CHILD SOLDIERS: Report Shows World-Wide Use of Child Soldiers ? Calls for UN Action
CHILD SOLDIERS: Report Shows World-Wide Use of Child Soldiers ? Calls for UN Action [news]
[New York City] - The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers today released a 195-page report listing those governments and groups that use and recruit child soldiers, in advance of an upcoming United Nations Security Council debate on children and armed conflict.
"This report is a 'list of shame' for the armed groups and governments using boys and girls in their conflicts in defiance of international standards," said Casey Kelso, Coalition Coordinator.
The Coalition's "1379 Report" lists some 72 parties to armed conflict that are using children as soldiers and more than 25 others that have recruited children in the past and should be monitored. Twelve governments are named as recruiting or using children under 18 years old.
The report takes its title from UN Security Council Resolution 1379 of November 2001, which among other things requested Secretary-General Kofi Annan to compile a first-ever list of those governments and non-state armed groups that are using children in warfare. In the next few days, the UN Security Council will receive the Secretary-General's report and list, which will be the focus of the UN Security Council's debate about protecting children affected by armed conflicts. The debate is tentatively scheduled for 20 November.
The Coalition's own report urges the Secretary-General and the Security Council to ensure that Resolution 1379 is used to its maximum potential recognising that some of the countries with the most severe child soldier problems, such as Myanmar, Colombia and Sri Lanka, are at serious risk of being excluded from the Secretary-General's report.
Children as young as eleven are forcibly recruited into Myanmar's national army. With an estimated 70,000 children in its ranks, it is the world's largest single user of child soldiers. In Colombia, there are an estimated 6,000 to 14,000 child soldiers. Boys and girls as young as 8 years old are recruited into armed groups, paramilitaries and militias. In Sri Lanka, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has a long record of using child soldiers as well as a record of breaking commitments to end their recruitment and use.
"We welcome the Security Council's initiative to review parties recruiting and using child soldiers," said Coalition Coordinator Kelso. "But grave situations of children being pressed into the frontlines of war may escape international scrutiny if ignored by the Security Council."
The Coalition's key recommendations to the Security Council are that:
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The Security Council should make this debate an annual event, but widen the criteria for next year's list to encompass all situations in which children are used as soldiers.
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The Security Council should take immediate action to make children's rights a reality in the specific conflict situations that it has examined. The Coalition makes a series of detailed recommendations on each of the 25 country situations examined in its report.
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The Security Council should commit itself to follow up in 2003 on the parties named in this year's discussion, inviting these governments and groups as well as others, to explain their use of child soldiers and engage in a dialogue about how to end it.
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The Security Council should evaluate progress made on these situations, ask for a six-month interim report, and commit itself to considering appropriate actions next year if progress has not been made. This could include the appointment of independent experts to examine situations.
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The Security Council should make field visits to the gravest situations threatening children.
For more information, contact:
Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers - International Secretariat:
2-12 Pentonville Road, 2nd, floor, London N1 9HF, UK
Tel: 00 44 207 713 2761; Fax: 00 44 207 713 2794;
Email: info@child-soldiers.org;
Website:
www.child-soldiers.org
