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UN, Human Rights Groups hail Agreement on Child Soldiers

January 23, 2000 · 

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Published in The Philippine Daily Inquirer

UNITED NATIONS-An international,agreement aimed at ending the use of child soldiers is being hailed as a major achievement after six years of wrangling over the details.

The accord, completed in Geneva on Friday, would, raise the minimum age for service in combat to 18 years and set 16 years as the limit for voluntary service. According to UN estimates, 300,000 people under 18 are currently involved in wars across the globe.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said that the agreement represented a significant step” and would become a highly effective instrument” for protecting children wherever there are armed conflicts, a.stateriient said.

The accord is an optional protocol to the LIN Convention on the Rights of the Child, meaning the treaty’s 191 signatory nations have the choice of whether or not to abide by it. Although the United States has not yet ratified the original treaty, it will be allowed to join the protocol.

Human Rights Watch praised the pact, noting that the United Stateswhich accepts 17-year-old volunteers and has in recent years deployed them to potential combat situations-has for the first time agreed to “change its practices in order to support a human rights standard. ”

In other human rights treaties, such as the one banning the use of land mines, the United States has been unwilling to sign, the group said.

Along with Britain, which allows enlistment at 16, the United States pressed to keep the minimum age for voluntary service at 16 years, instead of 18 as many activists would have liked.

“Many concessions were made to accommodate the United States,” said Jo Becker, the director for children’s rights advocacy for Human Rights Watch. “The US should now move quickly to ratify and implement the agreement.”

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson issued a statement welcoming “the spirit of cooperation” in the protocol and called for a “speedy conclusion of the process.”

According to the agreement, soldiers under 18 must be provided special protection and nations must “take all feasible measures” to ensure child soldiers do not enter combat.

The protocol is also meant to include guerrilla movements, which have frequently raised child armies to wage their conflicts. Children have been recruited to rebel militars throughout Africa, as well as in places like Colombia and Lebanon, Human Rights Watch has said.

Olara Otunnu, UN special representative for children and armed conflict, said he had already received “commitments from several guerrilla groups not to recruit, not to deploy below 18.”

The agreement “strengthens our hands in terms of advocacy and we can now proceed to put in place arrangements for more effective monitoring of conduct on the ground,” he said.

But the UN Children’s Fund said it believed the agreement contained “weak” language and did not go far enough.

“We are disappointed that the protocol has taken such a relatively weak position,on voluntary service,” said Peter Crowley, Unicefs’senior program officer for child rights.

Crowley said provisions in the agreement left open the possibility that soldiers under 18 could still take part in supporting combat operations.

AP

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