generation of Sierra Leone now sits by pocked-marked roads with no hope, waiting for the next “Pa” to lead them back into the only life they know--fighting, raping, pillaging, and murdering their fellow citizens.

Between 1986 and 1996 over two million children were killed in armed conflict. There have been countless more killed since then, many of them in places such as Sierra Leone.  Only when the rule of law is enforced will abusers of children be held accountable at the international level (and hopefully the domestic level) thus assisting in ending this tragic international crime. It is time for the United States to assist in making this happen.

The Child Soldiers Accountability Act of 2007, passed by the United States Senate in December of last year, is an important signal to the world that this country will not tolerate those who recruit mere children into armed forces of whatever kind.  Moreover, it gives our government the legal tools to deal with those who are in this country or seek to enter this country to deal with them by prosecution, exclusion, and/or deportation.  This is not a partisan issue, this is needed legislation.  I respectfully urge this subcommittee to champion this important bill and support its passage.

I will close with a story of thousands that I personally was involved with in my three years in West Africa relating to one child soldier:

It was a clear hot day.  The meeting hall in the school for the deaf located up country near Makeni rippled with the heat of over five hundred persons.  I had been speaking to the students, faculty, and others in one of my many town hall meetings I conduct throughout Sierra Leone.  The purpose of the meetings are to provide a vehicle for the people of this small and fragile nation to talk to their Prosecutor about the war, the crimes, their pain and other issues related to our work.  As I finished answering a question from a student near the front, a shy and small arm was raised in the middle of the hall.  I walked back to the student.  He meekly stood up, head bowed and he mumbled, loud enough for those around him to hear, “I killed people, I am sorry, I did not mean it.”  I went over to him, tears in my eyes, and hugged him and said, “Of course you didn’t mean it.  I forgive you.”

Thank you, Mr. Chairman for this opportunity to address you today about holding accountable those who destroy children’s lives by recruiting them into armed forces. I welcome your questions.

The remarks can be found complete with footnotes at Download opening_remarksthe_house_committee_on_the_judiciary.doc