By Ramesh Thakur

The idea of using force to settle disputes has become anathema to the modern conscience. The U.N. Charter repudiates the use of force in world affairs. The UN University exists to test the limits of what can be achieved through the force of ideas. As the think tank of the U.N. system, we are the conceptual and policy bridge between the worlds of ideas and praxis, of values and policy: between scholars, governments, international organizations, and nongovernment organizations.

As single-issue actors, NGOs normally work with a sense of moral clarity. Like diplomats, academics profess and believe that gray is the colour of truth. In most cases -- in fact in almost all cases -- that is indeed so. But not in this case. The subject of children in armed conflict is one of those rare issues where truth and falsehood appear, not in shades of gray, but in stark black and white.

U.N. calculations show that just in the last decade, 2 million children have been killed, 1 million orphaned, 6 million disabled or otherwise seriously injured, 12 million made homeless, and 10 million left with serious psychological scars. Of the total numbers of refugees and displaced persons in the world today, half are children. Large numbers of them, especially young women, are the targets of rape and other forms of sexual violence as deliberate instruments of war.

We know the truth, we know it in black and white. The question is: Do we have the courage and the nerve to press our case on the two groups of countries that matter, the countries of concern and the concerned countries (as Olara Otunnu, the secretary general's special representative, says)? Can we unite them in a common vision of a world community dedicated to the rights of children, and the common cause that makes the vision a reality - and in our lifetime? The steps taken in defense of the rights of children remain small, hesitant and limited. The biggest danger is compassion fatigue: We will get so used to the statistics that they will cease to shock us, and we will learn to live with the unacceptable.

The passionate denunciation of the practice of using children as targets and tools of warfare needs the supporting intellectual girders of dispassionate analyses and the active engagement of elements of civil society. International legal instruments are necessary, but they are not sufficient. In international society, as in domestic society, norms are more important for regulating everyday behavior and conduct. But they must be backed by the majesty of law and coercive sanctions for those who would test and transgress them once in a while.

In order to eradicate the distressingly prevalent practice of children in armed conflict, we need to make it anathema: We must establish a powerful norm against it, so that no government or guerrilla army will be able to brutalize children without moral compunction. The UN can adopt international conventions and proclaim lofty principles from global platforms; civil society can stigmatize unethical conduct at the local level.

The mark of a civilization is not the deference and respect paid to the glamorous and the powerful, but the care and attention devoted to the least privileged and the most vulnerable. Every society prizes children, the link between succeeding generations; every culture abhors their abuse. The degradation of a child anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere: It diminishes us all. The restoration of dignity to a child - the right to innocence for the entirety of childhood - will help redeem us all.

Can we make the Kantian transition from barbarism to culture? Can we afford not to?

Return to previous page