•  united nations
• Friday, February 04, 2011
• Inter Press Service

Briefing the press on her recent trip to Afghanistan, during which she oversaw the signing of a landmark Action Plan to prevent the recruitment of child soldiers into the armed forces, Special Representative to the Secretary General Radhika Coomaraswamy honoured the success but acknowledged that the world still has a long way to go.

The Action Plan, which prevents under-age recruitment into the Afghan National Security Forces, as well as other crimes such as sexual violence and the killing and maiming of children caught up in armed conflict, was ratified by the Afghan government on Jan 30 in Kabul, under the auspices of a team of UN officials including the SRSG.

While the Action Plan includes comprehensive measures that strictly prohibit the recruitment of young children, as well as a solid framework of post-implementation monitoring and accountability, its mandate does not extend to non-state actors such as the Taliban or al Qaeda. Given that most abuses and violations of the rights of the child occur through armed militias, insurgent groups or other non-state actors, a lack of engagement with these groups does not bode well for child victims of conflict.

The crisis was heightened in December of last year when U.S. president Barak Obama granted ‘national interest’ waivers allowing all forms of U.S. military assistance to continue to flow to countries that are in flagrant violation of the 2008 Child Soldiers Prevention Act, including Sudan, Chad, the DRC and Yemen. The US’s failure to leverage their military might against the offending member-states, and its brazen prioritization of its own military interests over the protection of child rights, has been a major setback.

'We have expressed our disappointment with the White House, and managed to come to the agreement that military aid to these countries must be conditional on their promise to not recruit children,' Coomaraswamy told IPS. 'So let’s hope that the U.S. will support, to some extent at least, this process.'

She added, 'Of course the ideal situation would be no soldiers, and a stop to the arms trade! As you know, small arms are one of the main reasons we have child soldiers to begin with; but in the interim we have to do what we can, put in place procedures that will prevent children from being recruited and get parties interested in being 'de-listed' from the Secretary General’s report on Children in Armed Conflict to take steps in that direction.'

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service