Truth and Reconciliation Mechanisms: A Re-victimization of Child Victims of Genocidal Forcible Transfer?

It has here been argued that children who have been the victims of forcible transfer to an armed group (State or non-State) perpetrating mass atrocities and/or genocide are not accountable for atrocities they may commit as child soldiers Rather, it is contended, these children are the non-culpable victims of a genocidal act as per Article 2(e) of the Genocide Convention (where forcible transfer to another group, it will recalled, does not require physical force and can include i.e. recruitment via exploitation of the child’s highly coercive circumstances during the armed conflict making them extremely vulnerable to various forms of recruitment into the armed group or force). To this author’s knowledge such a view has not been espoused previously while ironically child soldiers themselves have been, incorrectly on the view here, charged with genocide (i.e. Rwandan youth between the ages of 14–18 allegedly involved in the fighting in the 1994 genocide were charged with genocide regardless the mode of their ‘recruitment’ into the Hutu perpetrator armed group; though certain numbers were later released upon surrender of their weapons and confession to the atrocities they had committed).