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Gender and Education for All
THE LEAP TO EQUALITY |
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| Box 3.7. Girls in the armed forces | |
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It is estimated that in the 1990s approximately 100,000 girls directly participated in conflicts in at least thirty-nine countries around the world. In terms of absolute numbers, Africa is the region with the highest number of children directly involved (McKay and Mazurana, 2000), but the issue is clearly a global one. Precise data are limited, but in countries such as El Salvador, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone and Uganda, it is estimated that 30% of child soldiers are girls. The Peruvian Shining Path has one of the highest female participation rates. In Asia, young girls are recruited by the Sri Lankan Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), 900–1,000 girls are participating in armed conflict in the north-east Indian state of Manipur, and large numbers of Nepalese girls are involved in the ‘People’s War’ of the Maoist insurgents (Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, 2000).
The term ‘girl soldier’, however, tends to deflect attention from girls’ multiple roles, not only as fighters, but also as cooks, porters, spies and as ‘wives’, servants and/or sex slaves. Disarmament, demobilization, rehabilitation and reintegration (DDRR) programmes tend to assume male experiences, and to ignore the quite different ways
| | in which boys and girls participate in armed forces and reintegrate into communities. In Angola, for example, when the surrender of weapons was a criterion for eligibility, girls who had been involved with the military, but not as fighters, were excluded. Those programmes that include girls nevertheless tend to ignore central gender issues. Little attention may be given, for example, to addressing the complex shifts in gender identities, roles and responsibilities created by conflict (Strickland and Duvvury, 2003). The tendency to channel girls only into gender-typical activities, such as soap-making or dress-making, is also a potential source of problems (Barth, 2003).
The stigma of being involved with armed forces and their various atrocities may be stronger for girls than for boys. There are high rates of pregnancy, and for young mothers there are serious practical, cultural and psychological barriers to school attendance and reintegration (McKay and Mazurana, 2002). Communities can be particularly hostile to girls who have had a child of the enemy. They can often be rejected by their families, becoming vulnerable to prostitution.
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Source: Kirk (2003).
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