CHILDREN: U.N. Puts Age Limit on Military Peacekeepers

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 1 1998 (IPS) - The United Nations, stepping up its global campaign against the recruitment of child soldiers, has put an age limit on its own military peace-keeping forces.

“We are asking contributing governments not to send civilian police and military observers younger than 25 years to serve in peacekeeping operations,” says Bernard Miyet, U.N. Under- Secretary-General for Peacekeeping.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in his capacity as commander-in- chief of U.N. peacekeeping operations, decided Friday to set minimum age requirements for peacekeepers who are made available to the Organisation by its 185 member states.

“While we have no indication that member governments have provided the United Nations with soldiers under the age of 18, this policy has been adopted as a proactive measure, and to ensure that the Organisation’s use of uniformed personnel is an example for police and military forces worldwide,” Miyet said.

He also pointed out that under the new ruling, troops in national armies, who are also loaned to the United Nations for peacekeeping missions, should preferably be 21 years, but certainly not less than 18-years-old.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) hailed the move as a “significant step toward a new international consensus to end the use of child soldiers.”

“No one under the age of 18 should take part in war, whether as part of a national army, an armed opposition group, or a member of a U.N. peacekeeping mission,” Jo Becker, Children’s Right Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch, said Friday.

Becker, who is also the steering committee chair of the ‘International Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, said the use of child combatants “has become one of the most devastating aspects of contemporary warfare.”

“National governments should do everything possible to stop this horrible practice. Raising their enlistment age to 18 is one important move,” she added.

Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said she “wholeheartedly welcomes” Annan’s decision to establish minimum age requirements for U.N. peacekeepers.

“This is a major breakthrough for children’s rights,” she said, pointing out that UNICEF’s field programmes in countries such as Sierra Leone and Rwanda support projects to prevent the recruitment of children and ensure their demobilisation and reintegration into society.

UNICEF believes that this new standard should be complemented by specialised training on child rights of personnel involved in peace making, peacekeeping and peace building, as recently called for by the Security Council, Bellamy noted.

Bellamy said Annan’s decision would also boost ongoing international efforts to adopt an optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child aimed at raising to 18 the minimum age for children’s recruitment in armed forces and their participation in hostilities.

A Working Group of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, which is in the process of finalising this protocol, is due to hold its next meeting in Geneva on January 11. Becker said the Working Group has so far failed to reach agreement on a text, despite four years of negotiations.

The United States, supported by a small number of other states, has vigorously opposed an 18-year minimum for either military recruitment or participation in armed conflict, she said. Becker also pointed out that the U.S. continues its opposition to the protocol “despite the fact that as one of only two countries (the other being Somalia) that has failed to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child, it would not even be eligible to join the optional protocol.”

In June, the Security Council, for the first time, issued a presidential statement condemning the targeting of children in armed conflict. In July, an international conference in Rome approved a treaty establishing an International Criminal Court which will have the authority to prosecute as a war crime the conscription and use in hostilities of children under the age of 15.

In a report released last month, Olara Otunnu, U.N.Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, said “most cynically, children have been compelled to become instruments of war, recruited or kidnapped to become child soldiers, thus forced to give violent expression to the hatreds of adults.’

“In all,” he said, “an estimated two million children have been killed in situations of armed conflict, since 1987, while three times that number have been seriously injured or permanently disabled.”

Arguing that children “simply have no role in warfare,” Otunnu said that there is an alarming trend in the increased participation, direct and indirect, of children in contemporary armed conflicts. He said that an estimated 300,000 children under the age of 18 are serving as combatants in government armed forces or armed opposition groups in ongoing conflicts.

“Indeed, the development and proliferation of lightweight automatic weapons has made it possible for very young children to bear and use arms,” he noted.

Many more are being used in indirect ways that are more difficult to measure, such as cooks, messengers and porters. “Children have also been used for mine clearance, spying and suicide bombing,” Otunnu said.