Toward a New Foreign Policy.

Strong international norms can provide a critical basis to prevent and stop the use and recruitment of children as soldiers. To this end, the U.S. should ratify all treaties relating to child soldiers: the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions, the CRC, the ICC, and ILO Convention No. 182. Once ratified, these conventions should be incorporated into U.S. national legislation and programs. The U.S. must also immediately cease any attempts to block current and future international efforts to raise the minimum age for soldiering to 18, especially in negotiations on the CRC. In keeping with international trends, the Defense Department and Congress should raise the U.S. recruitment age to 18 and ensure that presently enlisted 17-year-olds are not deployed to potential combat zones.

In addition, the U.S., with its stated commitment to human rights, should help to establish prompt, objective monitoring and effective enforcement of agreements regarding child soldiers, particularly through the existing UN Commission on the Rights of the Child. U.S. embassy staff and other U.S.-supported personnel abroad should be educated on national and international laws regarding the use of children as soldiers.

Information on child soldiers should be included in State Department country reports, where present coverage is spotty. Congressional hearings involving the Departments of State and Defense should examine the problem, monitor progress, and lead to vocal and active measures against countries or groups using child soldiers, including withholding military transfers, aid, and training. Congress should authorize the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor to report on establishing and implementing this guideline as a condition for receiving military aid, transfers, and training. Congress should also examine war practices that increase the likelihood of children becoming soldiers.

Several pieces of legislation can be used toward this effort. One is the 1997 Leahy Law, which stipulates withholding funds from governments whose security forces have been implicated in human rights abuses. Another proposed bill is the McKinney-Rohrabacher Code of Conduct on Arms Transfers Act of 1999 (HR 2269). To be eligible for arms transfers, military aid, or training under this code, countries would need to adhere to internationally recognized human rights standards and not be engaged in armed aggression. The enforcement of such a code, which should recognize using child soldiers as violating these terms, would restrict the availability of weapons to groups that use children as soldiers.

The U.S. must take responsibility for the ways in which its own laws and practices foster the use of child soldiers and warfare against children. Congress should explore how U.S. weapons aid and training facilitate the use of child soldiers. Accordingly, it should monitor the entire process and investigate the end use of U.S. weapons shipments, including both weapons given as aid and arms that various government bodies have authorized for legal sale by U.S. manufacturers. This oversight is particularly important in curbing the vast illegal weapons trafficking (especially of small arms), upon which armed opposition groups rely. Additionally, U.S. aid should focus on universal access to basic education, food security, and primary health care, which are important factors in keeping children out of conflict.

Rehabilitation and reintegration of child soldiers into their communities is crucial in ensuring both lasting peace and stable communities. Just as the decommissioning of arms is now seen as a crucial--though often missing--component in cease-fires and peace accords, the resettlement and reintegration of child soldiers and other combatants should be critical elements. Children's basic needs must be addressed, along with education and family reunification. For instance, Christian Children's Fund (CCF) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), with help from the U.S. Agency for International Development, have developed locale-specific programs to demobilize and return Angolan children home. To continue and expand this work, Congress should increase funding for the rehabilitation and reintegration of disarmed and demobilized child soldiers. The U.S. should also be willing to grant asylum to former child soldiers unable to return home and to youngsters fleeing wars or conscription.

Washington refuses to admit that the U.S. has its own child soldiering problem. But 17-year-olds in the U.S. armed forces are only one aspect of a greater problem: a tolerance and even glorification of violence in U.S. culture that leads many youth to engage in different types of warfare in U.S. streets and schools. What must be recognized is that this tolerance of violence is ultimately connected to Washingtons failure to condemn unequivocally all use of children as soldiers. Thus, this culture of violence has ramifications not only in countless U.S. communities but also for hundreds of thousands of children--especially child soldiers--around the world. As public concern grows over youth violence, we must be sure that the efforts to end violence perpetrated by and against children extend to all the world's children.

Key Recommendations

* The U.S. should bring its policy and actions into line with international attempts to raise the minimum age for soldiering to 18.

* The use of child soldiers should be examined by the State Department and Congress and reports used to monitor progress and take action.

* Congress and the State Department should deny military aid, transfers, training, and sales to groups using child soldiers; aid should instead address root socioeconomic problems and the reintegration of child soldiers into civil society.

Sources for More Information

Organizations

American Friends Service Committee(*)
National Youth and Militarism Program
1501 Cherry St.
Philadelphia, PA 19102
Voice: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
Website: http://www.afsc.org/youthmil.htm

Publications

Amnesty International, Child Soldiers: One of the
Worst Abuses of Child Labour (London: Amnesty
International, 1999).

Laura A. Barnitz, Child Soldiers: Youth Who
Participate in Armed Conflict (Washington: Youth
Advocate Program International, 1997).

Rachel Brett and Margaret McCallin, Children:
The Invisible Soldiers (Stockholm, Sweden: Radda
Barnen, 1998).

Center for Defense Information, U.S. Campaign
to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers Advocacy Video,
July 1999.

Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, Stop
Using Child Soldiers! (Stockholm, Sweden: Radda
Barnen, 1998).

Mike Wessells, "Child Soldiers," The Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists, November/December 1997.

World Wide Web

Amnesty International(*)
http://www.amnesty-usa.org

Center for Defense Information's Children and
Armed Conflict Project(*)
http://www.cdi.org/atp/childsoldiers

Children and Their Rights: The Convention on
the Rights of the Child
http://www.unicef.org/crc

Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers
(international)
http://www.child-soldiers.org

Human Rights Watch: Stop the Use of Child
Soldiers!(*)
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/crp

Impact of Armed Conflict on Children
(UN report by Graca Machel)
http://www.unicef.org/graca

International Committee of the Red Cross
http://www.icrc.org

Radda Barnen
(Swedish Save the Children)
http://www.rb.se

U.S. Campaign to Stop the Use of Child
Soldiers
http://www.us-childsoldiers.org

Youth Advocate Program International(*)
http://www.yapi.org

((*) steering committee members of the U.S. Campaign to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers)

Shannon McManimon is the Jim Bristol Fellow in the AFSC National Youth and Militarism Program. The AFSC is a steering committee member of the U.S. Campaign to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers.