HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

The United States was notably absent from the 125 nations that recently gathered to sign the international treaty banning land mines. The U.S. (joined only by Somalia) has failed to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most widely and rapidly adopted human rights treaty in history. And now, the US is attempting singlehandedly to block efforts to reduce the use of child soldiers. As many as 250,000 children, some as young as eight years old, are serving in government armies or armed rebel groups. In over thirty countries around the world, these young combatants are both the tools and the casualties of adult hatreds. Over two million children have been killed in armed conflicts in the past decade. Six million have been seriously injured or permanently disabled. Many more bear psychological scars from being forced to both commit and witness horrific atrocities. For example, thousands of children have been abducted into the Lord's Resistance Army (L.R.A.), an armed rebel group fighting the Ugandan government. Interviewed after escaping from captivity, a sixteen year old girl shared her experience: "One boy tried to escape [from the rebels], but he was caught... His hands were tied, and then they made us, the other new captives, kill him with a stick. I felt sick. I knew this boy from before. We were from the same village. I refused to kill him and they told me they would shoot me. They pointed a gun at me, so I had to do it. The boy was asking me, "Why are you doing this?" I said I had no choice. After we killed him, they made us smear his blood on our arms... They said we had to do this so we would not fear death and so we would not try to escape. . . I still dream about the boy from my village who I killed. I see him in my dreams, and he is talking to me and saying I killed him for nothing, and I am crying."

A fourteen-year old boy described being forced into combat in the Sudan: "I remember the first time I was in the front line. The other side started fighting, and the commander ordered us to run towards the bullets. I panicked. I saw others falling down dead around me. The commanders were beating us for not running, for trying to crouch down. They said if we fell down, we would be shot and killed by soldiers." Unfortunately, the use of child soldiers is a growing phenomenon. In Afghanistan, the proportion of soldiers who are children is believed to have risen in recent years from thirty to forty-five per cent. In other countries, such as Burundi, children are being recruited at increasingly younger ages. To address this appalling practice, the United Nations has been working to draft an amendment to the Convention on the Rights of the Child to raise the minimum age for recruitment and participation in armed conflict from fifteen to eighteen years of age. The agreement is optional and no state is required to join. Negotiations fell apart early last year, however, when the U.S. became the only country unwilling to accept eighteen as a new minimum standard for participation in armed conflict. Negotiations are set to resume next month, but unless the U.S. changes its position, any further progress may be impossible. Washington bases its objection to the agreement on current US recruitment practices, which allow seventeen year-olds to enlist with parental permission. In fact, less than one-half of one percent of US troops are below the age of eighteen. After completing basic and technical training, nearly all of these soldiers have reached eighteen before being assigned to combat positions. Recently, thirty-eight former U.S. military officers (including several retired Admirals and Generals) wrote to President Clinton, saying "an agreement establishing eighteen as the minimum age for participation in armed conflict reflects the strong desire of the world's nations to set a new international standard for protecting children from the horrors of war." Washington’s refusal to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child makes it ineligible to even join the proposed agreement. In this light, our government’s obstruction of an initiative that the rest of the world favors, and would protect a great number of children from combat, is truly unconscionable.

Jo Becker is advocacy coordinator for the Human Rights Watch Children’s Rights Division.