Chad’s national army and other armed groups are recruiting child soldiers as young as 13 years old, says Amnesty International. The human rights watchdog urged the African country bordering Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region to stop recruitment of child combatants in a report released on Wednesday.

“It is tragic that thousands of children are denied their childhood and are manipulated by adults into fighting their wars,” said Erwin van der Borght, Amnesty International’s Africa director. “This scandalous child abuse must not be allowed to continue.”

“The Chadian government – and the Chadian and Sudanese armed groups operating in eastern Chad – must immediately stop the recruitment and use of children under 18 and release all children from their ranks,” he added.

Most susceptible to recruitment are teenage boys living in refugee camps in eastern Chad, says the report. Some are abducted and forced to join armed groups. Others are motivated by poverty, lack of education and slim work opportunities.

“There is nothing to do here; there is no work, no school, no money and I am poor,” a former child combatant of Sudanese armed opposition group Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), now living in a refugee camp, told Amnesty International. “In the JEM I am not paid but, when we are in combat, we take stuff from the enemy.”

Some teenagers join armed forces seeking revenge.

“Some of our family were killed by the Zaghawa [Chad president’s ethnic group], and I wanted to take revenge on behalf of my family,” 16-year-old Souleiman told Amnesty International. “I had talked about this with my friends, and we all decided to leave the village and join the rebellion.”

“I joined the MNR [National Movement for Redress] because I had family members with them […] At the end, the MNR joined the Chadian government,” concluded Souleiman.

According to the report, most of the fighters are paid between 10,000 and 250,000 CFA francs (14 and 370 euro). Teenagers between 13 and 17 years old are usually given guns and used as soldiers, while younger kids serve as porters and messengers.

“All parties involved in the conflict in eastern Chad have recruited and used children,” reads the report. One fifth of them joined Chadian national government.

War crime

Enlisting children younger than 15 constitutes a war crime under the statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to which Chad is officially a party.

War crimes fall under the jurisdiction of the ICC. However, the ICC is a court of last resort. It will not act if a case is investigated or prosecuted by a national judicial system, unless the national proceedings are not genuine.

Amnesty International advised that impunity in Chad should be tackled by independent investigations. “Those individuals who are suspected of the recruitment and use of children as fighters or in other roles in their military activities should be prosecuted in national courts in trials that meet international fair trial standards. If Chad is unwilling or unable to do so, such cases could be referred to the ICC for investigation and possible prosecution,” says the report.