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The second phase of the research will be critical of the international legal 'rights' approach aimed at protecting children in conflict and post conflict situations and of the ethnocentric and Western-centric attempts to impose external protection norms on conflict-ridden societies.
The experience of the past few decades (e.g. the genocide in Rwanda, the clan violence in Somalia, the internecine killing and maiming in Sierra Leone, Liberia, the DRC, and Uganda, the factional fighting in Mozambique, the ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, the intifadah in Palestine, and the suicide attacks in Israel) indicates that, despite the existence of significant international human rights standards and humanitarian laws, the international community has had limited success in protecting children from the ravages of armed conflict.
Olara Otunnu, the UN Secretary General's Special Representative on Children and Armed Conflict, has identified this problem as a major one. He notes that the most pressing challenge for the UN is to translate the principles, standards and measures, that has been put in place by such legal instruments as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the Optional Protocol to the Child Rights Convention, into facts on the ground. [in UNSC Press release SC/7631 Meeting 4684, 14 January 2003]
The main problem with international human rights law is that it was devised to regulate state behaviour. [ICHR policy, 1999, p.54] Wheeler points out, that "the gap between normative commitments and instruments allows governments to abuse human rights with virtual impunity." [Wheeler, 2000, p.1] Given the changing nature of conflict, combatants can be regular state armies and/or irregular forces.
Even if states decide to adhere to international legal child protection standards and norms (and many of them do not), rebel groups will tend to disregard these rules even more so. In addition, as I have pointed out in my own work, the sovereignty and non-intervention norms are still so powerful among many states that intervention, even to protect innocent children, is viewed by many as an affront to the independence of the state. [Knight, 1994]
Yet, there is a burgeoning literature supporting the position of solidarists and international society theorists who claim that the international community has the 'responsibility to protect' victims of civil conflict, particularly if the state government in the theatre of conflict is unwilling or unable to do so.
This is a powerful argument for the use of international legal instruments -- such as conventions, treaties, protocols, UN Security Council resolutions, and sanctions - in the protection of children caught in the midst of conflict. While the need to protect children is urgent, this research project will expose the problems inherent in solutions that do not take sufficiently into account indigenous child protection norms.
Basic Research Questions in Phase Two
Clearly, in the context of a changed security environment in which intra-state and internecine conflict is prevalent, there is a need to rethink the 'legal' child protection strategies that the international community has used in the past and consider a stratagem that is rooted in local norms and values. Some of the relevant questions to be addressed in this phase are:
- What norms and cultural values sustain the "culture of violence" in the societies where children are affected by war?
- What local norms and cultural traits give rise to the absence of protection for children in conflict and post-conflict countries?
- What norms and values (at the international, regional and local levels) can lead to the enhancement of protection of children during armed conflicts?
- Which local standards of protection work and which do not?
- Is there a clash between international and local legal measures aimed at protection of children in conflict zones?
There is a shift here in the focus from universalist approaches to child protection to more culturally specific and local approaches.
The second phase of this research project will therefore raise the issue of whether or not universal legal standards, such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, are ethnocentric or trans-cultural. In addition, this phase will investigate the possibility of developing - in theatres of conflict -- 'codes of conduct', 'zones of peace', and 'periods of tranquility' to which belligerents would adhere. [van der Merwe & Malan, pp.229-247]
It draws on the constructivist work of Finnemore and Sikkink [1998] that offers some explanation of the process of making emerging norms more robust. Certainly, there is a need to supplement the international legal norms geared at protecting children in conflict and post conflict situations with local norms of child protection. However, ways must be found to strengthen those local norms to the point where all warring parties, without question, can accept them; and this will be one of the goals of the second phase of this project.
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