Canada and child soldiers.

This issue's feature article on the Machel Report (see pages 3-8) graphically documents the horrific effects of war on children. As the briefing papers accompanying the report state, "One of the most disturbing trends in armed conflict is the participation of children as soldiers. The deliberate recruitment of children as combatants by adults is increasing." The child soldiers referred to are children under the age of 18 (many much younger) who find themselves in military service either through force or as a means of simple survival in a region at war.

A UN working group will be meeting early in 1997 to negotiate an optional protocol that will close a glaring hole in the 1979 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Although the convention recognizes 18 as the appropriate upper limit of childhood, it retains 15 as the minimum age for recruitment and participation in hostilites.

Adoption by the world community of 18 as the minimum voluntary recruitment age would be a major move forward in restricting the use of child soldiers, and the coming meeting is seen as being crucial in this effort. Unfortunately, there is resistance to this protocol by a few states which, according to the Machel briefing papers, fail "to take account of the extent to which effective protection of children requires unqualified legal and moral commitment to the principle that children have no part in armed conflict."

Given its peacekeeping image, it is surprising to find that Canada has been named as one of the small group of nations standing in the way of this international agreement. Both the Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva and the NGO Radda Barnen (Swedish Save the Children) have admonished Canada for not fully supporting the protocol.

Canadian government sources report that Canada supports two out of the three changes proposed by the optional protocol - setting 18 as the minimum age for conscription, and setting 18 as the minimum age for placing military personnel in situations of conflict. But the third change, setting 18 as the minimum age for voluntary recruitment, is still under discussion as the government formulates a position to take to the working group meeting early next year. Currently, the Department of National Defence is arguing for 17 as the minimum age for voluntary recruitment so that youth can be accepted into the armed forces directly from high school.

The international community needs to give children (under the age of 18) unqualified moral and legal protection from military recruiters. The Canadian government may argue that its own recruitment of 17-year-old soldiers in innocuous, but any move to frustrate the development of high international standards is not innocuous.