Mitigating children's involvement in maritime piracy.

• Author: Conradi, Carl
• Position: Reprint

Introduction

Recently, the Canadian Forces Maritime Warfare Centre (CFMWC) had the honour of hosting the prestigious Multilateral XII Wargame, an annual event that convenes representatives from eight of the western hemisphere's most potent navies. In the past, game scenarios have sought to replicate the catastrophic conditions that have accompanied real-world political or environmental events, such as the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. However, among this year's various problematics and injections, participants will be asked to simulate and discuss the burgeoning involvement of children in maritime piracy. Until quite recently, the phenomenon of child maritime piracy elicited scant attention. Precious few academic articles have been written on the subject--excepting three pieces by Danielle Fritz, Mark Drumbl, and the Romeo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative--and little has been done to create practical counter-piracy doctrine that affords consideration to threats posed by children. Yet according to the Seychellois Department of Legal Affairs, some ten to 20 percent of all pirates captured within the Indian Ocean have been below the age of 18. These youths present naval security actors with unique tactical and operational challenges that merit a distinct tactical and operational response.

Since 2012, the Dalhousie University-based Dallaire Initiative has been partnering with the Dalhousie Marine Piracy Project (DMPP) to explore the security implications of children's involvement in maritime piracy; and while it is not yet capable of offering doctrinal recommendations, the Dallaire Initiative has managed to identify a number of key issues that demand further consideration by affected navies.

Children as a Security Concern

The Dallaire Initiative hypothesises that child pirates share a great deal in common with child soldiers, insofar as they are recruited to serve specific tactical and operational functions--functions that adults are ill-disposed to serve themselves. Indeed, children are prized by unscrupulous commanders (and presumably, by piratical gangs) for being agile, submissive, trustworthy, daring and largely impervious to legal prosecution.

Moreover, as Dr. Shelly Whitman noted:

... the socio-economic factors (e.g. poverty, armed violence, lack of educational or employment opportunities, orphanhood, displacement and exposure to disease) that make children vulnerable for use by armed groups exists in each of the major areas where piracy is currently reported. In addition, in many of the regions where piracy exists, children are being used by terrorist groups, criminal gangs and within state and non-state armed groups (e.g. in Somalia, Nigeria and Haiti). Therefore, the use of children and youth by pirate groups could be viewed as a natural extension of these armed groups. When they are deployed against a professional armed force, children also present adult security actors with a serious ethical dilemma--one that may result in fatal hesitation and/or subsequent post-traumatic stress. For instance, if a security actor were reluctant to return fire against a child--and said reluctance resulted in the death of a colleague--he or she might be blamed for the casualty. On the other hand, if he or she were to return fire--thereby eliminating a child pirate or child soldier--they may return to base, only to be stigmatized as a child killer.

For these various reasons, if Western armies and navies are not afforded adequate doctrinal guidance and clear preparatory training on the subject of child soldiers and/or child criminals, they may well become increasingly loathe to participate in operations that involve children, thereby effectively ceding the strategic advantage to persons who use boys and girls for...