In 2000, a dramatic breakthrough was achieved in efforts to end the use of children as soldiers. On January 21, after six years of negotiations, governments from around the world agreed on a new international treaty to prohibit the use of children as combatants.
The new child soldiers protocol establishes eighteen as the minimum age for direct participation in hostilities, for compulsory recruitment, and for any recruitment or use in hostilities by non-governmental armed groups. It is technically an optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict.
Previous international standards had allowed children as young as fifteen to be legally recruited and sent into war. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (which has been ratified by every government except the United States and Somalia) generally defines a child as any person under the age of eighteen. However, in situations of armed conflict, the convention set the lower age of fifteen as the minimum age for recruitment and participation in armed conflict. The new protocol helps to correct this anomoly.
The new protocol was adopted unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly on May 25, 2000, and opened for signature in early June. As of April 2004, 115 countries had signed it, and 71 countries had ratified it. The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers is campaigning for universal ratification of the protocol.
Key provisions of the Protocol:
- Participation in Hostilities: Governments must take all feasible measures to ensure that members of their armed forces that are under the age of eighteen do not take a direct part in hostilities.
- Conscription: Governments must not conscript (compulsorily recruit) any persons under the age of eighteen.
- Non-governmental Armed Groups: Rebel or other non-governmental armed groups are prohibited from recruiting under-18s or using them in hostilities. Governments are required to criminalize such practices and take other measures to prevent the recruitment and use of children by such groups.
- Voluntary recruitment: Governments must raise their minimum age for voluntary recruitment beyond the current minimum of fifteen, and must deposit a binding declaration stating the minimum age they will respect. (In practice, this means the minimum age for voluntary recruitment is sixteen.) Governments recruiting under-18s must maintain a series of safeguards, ensuring that such recruitment is genuinely voluntary; is done with the informed consent of the person's parents or legal guardians; that recruits are fully informed of the duties involved in military service; and that proof of age is established.
- Implementation: Governments must demobilize children recruited or used in violation of the protocol, and provide appropriate rehabilitation and reintegration assistance.
- Ratification: All governments can sign and ratify the protocol, regardless of whether or not they have ratified the underlying Convention on the Rights of the Child.
- Monitoring: Governments must submit a report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child within two years of ratifying the protocol, providing comprehensive information on the measures it has taken to implement the protocol. Thereafter, follow-up reports are made every five years.
