A/67/256 1. Special Court for Sierra Leone: setting precedents for criminal responsibility 4. The Special Court for Sierra Leone, set up as a hybrid judicial body to investigate, prosecute and try those bearing the greatest responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the armed conflict in Sierra Leone, was the first international court to determine that the recruitment and use of children aged under 15 years constituted a war crime under customary international law. Consequently, for the first time in history, a small number of children also testified as witnesses before the Court. 5. In view of the large number of children who participated in the civil war, the statute of the Court gave the Court jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed by any person of 15 years of age or older associated with armed actors at the time of the alleged commission of the crimes. Early in his tenure, however, the first Chief Prosecutor of the Court stated that as a matter of policy he did not intend to indict persons for crimes that they had committed when they were children, but instead to prosecute those who bore the greatest responsibility for those crimes, interpreted as the adult recruiters and commanders. 6. The Court’s judgement against Charles Taylor marks the first time that a former Head of State has been convicted of war crimes against children that were committed by an armed group that was found not to be under his direct command and control. The Court established that the practical assistance, encouragement and moral support that Charles Taylor gave to RUF rebels in neighbouring Sierra Leone while serving as the President of Liberia was sufficient to make him criminally responsible for the recruitment and use of children, in addition to the killing, mutilation, rape and enslavement of civilians, including children, performed by RUF combatants. 2. First case of the International Criminal Court dealing with the war crime of recruitment and use of children 7. Crimes committed against children during armed conflict have figured prominently in indictments issued by the International Criminal Court in cases in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. Although these are but a few cases compared to the number of perpetrators, when combined with the verdict in the trial of Thomas Lubanga, these indictments serve as a useful deterrent against child recruitment in situations of armed conflict. 8. The acts of conscripting or enlisting children under the age of 15 years into national armed forces or using them to participate actively in hostilities are recognized in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as war crimes in conflicts of international and non-international character. Those acts are not, however, defined in the Statute, with it left to the Trial Chamber to provide legal interpretation. 9. In 2008, the Special Representative testified as an expert witness before the Court and submitted an amicus curiae brief providing clarification on the terms “conscripting and enlisting children” and “using them to participate actively in hostilities”. She argued therein that there was in fact no distinction between voluntary enlistment and forced recruitment, pointing out that children were not always recruited through abduction or the brute use of force. Recruitment also took place in the context of, among other things, poverty, ethnic rivalry and ideological 12-45308 3