Child Soldiers: Counter Recruitment Efforts

The Child Soldier: US WILPF and the US Government

Memorial Day, 2008

The Child Soldier: US WILPF and the US Government

DAY ONE:

Could any of us have imagined this face-off over the child soldier issue six years ago? At the same time, within this treaty review process, US democracy has seemed to awaken.

In this scenario, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, based in Geneva Switzerland, called on the US government to testify before the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.

This periodical formal question and answer also occurs with other countries who signed the UN Convention on the Child that the US has not signed. But it did write and sign the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict.

Truth in Military Recruitment - Going beyond “counter recruitment” strategies to End Abusive and Improper Military Recruitment

In 2004 – according to the latest available statistics from the Under Secretary of Defense – about 19,885 seventeen year old children joined the US armed forces, constituting 23% of all new reserves and 4.3% of active armed forces recruits. These 14,933 boys and 4,952 girls represent a fraction of the youths targeted annually by military recruiters who have become an ominous presence in elementary schools across the country where students as young as 11 can participate in the Middle School Cadet Corps.