Age Determination of Child Soldiers

International Criminal Court (ICC) Trial Chamber IX’s decision in the Ongwen case in 2021 and the subsequent Appeals Chamber decision in 2022 have quickly become benchmarks for a still nascent but steadily growing body of jurisprudence on the recruitment, enlistment, or use of child soldiers. This naturally raises questions and considerations about age determination in these cases. This article attempts to contribute to this scholarship by way of providing a critical analysis of the main difficulties and challenges faced by international criminal tribunals in estimating and proving age in proceedings before international criminal tribunals, including references to standards of proof and evidential value. It then studies the ICC’s considerations for determining the age element having these difficulties in mind. The article argues that the ICC’s approach to this case, while arguably innovative in certain respects, largely suffers from the same problems it has faced in previous cases on the same subject matter, namely, challenges of validity, reliability, and potential bias.