Al-Shabab

Coomaraswamy said it’s much more difficult to get al Shabab to stop using child soldiers.

“What we are trying to do in that case, of course, is to work though interlocutors. But also through the community level also to try to influence them. But I can’t say they’re having that much success,” she said.

Radhika Coomaraswamy, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for children and Armed Conflict

She said al Shabab recruits on the community level by extorting, threatening or intimidating families to turn their children over to them. She says they also take them from schools or lure them through radio broadcasts.

The U.N. special representative also visited a camp in Mogadishu where al Shabab defectors or fighters who surrendered are held. Among them were 37 former child soldiers. Coomaraswamy described her visit to the camp as depressing.

“We met a young boy,” she said, “with a bullet still in his head. He was very young. He was about 11 at most or 12. And he had gone through full training, taken part in combat, shot in the leg. But finally he escaped and was taken by the TFG and put in Marino Camp.”

UNICEF, the U.N. children’s fund, has programs to help reintegrate former child soldiers back into society. These include psycho-social support and returning them to school. The International Labor Organization also provides skills and livelihood training.