Child Soldiers

Floor Speech

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, in December of 2008, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act became law. The act includes a provision that I put in the bill with Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, to address the problem of child soldiers, specifically the Child Soldier Prevention Act.

The goal of this language was simple and straightforward: U.S. military assistance should not go to finance the use and exploitation of children in armed conflict. The law not only expresses American values by rejecting any use of child soldiers by foreign governments, but also provides leverage through our Foreign Military Assistance Program to encourage governments to address this heinous practice.

Moreover, under the Child Soldiers Accountability Act and Human Rights Enforcement Act, it is unlawful to knowingly provide material support to the use of child soldiers. Tragically, according to Amnesty International, hundreds of thousands of children around the world are still being used as child soldiers. These boys and girls wield automatic weapons on the front lines of combat. They serve as human mine detectors. They participate in suicide missions. They carry supplies, they act as spies, messengers, lookouts, and sex slaves. They endanger their own health and the lives of others and sacrifice their childhood in the process.

As chairman of the Judiciary Committee's Human Rights and the Laws Subcommittee, one of the first hearings we held was focused on the scourge of child soldiers. We heard moving testimony from a remarkable young man named Ishmael Beah. Mr. Beah is a former child soldier from Sierra Leone and author of the best selling book, ``A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.''

Some Americans may recall this book because it was featured at Starbucks for a long period of time. You find it at bookstores as well. I will never forget what Mr. Beah told the Human Rights Subcommittee, and I want to quote him. Here is what he said:

When you go home tonight to your children, your cousins, and your grandchildren, and watch them carrying out their various childhood activities, I want you to remember that at that same moment, there are countless children elsewhere who are being killed, injured; exposed to extreme violence and forced to serve in armed groups, including girls who are raped ..... As you watch your loved ones, those children you adore most, ask yourselves whether you would want these kinds of suffering for them. If you don't, then you must stop this from happening to other children around the world whose lives and humanity are as important and of the same value as all children everywhere.

We have a moral obligation to respond to Mr. Beah's challenge. Children suffer high mortality, disease, and injury rates that are higher in combat situations than adults. The lasting effects of war and abuse remain with them long after the shooting stops. Both girls and boys are stigmatized and traumatized by their experience, and left with neither family connections nor skills to allow them to transition successfully to productive adult life.

Over the last decade, 2 million children have died in armed conflict--10 years, 2 million children died in armed conflict, 6 million injured.

Further troubling is that children have served as soldiers for governments that have in the past received the assistance of the U.S. Government. With the passage of the Child Soldier Prevention Act, my hope was that this practice would come to an end.

Imagine my surprise when I saw on the front page of the New York Times this week that Somalia's transitional federal government, which the U.S. supports financially as part of its larger counterterrorism strategy, is brazenly using child soldiers. Mr. President, I know you have a young son and you probably saw this photograph. But imagine, if you will, two young boys, identified in this photograph in Somalia, 12-year-old Adan Ugas, and 15-year-old Ahmed Hassan, holding automatic military weapons and working for the transitional Federal Government of Somalia.

When I was a little boy, 12, 10, we used to play with guns, but they were all toys. This is the real thing. These are children. As Ishmael Beah said: Try to picture your son or daughter in that situation, their childhood robbed and scarred for life from being drawn into horrific violence.

The fact that they are working for a military financed by the United States is appalling. In fact, according to human rights groups and the United Nations, the Somali Government is fielding hundreds of children on the front lines, some as young as 9 years old. A Somali Government official quoted in the Times article said: We were trying to find anyone who could carry a gun.

I read that article. It talked about these little boys who, the guns were so heavy, they were switching the strap from one shoulder to the next. They were talking about these little boys with these automatic weapons challenging people in vehicles to stop or they would shoot them.

They asked one of these little boys: What do you really love in life? He said: I love my gun. A Somali Government official acknowledged the fact that this is happening, an official of a government which we are supporting.

I understand Somalia is in a difficult neighborhood in the world, and one of the most dangerous places. It is trying to emerge from years of lawlessness, and the fledgling government does need support. I have met with refugees who have fled the chaos of Somalia in hopes of a better life.

In fact, this last Saturday I met with refugees in Chicago from Somalia. But the law is clear. American tax dollars must not be used to fund the use of child soldiers. Period. I urge the Department of State and the Department of Defense to immediately halt the U.S. support for any such activities and to work with the Somali Government to terminate the use of child soldiers, and reintegrate these children back into a normal, peaceful family life.

I have written our Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and urged her to recognize that though the Somali transitional government is trying to bring some measure of stability to their war-torn country, it should not do so on the backs of its most precious commodity, its children, and certainly not with the help of American taxpayers.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter to Secretary Clinton on this topic.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record

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