By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 2 1998 (IPS)

The United States “singlehandedly” is blocking international efforts to de-mobolise child soldiers in national armies throughout the world, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The rights organisation says the United States is the only country that has refused to accept 18 as the minimum age for participation in hostilities.

“There is a growing international consensus that the use of children as soldiers is unconscionable and must be brought to an end,” says Jo Becker, of the HRW Children’s Rights Project.

Since 1994, a U.N. Working Group has been trying to develop new international standards that would protect children from the horrors of war. The Group has been pushing for an optional protocol to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child which would raise the minimum age for military recruitment: from the present 15 to 18 years of age.

“Unfortunately, the U.S. singlehandedly has blocked progress on this critical effort,” Becker says. She also points out that it is ironical that the United States should oppose a protocol in a convention which Washington has so far refused to ratify.

Besides Somalia, the United States is the “only international- recognised government which has failed to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and is therefore ineligible to even become a party to the optional protocol,” she noted.

“The U.S. position has led to a breakdown in negotiations and currently “represents an insurmountable obstacle to successfully concluding the protocol,” Becker says.

The U.S. government accepts 17 year-olds as voluntary recruits into the military, and is thus opposed to establishing 18 as the minimum age for voluntary recruitment into government armed forces. But, in reality, 17 year-olds make up only a fraction of U.S. troops, namely about half of one percent, HRW says.

Last month, the U.S. expressed strong reservations on a U.N. General Assembly resolution that called for a end to the use of children in national armies.

U.S. Ambassador Seth Winnick told delegates that for more than 50 years, the United States had permitted voluntary enlistment in the armed forces at 17 years of age, with parental consent. Therefore, it did not anticipate any changes to its law or practices in that area.

Winnick pointed out that the reference to the use of children as combatants and as soldiers was contrary to the term “children” in the United Nations, where “it”referred to persons under 18 years of age, in accordance with Article 1 of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. However 15 is the minimum age for enlistment in the armed forces under texts to which virtually all member states were parties or signatories.

Winnick said that many member states permitted military service to individuals between 15 and 18 years of age. “Nevertheless, the U.S. was concerned by drafting practices that used unclear and imprecise language that only undermined the hard work of the United Nations.”

He said that negotiations have been under way for five years on an optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, but agreement had not been reached. It would therefore be inappropriate for the General Assembly to prejudge the outcome of those negotiations, he added.

Human Rights Watch, however, argues that to deal with discrepancies between current U.S. practice and the goals of the protocol, Washington could follow the lead of other countries, such as Australia, the Netherland and New Zealand, which have recently raised their minimum age for military recruitment. Another model is the UK, which plans to continue recruiting under- 18s, but will place them into separate training establishments rather than combat units.

HRW also notes that 17 year-olds are placed on warships and cannot be removed if a ship would find itself in a conflict situation. However, the U.S. government’s report under the International Convenant on Civil and Political Rights, submitted in 1994, said that “in practice, the Department of Defence ensures that individuals under the age of 18 are not stationed in combat situations.”

Since the U.N. Working Group takes decisions only by consensus, all participating nations must be in unanimous agreement on the wording of the draft protocol. While several other countries in the Working Group have supported 17 as the minimum age requirement, the U.S. was the only country to state that it would refuse to accept a consensus of 18 years.

The Working Group is scheduled to meet again from Feb. 2-12. “If the U.S. refuses to change its objections to 18 as a minimum age for participation in hostilities, however, further progress may be impossible, as anything less than 18 years is unacceptable to other members of the Working Group,” Becker says.

Human Rights Watch, meanhile, says that as many as 250,000 children under the age of 18 now serve in government armies or armed rebel groups in more than 30 countries worldwide. “These young combatants, some as young as eight years of age, are both the tools and the casualties of adult hatreds,” it adds.

HRW also points out that, in the last decade, more than two million children have been killed in armed conflicts, six million have been seriously injured or permanently disabled. Many more bear psychological scars from being forced to both commit and witness horrofic atrocities.

A U.N. report released in 1996 also blamed the world’s arms manufacturers for mass-producing inexpensive light weapons making it tragically easy for children to be recruited and trained as soldiers.

Titled the “Impact of Armed Conflict on Children,” the study was prepared by Mozambique’s former first lady Gracha Machel after visits to several battle zones, including Angola, Cambodia, Northern Ireland, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and the former Yugoslavia.

Machel said the participation of children is “one of the most alarming trends in armed conflicts.” “Children serve armies in supporting roles, as cooks, porters, messengers and spies. Increasingly, however, adults are deliberately conscripting children as soldiers,” she pointed out.

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