Durbin Chairs Hearing on Child Soliders

Press Release

DURBIN CHAIRS HEARING ON CHILD SOLDIERS

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) today held the first ever congressional hearing on the issue of child soldiers. Durbin, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, convened the hearing, entitled "Casualties of War: Child Soldiers and the Law," to address the persistent use of child soldiers, a practice widely acknowledged as a war crime. The hearing will focus on gaps in U.S. law that make it more difficult to hold accountable individuals and governments that recruit or use child soldiers.

Ishmael Beah, author of the bestselling book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, testified at the hearing, recounting his time as a child soldier in Sierra Leone's civil war and the need to prevent experiences like his own from befalling others. "As I speak to you, there are thousands of children from ages 8 to 17 - in Burma, Sri Lanka, Congo, Uganda Ivory Coast, Colombia, just to name a few places - that are being forced to fight and lose their childhoods and their families." Beah said. "They are maimed and they lose their humanity, and these are the fortunate ones. Those who are less fortunate are killed in the senseless wars of adults."

In over twenty countries, children are currently fighting as soldiers. 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. Physically vulnerable and easily intimidated, children typically make obedient soldiers and participate in all aspects of warfare. Many are recruited by force, and often compelled to follow orders under threat of death.

"There is a clear legal prohibition on recruiting and using child soldiers, and yet around the world hundreds of thousands of boys and girls are used as combatants, porters, human mine detectors and sex slaves," Durbin said. "While most serve in rebel or paramilitary groups, some government forces use child soldiers as well and these governments must be encouraged to abandon their reliance on children as instruments of war. That is why I've introduced, with Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2007, legislation that would place limits on U.S. military assistance to countries that are clearly identified in the State Department's Human Rights report as recruiting or using child soldiers."

Durbin's bill would ensure that U.S. taxpayer dollars are not used to support this abhorrent practice by governments or government sanctioned military and paramilitary organizations. The bill would allow for U.S. military assistance to continue but only if the assistance is used to remedy the problem by helping countries successfully demobilize their child soldiers and professionalize their forces.

"One of the reasons why child recruitment has persisted as an awful aspect of contemporary warfare is the impunity enjoyed by individual recruiters," said Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch. "Consistent with the US' own policies and practices, US law should criminalize any recruitment or use of child soldiers in violation of international law. This would enable the United States to prosecute military commanders who exploit children as soldiers abroad, and then seek refuge in this country."

In the 2006 State Department Human Rights report, issued in March of this year, 25 countries were singled out as nations that have recruited or are currently recruiting child soldiers. Of those 25 nations, 16 countries have used child soldiers in direct hostilities with armed groups - either as part of government forces or in militias. Since 2001, 14 of those nations have received U.S. military assistance.

The report also noted that of the 16 nations where child soldiers are currently being recruited or conscripted, 10 nations used children as part of government security forces or government sponsored armed groups. 9 of the 10 nations cited in the report have received U.S. aid since 2001.

Durbin said that the practice of providing military assistance to governments and militias who exploit children violates U.S. policy and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, which the United States Ratified in 2002. Nations which could be affected by this legislation include: Burundi, Chad, Colombia, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, Sri Lanka and Sudan.

Other witnesses at today's hearing were Anwen Hughes, Senior Counsel of the Refugee Protection Program at Human Rights First and Joseph Mettimano, Director of Public Policy and Advocacy at World Vision.

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