PRESS BRIEFING ON CHILDREN IN ARMED CONFLICT

Press Briefing

PRESS BRIEFING ON CHILDREN IN ARMED CONFLICT

Olara Otunnu, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children in Armed Conflict, told correspondents at a Headquarters press briefing today that there could be no part for children in warfare. "We have to be unequivocal and uncompromising about this because it violates their innocence, exploits their particular vulnerability, and destroys their future and, therefore, the future of their society." The press conference was to launch a multi-agency effort to encourage the adoption of international prohibitions on the recruitment and participation in armed conflict of children under 18 years of age.

The deliberate and systematic targetting of children, the use of rape as a strategy of war that specially targetted young women, and the cynical use of minors as the weapon of choice and the instrument of war were the three most reprehensible ways that children were abused in armed conflict, he went on to say.

The Special Representative said, with regard to children in warfare, he had advocated a minimum age of 18. The reasoning behind that was based on a very practical concern. In the countries that he had visited on the ground, he had met many young people under arms and others who had by then been discharged. "It struck me suddenly how difficult it is in any of these situations to tell the age of a young person -- in many of these societies no records are kept -- where records have been kept, in the convulsions of war, they have been destroyed." It was very much guesswork then to ascertain ages: the higher the age ceiling, then the more children who could be protected from being exploited and pressed into war; the lower the ceiling, the more children who could pass through the net to be exploited.

Mr. Otunnu said that in every place he had visited, his concern had been, among others, to raise two issues: one, that there should be no recruitment and use of children in hostilities; and two, that, regardless of the laws of a particular country, there should be a firm commitment to accept the age limit of 18. He cited Sri Lanka, Liberia, Sudan and Sierra Leone as countries he had visited and taken that position.

He hoped that the conference taking place in Rome on the elaboration of a statute for an international criminal court would accept that the recruitment and use of children be considered a war crime. The launch today was especially important, because he believed that "the concerted effort to reverse this trend of abomination was much too important to be left exclusively to the councils of government and intergovernmental institutions". It was an agenda that must be set free, and around which the participation of all concerned persons of goodwill must be mobilized. The Security Council's session yesterday on the plight of children in conflict was a ground-breaking

gesture. He saw his work as resting very much with the non-governmental organizations, who were launching such a major campaign today.

Emilio Hernandez-Xicara, a former child soldier from Guatemala, told correspondents that the army was a nightmare. "They forced me to learn how to fight the enemy, in a war that I didn't understand." Child soldiers suffered greatly from the cruel treatment they received. They were constantly beaten, many times for no reason at all, just to keep them in a state of terror. "I still have a scar on my lip and sharp pains in my stomach from being brutally kicked by the older soldiers. The food was scarce, and they made us walk with heavy loads, much to heavy for our small malnourished bodies."

Mr. Hernandez-Xicara, who is now 18, said he was only 14 years old, travelling on a bus towards the city of San Felipe in Guatemala, when the bus was suddenly pulled over. Two soldiers boarded the bus and ordered another boy and himself to get off. The other boy was immediately released since he was a student. Indigenous people with little or no education were often recruited. Mr. Hernandez-Xicara was put on a truck with 15 other boys. They then travelled for three hours without being able to notify their families and unaware of their destination. "I was forced to fight and live in the most violent conditions -- I had to mature rapidly in order to survive."

He told correspondents that, "in the army you live in state of panic, in pain, and your only dream is that the killings, the bloodshed and the horrors of war which you are forced to experience during your youth, will soon come to an end". When he was 14 years old, he was taught how to kill people. He was very impressionable, and now it was hard to forget his experiences. It was difficult to know that he was now 18 years old. Sometimes, he forgot that he was in the United States because he did not want to stay in Guatemala and hurt anyone. He hoped his testimony would remind people of how important the work here was for all the young people around the world who deserved to grow up and live their youth in peace.

Stephen Lewis, Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), said his organization hoped that the optional protocol which insisted on no recruitment of children before the age of 18 was adopted as soon as possible by the international community, as an amendment to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, while that was the primary focus of the campaign, there were many other aspects to the unhappy and terrifying phenomenon of child soldiers who were estimated to number some 300,000 in the world today. Above all, UNICEF supported the emergence of an international criminal court whose authority would bring to justice those who forced young people to be conscripted into military service as child soldiers. That court could be given a litany of those who should be instantly prosecuted once the statute was put in place.

Jo Becker, Steering Committee Chair of the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers and a representative of Human Rights Watch, drew the attention

Otunnu Briefing - 3 - 30 June 1998

of correspondents to the story of Angelina Acheng Atyam, a remarkable Ugandan woman whose 14-year-old daughter was abducted from her school in northern Uganda by a rebel group. Angelina had walked the halls of the United Nations, met with Hillary Clinton, and appealed to every international authority she could find, in order to try to secure the release of her daughter. Today, a year and a half after the abduction, her daughter, Charlotte, was still in captivity. She said her story and that of Emilio Hernandez-Xicara provided very dramatic examples about the international community's failure to stop the horrors of war that were experienced by nearly 300,000 child combatants around the world.

Child soldiers were often called the invisible combatants because it was often impossible to document them, she continued. Children should not be allowed to fight adult wars. Existing international standards allowed kids as young as 15 to be legally recruited and participate as armed combatants. In the last few years, the United Nations, through a working group, had attempted to raise the minimum age to 18.

Unfortunately, a small handful of States, including the United States, United Kingdom, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Republic of Korea, and Israel, had been unwilling to accept 18 as the minimum age even for the participation of children in armed conflict, she continued. Some countries seemed more concerned with preserving the status quo of their existing national standards than doing what had to be done to protect children. More years of diplomatic manoeuvring was only going to put more children at risk.

"We believe we can do better", she went on to say. Six international non-governmental organizations -- Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Jesuit Refugee Services, International Save the Children Alliance, International Federation Terre des Hommes, and the Quaker United Nations Office -- had joined together to form the coalition to stop the use of child soldiers. They were working to mobilize public opinion and to muster the political will that they believed had to be generated to deal effectively with the issue.

"Our goal is an optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child that would prohibit any child under the age of 18 from being recruited or participating in armed conflict", she said. That was the only standard that was going to offer adequate protection to children in armed conflict. There were, however, more than 45 countries that still recruited children under the age of 18. Thankfully, after today, Denmark could be crossed off that list since the Danish Prime Minister announced just a few days ago that Denmark would no longer be recruiting children under the age of 18. She said the Coalition called on all other governments to follow the Danish example by changing their national legislation where necessary and publicly declaring their commitment to the 18-year-old standard.

Otunnu Briefing - 4 - 30 June 1998

A correspondent asked if most States regarded forceful recruitment of minors as an offence in the practical sense, and whether they would grant political asylum to people fleeing the army who claimed that return to their countries would result in them being put back in the military to face all the awful things that they had previously faced. Mr. Otunnu said there was need to distinguish between compulsory duty, sometimes called conscription, or national service which was under the law, and the forcible kidnapping and abduction of children.

It was fair to say that the use of children in armed conflict was not entirely new, but the nature, the scope and the magnitude which was being witnessed today was something new, he continued. Children had become the weapon of choice -- that was worldwide and the central aspect of warfare today. Many governments that he had spoken to certainly agreed that the kidnapping and abduction of children were entirely unacceptable, and many with whom had been in touch were willing to cooperate with the identification and release of children who could be within their territories.

On the situation of Emilio Hernandez-Xicara, a correspondent asked whether, if he fled to America for asylum, his situation would be viewed as an abduction or a standard form of military recruitment, where the State had the right to do that type of thing. Mr. Otunnu said there were various ways in which children were pressed into service. Sometimes for economic, political and social reasons, they were enticed. At other times, they could be given a political ideology and recruited. Increasingly, however, they were being simply abducted. Villages, schools and school buses were raided and children were being taken. He hoped that governments with such categories of children in their territories would treat them as victims and seek their release.

Also responding to that question, Jo Becker said that every country should grant asylum to children who had been forcibly recruited. Emilio Hernandez-Xicara was granted political asylum in the United States and, shortly after, the Immigration and Naturalization Services announced that it was appealing his case. "Emilio's personal status was still uncertain in this country."

Mr. Lewis said the refugee law in most countries would probably grant asylum on humanitarian grounds. However, it was not something that most countries had been confronted with as yet.

* *** *