Taking Advantage: Refugees' Vulnerability to Military Recruitment

Double jeopardy. CNN is reporting that in Kenya's refugee camps, which hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees have made their "temporary" homes, Somali military recruiters are enticing refugee men and boys to join their ranks. Human Rights Watch has identified early October as the start of this recruitment mission, in which recruiters make false promises of pay that, though meager, seems miraculously rewarding to those that have next to nothing. Camp residents also report that Somali recruiters have portrayed their fight as UN sanctioned, such that some recruits believe they are actually signing up for an official UN mission.

Check out the full story at this link: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/10/25/intl.kenya.refugee.recruitment/

This story points to the inherent vulnerability of the world's refugee populations. Bereft not only of material goods but also of social support, refugees are left to grasp at whatever threads of hope the broader world may dangle before them. There may be money in fighting? Why not sign up? You see a sign you think is offering cars for sale for only $100? Why not give a call? Someone offers work? Why bother thinking of the potential pitfalls? Why worry about danger? Your life is danger. Why not just sign up?

It is not, of course, as simple as that. Yet neither is it complicated to comprehend that when one lives in utter desperation, ripped from the stability of a society with norms of both social behavior and material advancement, one becomes vulnerable to the worst forms of abuse.