This should shock and alarm the international community. The UN Office for Children and Armed Conflict found that the number of children either forcibly or voluntarily fighting in the various conflicts in the Middle East and Africa doubled in number in 2019. As an international community, we are not demanding 100 percent compliance, and that needs to change.Įxploitation by state and quasi-state actors This is a glaring example of an OPAC signatory not adhering to the stipulations of their signed commitments. secretary of state waived the inclusion of Saudi Arabia on its annual list of countries that recruit child soldiers, even though it met all the criteria to be included. In a controversial decision in 2019, that was opposed by many career professionals, the U.S. More than 30 percent of globally recognized states refused to sign onto OPAC to help protect children from being exploited into soldiering. By 2016, 70 percent of the state actors and 60 percent of non-state actors (with armed forces) had signed on to OPAC. They cannot recruit or use anyone below the age of 18. For non-state actors that are signatories, there are no exceptions for those between the ages of 16 and 18. Under OPAC, children must be fully informed of their duties and they cannot be combat-related until they attain the age of 18. OPAC states that individuals under the age of 16 cannot be enlisted to fight and individuals between the ages of 16 and 18 cannot be compelled to join an armed force. An additional protocol from 1977 addressed the rights of children in these conflicts by prohibiting state and non-state actors from using children under the age of 15 as combatants, and took the added step of designating the use of children as a war crime.Īdopted by the UN General Assembly in 2000, the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (OPAC) raised the 1977 standard by barring the use of anyone under the age of 18 in conflict. The post-World War II Geneva Conventions consisted of four treaties and three protocols, setting the standards of international law for armed conflict. It’s critical to understand the relevant international laws, force countries to sign these protocols through continuous isolation and scrutiny until they comply, and then hold them accountable for violating the protocols they signed. Many of the signatories simply ignore their obligations. The international community must take action beyond just signing protocols at the UN. ![]() Therefore, those superpowers have a responsibility to help end this practice of child exploitation. The use of child soldiers not only spans the globe, it also happens in many locations where the world’s superpowers have deployed their own military forces. ![]() These countries are Afghanistan, Colombia, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Mali, Myanmar, Nigeria, the Philippines, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. The UN has identified 14 countries where children have been widely used as soldiers. ![]() This is a global problem that is getting worse and it must be addressed. The UN further reported that a majority of these children were actually under the age of 15 and that 40 percent of them were girls. In 2017, the advocacy group Child Soldiers International estimated that more than 100,000 children were forced to become soldiers in state and non-state military organizations in at least 18 armed conflicts worldwide.
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