U.S. Allows Use of Child Soldiers

You probably assume that your country is a leader in the rights of children in the world. I would have. But yesterday I listened to a statement by Senator Leahy asking that the U.S. join a convention adopted by the U.N. to prevent the use of children as soldiers, and found that we are not a party to that.

In 1994, a working group at the United Nations was formed to prepare a optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child that would raise the minimum age for armed forces recruitment and participation in hostilities from 15 to 18 years. Although most countries would accept such a change, Bangladesh, Cuba, Israel, Pakistan, the United Kingdom and the United States resisted it. The U.S. has a long standing policy of allowing 17 year olds to enter the military if they have the permission of a parent. However, they are not assigned to active combat. "Since the U.N. Working Group takes decisions only by consensus, all participating nations must be in unanimous agreement on the wording of the draft protocol. The United States alone has said that it would refuse to accept a consensus stipulating 18 years as the minimum age for recruitment."

This does not represent me, and I doubt it represents the majority of the U.S. public. The use of children in war is reprehensible, and this country should be in the lead of opposition to it.

The last few years have seen heightened interest in the problem at the highest level of the international community, and landmark developments to strengthen and broaden the scope of international measures to protect children from this scourge. For this reason, says Olara Otunnu, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children in Armed Conflict, we are now at "a watershed moment" when international attention can be coupled with new mechanisms and instruments to end impunity for those using child soldiers.

It is time over the next three years, according to Otunnu, "to switch from talking the talk to walking the walk … for a critical mass that could come together to change the behaviour of parties in conflict and prevent them getting away with abuse of children."

The nature of the problem

More than 500,000 children under-18 have been recruited into state and non-state armed groups in over 85 countries worldwide, according to the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers [www.child-soldiers.org]. At any one time, more than 300,000 of these children are actively fighting as soldiers with government armed forces or armed opposition groups worldwide, says the coalition.

Most child soldiers are between the ages of 15 and 18 years, but some are as young as seven. Most, but not all, soldiers under 15 years of age are believed to be part of non-state armed forces. Those children who are not fighters, are typically runners or scouts, porters, sex slaves, cooks or spies.

The recruitment and use of children for combat is outlawed by various measures of international human rights law, humanitarian law, labour law and criminal law but a chasm exists between these standards and their application.

It would seem that if the U.S. represents any degree of humanity, it would be at the forefront in opposing the use of children in war.

It is time that we came out of the ranks of those opposing basic human decency.