A recent mission to establish whether there were children in the armed forces in South Sudan’s Eastern Equatoria region has returned a clean scoresheet, as not a single child was found within the ranks of both the opposition and government forces.

The first in a series of planned screening missions, the two-week exercise was aimed at verifying recruitment of children as soldiers, as South Sudanese armed forces seek to clear their name from the United Nation’s list of grave violators against children.

“I assure you the joint team that we do not have child soldiers, except for two orphans aged 16 and 17 years,” said Brigadier General Kenyi George Lam, Officer-in-Charge of Ashwa cantonment site for the Sudan people’s Liberation Army in Opposition and South Sudan Opposition Alliance. “We found these boys lying next to the remains of their parents, who had been killed during a crossfire with SSPDF at Loa village of Pageri county in 2016,” he explained.

Speaking to members of the Tiger Battalion of the South Sudan People’s Defence Forces (SSPDF) at their military camp in Kerepi, Alfred Orono Orono, Senior Child Protection Officer and head of the Child Protection Unit at the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) reminded the military commanders of their responsibility.

“Commanders, it’s your responsibility to ensure the absence of children in the army,” said Mr. Orono. “Also, forces should not attack schools and hospitals, or commit acts of rape. If you get them doing so, bring them to the court martial and subject them to the law,” he concluded.

The mission, conducted mostly on foot, took members of the verification exercise – both from the government and opposition forces, and from UNMISS – trudging through Eastern Equatoria’s bushy pathways, and brought them to Ashwa and Lowaring cantonment sites; Loyoro, Nyara, Irube military camps, and several military barracks in the Kapoeta and Torit areas.

In the cantonment sites, Mr. Orono appealed to the forces of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army in Opposition (SPLA-IO) “to act professionally, and not fail in their duty to report the presence of child soldiers.”

SSDPF is currently listed in the annexes of the report of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, among other forces around the world, as a persistent perpetrator of grave violations against children, including recruitment and use of children, killing and maiming, rape and other forms of sexual violence, abduction, and attacks on schools and hospitals.

SPLA-IO is listed for recruitment and use of children, in addition to killing and maiming. 

In February this year, the forces came together to draft a plan of action that seeks to prevent and end recruitment of children in armed forces, which is set to be endorsed this week, on 29 August.

“If we work together, and avoid these violations against children, and desist from denying humanitarian access, we will no longer be on the list of shame in New York,” advised Chaplain Khamis, the chief of child protection of South Sudan People’s Defense forces. “We will then be considered as a professional army and organized soldiers,” he noted.

“There is no need for us to fight again. Politicians divided us, and now we are in a time of peace, so we need to maintain it and wait to be unified as one army after training,” said Ajack Deng Biar, the South Sudan People’s Defense Forces’ Chief of Moral Orientation.

Subsequent phases of the verification exercise will be conducted once the forces are fully assembled and trained as a unified army.