Legal Issues

There are nearly 300,000 children below the age of eighteen that are currently involved in armed conflicts in over thirty different countries on practically all continents.  Most of the military soldiers who get and fight into wars are maybe over the age of 15 but they are still considered minors as they are still below the age of 18.   Aside from that there are children soldiers who are as young as seven years old.

In over twenty countries around the world, children are direct participants in war.   Denied a childhood and often subjected to horrific violence, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 children are serving as soldiers for both rebel groups and government forces in current armed conflicts.  That is the reality according to the Human Rights Watch. The military use of children, which can also be referred to as child sacrifice, involves social abuse of the children in many different ways.  An example would be children being placed in harms way by military actions when the publicized mission is supposed to protect a location or provide propaganda (Briggs 33).  Not to mention the poor children used for child soldiers or saboteurs. An overlooked problem in the issue of military use of children would be about the demobilization and reintegration of these children into the society (Briggs 40).  Most of these children who come home after an armed conflict are harshly traumatized (Jal 133).

History and cultures showcased children extensively used for military campaigns.  Some practices even were supposed to be against cultural mores.  In the ancient times, Spartans train their children in a very young age.  Medieval Europe used young boys as military aides but not for actual combat (Kahn 20).  The famous Childrens Crusade of 1212 featured thousands of children- untrained for combat, used as soldiers under the assumption that the heavens would help them conquer the enemy, even though in reality, none of the children entered combat.

It is said that the sake of children have been sacrificed in military actions now in the modern times.  Some soldiers use children as cover, creating a moral dilemma for the enemy  to shoot or not to shoot. Sacrifice the lives of the children, or take fire themselves  If the enemy chooses to shoot, it can be a great propaganda against them.  Palestinians allegedly use this tactics.  Some parents supposedly train their children for the sole purpose.  Also, a report suggest that unsuspecting US soldiers faced certain danger from Vietnam as children strapped with hand grenades under their clothing would explode at their harm (Wessells 144). Although noted that both of these accusations were (sometimes) decried as false, some consider these stories to justify the atrocities committed by the military against children.

There have been several laws concerning the use of children in military activities.  A lot of organizations from all over the world have also shown their concerns on the military use of children.  According to Article 38 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child State parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure that persons who have not attained the age of 15 years do not take a direct part in hostilities.  There have been regular conventions and conferences among the members of the United Nations Security Council to talk about and pass on resolutions concerning these children in armed conflicts.

One of the predefined most terrible form of child labor is the enforced or mandatory recruitment of anybody below the age of 18 for utilization in military affairs (Kahn 39).  It is deemed to be one form of slavery according to the International Labor Organizations Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention in 1999.

The UNICEF declared staggering and frightening figures which consider the recent developments in warfare during the last decade (Wessell 123).  It was taken to account that those developments in warfare have significantly increased the danger and threat to children.  Over 2 million children have been killed, almost 5 million disabled, 12 million left homeless, over 1 million orphaned or separated from their parents, and some 10 million traumatized all due to armed conflicts and military missions.

Every 12th of February, it is tagged as the annual commemoration day against the practice of using children as soldiers in any war and armed conflicts.  It is known as the Red Hand Day. Recently enough, a powerful international movement has been formed to help put an end to this practice.  The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers is one of the many groups highly publicized against childrens use in violence.  Jamil Dakwar, the director of the ACLU Human Rights Program, said that the United States has been constantly failing to protect its youth from military recruitment and not to mention the failure to protect the youth of other countries that were forced into armed conflict.  There is a need for immediate action to see through the policies and practices of military recruitment and the treatment which should be internationally accepted of those child soldiers.

Children are still continuously used for military affairs at present.  All countries must work double hard to stop this slavery and abuse of youth.  It is the rights of these children to have a free and bright future and they should not be taken advantage of.