Casualties of war: Child soldiers and the law

A bill introduced this week in the U.S. Senate would put restrictions on U.S. military assistance for governments that use child soldiers.

World Vision urges support for the legislation to encourage governments to prohibit, demobilize and rehabilitate child soldiers from national forces and government-supported militias.

An estimated 250,000 children are exploited in state-run armies, paramilitaries and rebel groups around the world. They serve as combatants, porters, human mine detectors and sex slaves. Their health and lives are endangered and their childhoods are sacrificed.

Introduced yesterday by Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Sam Brownback (R-KS), S.1175 would curtail U.S. military assistance to governments that fail to take steps to demobilize and stop recruiting children into the armed forces or government-supported militias. Countries that take steps to demobilize child soldiers would be eligible for certain forms of assistance in that process for up to two years, to help professionalize their forces and ensure U.S. taxpayer dollars are not used to finance the exploitation of children in armed conflict.

"This bill creates strong incentives for foreign governments to end any involvement in the use of children as soldiers," said Joseph Mettimano, director of public policy and advocacy for World Vision U.S.

Mettimano will testify at a Senate hearing on "Casualties of War: Child Soldiers and the Law," to be held Tuesday, April 24, at 10 a.m. in Dirksen Senate Office Building Room 226. Other speakers will include Ishmael Beah, a former child soldier who is author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier; Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch; and Anwen Hughes, senior counsel for Human Rights First's refugee protection program.

In a letter to lawmakers, Mettimano and his counterparts at Human Rights Watch, the Center for Defense Information and Amnesty International USA urge support for the legislation, which is in alignment with the standards the U.S. has accepted for its own armed forces under the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, ratified in 2002. It also encourages the U.S. to expand funding to rehabilitate former child soldiers and work in international cooperation to bring to justice rebel leaders that kidnap children for use as soldiers.