A LEADING member of one of Darfur’s rebel factions who also sits on the advisory board of Irish Aid, the Government’s overseas development division, has denied accusations by a human rights organisation that his group recruits child soldiers.
Abdullahi El-Tom, an academic at NUI Maynooth, is head of training and strategic planning for the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), one of the main rebel groupings that have been fighting the Sudanese government since 2003. He is a member of the Irish Aid advisory board that was established to provide general oversight and advice to the Minister for Foreign Affairs on the strategic direction of the Government’s programme of assistance to developing countries.
JEM was singled out in a recent report on child soldier recruitment published by Waging Peace, a British human rights organisation, which said it has footage shot in refugee camps in eastern Chad to support its claim that JEM was losing support among Darfuri refugees because it accepted into its ranks boys who had been abducted and trafficked from the camps. The recruits were mostly between nine and 15, the report said.
Last year the UN estimated that between 7,000 and 10,000 child soldiers had been forcibly recruited in Chad, where some 250,000 Darfuri refugees languish in camps. Dr El-Tom said the report was “totally unfounded and false”. “We don’t have a shortage of volunteers, so we do not need to use any children.”
He said Waging Peace did not speak to JEM troops on the ground during their research. “I don’t think the investigation was fair or balanced.”
Waging Peace executive director Louise Roland-Gosselin said the group had not received any communication from JEM since the report was published.
“While Waging Peace’s recent report highlighted the recruitment and trafficking of child soldiers on the Chad-Sudan border by a number of parties including the JEM, Chadian rebel groups, Sudanese Janjaweed militias and Chadian authorities, the strongest evidence we collected related to the forced recruitment of child soldiers by the JEM,” she said.