End Use of Child Soldiers

Delivering the annual lecture at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London, Dr. Williams spoke of the estimated 300,000 child soldiers round the world. He set their plight in the context of the recent terrorist atrocities in Russia in which hundreds of children were killed:

"The slaughter and violent abuse of children in local conflicts across the world means that the moral equivalent of Beslan is being enacted repeatedly – that is, the conscious, long term exploitation of children in acts of murderous violence, the calculated use of horrific intimidation towards them, the prolongation of their sufferings and the killing of large numbers without compunction,"

" But the use of child soldiers adds a further twist to the picture: the assault is also on their souls, as they are forcibly made partners in acts of terrible violence."

Dr Williams highlighted a range of measures to help end the abuse. These included tougher conditions in trade agreements and curbs on arms sales—especially small arms of the kind borne by children. He also urged the international community to focus more on the ways in which debt and economic failure helped to create conditions for children to be drawn into military conflict, and he called for more resources for protection, reintegration and reconciliation projects involving young combatants.

Dr Williams also drew attention to some  wider challenges to the well-being of children and childhood:

"Reflecting on the horrors of child soldiering, we may see more clearly the governing features of diverse sorts of abuse – treating children as instruments for adult ends, imprinting guilt and self-hatred through blaming the victim, pushing children into pseudo-adult roles and experiences prematurely," he said.

The Archbishop went on to set his reflections in the context of the teachings of Christ:

"The world contains poison as well as nourishment; what is offered to the child may be death as well as life. Because we should know this, because we should take seriously Jesus' recognition of the child's receptive capacity, we are the more guilty if we ourselves distort or poison the life of a child or if we tolerate a situation in which this is permitted to happen."

"What kind of community is it that can tolerate the wreckage of children's lives by deceit, by the denial of childhood itself, by violence and co-option into violence? Jesus warns that the fate of the enemy of childhood is worse than being thrown into the sea with a millstone round your neck; or, as we might paraphrase, the assault on childhood is an assault on your own life."