The Complex Role of Children in Armed Conflicts: International Legal Protection and International Criminal Court Jurisprudence
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5937/crimen2601072S%20Keywords:
children soldiers, international humanitarian law, Lubanga case, Ongwen case, International Criminal CourtAbstract
Armed conflicts represent a deviation from the regular state of affairs in countries and affect every segment of life. The first association with armed conflicts is violence – both mutual violence between members of opposing armies and violence against vulnerable categories of people who do not participate in the armed conflicts. Children belong to one of these vulnerable categories because, due to their age, they are unable to take care of themselves. Although the rules of international humanitarian law, international human rights law and international criminal law provide special protection for children, in practice, such protection is often lacking in reality. Therefore, it was necessary to take certain further steps to ensure more adequate protection of children in armed conflicts, which led to this issue being addressed by the International Criminal Court. In this paper, the author is trying to present the notion of the children in armed conflicts, as to better explain the rules of international law relating to the protection of children in armed conflicts and why is that protection needed. The main focus of the paper is on the problem of conscripting and enlisting children under the age of 15 during armed conflicts, and on the analysis of two judgements of ICC which defined those acts as war crimes – Lubanga and Ognwen cases.
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