Children in combat
Egan, Eileen
REPORT FROM THE UN CHILDREN IN COMBAT WHEN ARE THEY TOO YOUNG? When is a child too young to fight? The question does not concern the onset of sibling rivalry. It has to do with deciding when...
...In 1986, negotiators agreed to a text which stated that "no child" should be sent into combat...
...Children were used extensively in the Iran-Iraq war...
...We are not involved in an armed conflict," he said, "but we may be one day, and it would be very hard for the armed forces to guarantee that seventeen-year-olds would be separated out from conflict.'' The U.S...
...Child" was subsequently defined as a person who had not yet reached the age of eighteen, or someone who had not yet reached the age of majority (many countries granting majority between fifteen and eighteen...
...In Nicaragua, the report states, contra groups included boys aged twelve to seventeen, while the Nicaraguan government at one time forcibly recruited 3,000 young people...
...A number of international nongovernmental organizations have registered their concern over the eventual outcome of the negotiations on child soldiers...
...I remember the young men who told me that as fifteen-year-olds they had been swept into combat during the nightmare end of World War II...
...Since 1979, member states, as well as advocacy groups for the welfare of children, have been weighing the matter further as the UN has sought to draft a general treaty on the rights of children...
...The definition's standard provided room for ongoing confusion...
...The U.S...
...It points out that this position would necessitate a change in the Selective Service Law...
...Should the world's children be made to wait longer...
...In the meantime, an important question for Americans to ask their State Department is what "elsewhere" is more suitable for taking up the question of child soldiers than the present Convention...
...also balked at a clause that would have required countries to "endeavor to prevent" children between fifteen and eighteen from being sent into war action, and called instead for countries merely to "take all feasible measures" to keep children under fifteen from combat duty...
...The aim of the Geneva meeting is to have the Convention of the Rights of the Child ready to present to the UN General Assembly for ratification in the fall of 1989...
...It has to do with deciding when young people should be allowed to participate officially in their country's wars...
...In El Salvador, where the age of conscription is eighteen, army recruiters have rounded up younger boys, while the guerrilla forces of the FMLN have forcibly recruited hundreds of peasant boys...
...position on child soldiers following the Geneva session last December, a member of the U.S...
...Debate before the Human Rights Commission in Geneva on the Convention of the Rights of the Child will continue through March...
...delegation stated that the matter should be taken up "elsewhere...
...All of this came to a head during a UN session on the treaty last December at Geneva...
...Contrary to the present State Department approach, the Convention under discussion is the most logical place to decide the question of child soldiers...
...One such group, the Friends World Committee for Consultation, has published a paper documenting the use of child soldiers in many parts of the world...
...Negotiations resume this month at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva...
...Many international nongovernmental organizations, including Pax Christi and the International Catholic Child Bureau, are likely to submit statements, and, on occasion, address the Commission...
...Entitled "Children's Military Training and Service," the paper estimates that there are as many as 200,000 children serving in the armed forces and various guerrilla units around the world...
...EILEEN EG AN Eileen Egan is a member of the National Council of Pax Christi-USA and the author of Such a Vision of the Street: Mother Teresa (Doubleday...
...Just where this "elsewhere" is was not explicated, nor was it specified which organ of the UN other than the Commission on Human Rights (which in 1987 had already passed a resolution affirming conscientious objection to military service as a human right) should deal with the question...
...delegate explained that with parental consent, youngsters of seventeen can enlist in the U.S...
...When pressed further on the U.S...
...representatives to the Human Rights Commission vote to protect children under eighteen from being sent into combat...
...But a crucial distinction remained to be made: defining at what age a young person is no longer considered a child in international perception and law, the point before which he or she could not legitimately participate in military actions...
...The United States declared it would fight the general proposal of a minimum age for combat of eighteen...
...The question has special poignancy for me arising from my work in Germany in 1947...
...It would be better to delay ratification, however, than to end up with a flawed document...
...The Soviet Union sided with the United States in the dispute, and the conference adjourned at an impasse...
...armed forces...
...In 1977, the first protocol to the Geneva Conventions ruled out combat for children below the age of fifteen...
...Pax Christi-USA has posed this question in a statement addressed to the State Department and the Armed Services Committees of the Congress...
...The statement urged that the U.S...
Vol. 116 • February 1989 • No. 4
