PRESS CONFERENCE TO LAUNCH REPORT BY COALITION TO STOP CHILD SOLDIERS’ USE

“It remains too easy and convenient for adults to use children as soldiers,” said the Director of the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, Victoria Forbes Adam, as she launched the Coalition’s 2008 Child Soldiers Global Report today at a Headquarters press conference.

Tens of thousands of children were currently operating in the ranks of dozens of armed groups in at least 24 different countries or territories across the globe, according to the report.  The Global Report, published every three to four years by the Coalition, documents military recruitment legislation and child soldier use by Governments and armed groups in 197 countries.

Non-State armed groups were the largest recruiters of child soldiers and the most resistant to change, Ms. Adam said.  However, exact figures on the number recruited by those non-State armed groups or Governments themselves were impossible to ascertain due to the obvious challenges in verifying the actual numbers on the ground.

Ms. Adam was joined at the press conference by Carolina Owens from the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, and Jo Becker of Human Rights Watch.

Ms. Becker said that, according to recent Human Rights Watch research, Myanmar was believed to be the country that had the largest number of child soldiers in the world, with “tens of thousands” of children likely recruited as soldiers in that country alone.

Explaining why the use of child soldiers remained so prevalent, Ms. Adam quoted a senior official in the Chadian National Army, who had said that “child soldiers are ideal, because they don’t complain, they don’t expect to be paid and if you tell them to kill, they kill”.

In the four years since the last Child Soldiers Global Report was published, the international community had made substantial progress in developing an international framework to shield children from involvement in fighting forces, she said, adding, however, that the current report had shown that the framework was unequal to the task at hand.

Continuing, she said that the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict -- which was the key international treaty in the field -- had been ratified by 120 States.  Yet, according to the Coalition’s research, Governments in at least 17 countries continued to flout those international standards and allowed children to be used in armed groups, auxiliary forces, civilian defence groups, or in armed groups acting as proxies and as spies.

Armed groups in general remained largely resistant to pressure and persuasion to end the involvement of child soldiers in armed conflict and ignorant of the norms of international laws and standards, she said.  Though the overall number of currently active child soldiers had diminished since the last report, that decline was likely the result of recent peace settlements in major armed conflicts in places like Sierra Leone, Liberia, Southern Sudan and Afghanistan, and not necessarily a sign that armed groups in general were scaling back on the use of children in conflict.

Indeed, Ms. Adam warned that a resurgence of some of those conflicts and the emergence of new conflicts might lead to an increase in overall numbers in the near future.

“I think it would be premature and not particularly helpful to be bogged down and fixating on whether or not the number has gone up or down,” she said.  “The fact remains that, when there’s armed conflict, children become involved.”

Addressing that central problem would require creative thinking by members of the international community, as well as a long-term commitment and a willingness to engage, she went on.  The international community should strengthen efforts to pressure and persuade armed groups to change their practices and should help Governments change the conditions that made the recruitment of children as soldiers possible, such as improving the social and economic conditions for children and building legal and institutional protections.

Ms. Adam stressed, however, that there was no easy solution and no “blueprint” for how the problem should be tackled.  “The solution will have to be context-specific and conflict-specific,” she said, while reiterating the need to address the underlying causes of recruitment.

Ms. Owens called the Global Report “an important evidenced-based resource that can be used by all partners working towards the end of the use of child soldiers, the prevention of recruitment, the release of children from armed forces and mobilization around longer-term reintegration strategies that focus on the specific needs of children formerly associated with armed groups”.

When asked what more the United Nations could do to end the use of children in armed conflict, Ms. Adam said it was vital for United Nations peacekeeping operations to support national Governments and regional organizations to investigate and prosecute those who recruited child soldiers.  Judicial and security sector reform, as well as legislative reform and improved law enforcement measures were also crucial.  “As long as this climate of impunity persists,” she said, “then there’s not a great deal of hope that recruitment and use of children as soldiers is going to end.”

She added that, in the past, disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programmes had repeatedly overlooked the special needs of children, in particular the needs of girl soldiers and their babies.  In the future, the United Nations and the international community as a whole should place the child soldier issue at the centre of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programmes and the planning and implementation agendas.

Political, diplomatic and bilateral pressure all had to be brought to bear by the international community to improve the lives of children in armed conflict, Ms. Adam said, adding: “It is a global failure that they have yet to receive protection -- and a global challenge to improve their lives.”

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For information media • not an official record