Since 1991, the International Day of the African Child has been observed and celebrated all around the world, especially in Africa. The Dallaire Institute for Children, Peace and Security and its Rwanda-based African Centre of Excellence (ACoE) commemorate this day by reflecting on their work on the continent over the past ten years. The Dallaire Institute for Children, Peace and Security was founded by retired General Roméo Dallaire, who led the UN peacekeeping mission for Rwanda when the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi occurred. Bearing witness to the horrific abuse of children recruited and used as soldiers motivated the General to found an institute with a mission to progressively end this repugnant violation of children’s rights. The Dallaire Institute employs a unique approach of working with the security sector (such as military and police) to provide tools and tactics that will prevent the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict and violence. The work of the Dallaire Institute for Children, Peace, and Security led to the establishment of the African Centre of Excellence (ACoE) in Kigali, to provide strategic leadership, coordination and a collaborative platform for Africa’s security sector professionals. Over the last decade, the Dallaire Institute has trained thousands of security sector professionals on the prevention of the recruitment and use of children as soldiers in Rwanda, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, and Somalia, as well as other international regions. In 2017, the Dallaire Institute was instrumental in the drafting and adoption of the Vancouver Principles on Peacekeeping and the Prevention of the Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers. Today, they continue to promote their further adoption and implementation, as well as to provide opportunities to reflect on the role prevention-centered training of security sector professionals can play in helping to end the involvement of children in conflicts. Rwanda was the first African country to endorse the Vancouver Principles, and plays a leading role in international peacekeeping; it is the worlds third-largest contributor of troops to UN peacekeeping missions, with forces currently deployed in the Central African Republic, South Sudan, and Haiti, all areas where child rights are significantly at risk. Recognition of this leadership led to the establishment of the Dallaire Institute’s ACoE in Rwanda, a central hub advancing the mission throughout Africa. The Dallaire Institute not only works at the highest levels of international advocacy, training, and research, it is also deeply rooted in the lives of individuals. Individuals such as Nyanchek from South Sudan, a country with one of the highest rates of child soldier recruitment in the world. In the community where she was raised, children were not protected from conflict; in fact, they were encouraged to join armed groups and become community protectors. Thus, Nyanchek was recruited as a soldier at the tender age of eight, separated from her home and her family. “We were taught to kill,” she says. “Nothing else. We grew up with these bad things in our mind.” Today, she is a Lieutenant Colonel in the South Sudan People’s Defence Forces (SSPDF) and a caring leader for peace in her community. She was one of more than two dozen South Sudanese women—soldiers, police, and community leaders—whom the Dallaire Institute gathered together late in 2020 with the aim of building alliances across sectors. These women shared their personal and professional perspectives with the ultimate goal to collaboratively prevent the recruitment and use of children as soldiers in South Sudan. This extraordinary coming together of security sector actors and community leaders of women-led organizations came about from the work the Dallaire Institute for Children, Peace and Security has been doing in South Sudan over the past three years, thanks to supporting from Global Affairs Canada. Nyanchek’s traumatic experience as a young girl inspired the pledge she made to the group: “Today, as an enlightened person and high-ranking officer in the SSPDF, I will never allow any child to be recruited and used in any armed forces or groups.” She says it was important to share her painful story at the women’s consultation, because she knows people in her country still do not understand the hardships children go through when they are recruited. That lack of awareness on rights and laws that protect children was identified by the women as one of many gaps that they could work together to fill. The Dallaire Institute’s organization of this unique consultation allowed space for these diverse women to exchange dialogue and then identify areas of both vulnerabilities and opportunities to protect children. This is but one small example of the unique ways we can all work together throughout Rwanda and the African continent to elevate the African Child and demonstrate hope for a future of humanity that protects children from all types of violence, especially the recruitment and use of children as soldiers.
