2016 sg children and armed conflict report

Its mandate was to begin negotiations on a new protocol to the Convention that would raise standards regarding the use of children for military purposes. The campaign for a new treaty Initial negotiations īy 1994, five years after the Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted, children's rights advocates and sympathetic governments had persuaded the international community to establish a working group of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

To achieve this, a small group of human rights campaigners and sympathetic governments began a global campaign for a new treaty, which was adopted in 2000 as the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict (OPAC). When the same limited standards were incorporated into the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1989, children's rights advocates were left frustrated, believing that a treaty establishing the fundamental rights of children ought to protect them from all forms of military involvement.

In addition, the Protocols did not prohibit belligerents from using children younger than 15 in hostilities when their participation was not 'direct' for example, as scouts, porters, informants, spies, message-carriers and in other support roles. The new Protocols prohibited the military recruitment of children aged under 15 and their direct participation in hostilities, but continued to allow state armed forces and non-state armed groups to recruit children from age 15 and use them in warfare.

Initial efforts to limit the participation of children in armed conflict began with the adoption of the Additional Protocols to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, adopted in 1977 (Art. Progress towards ending the use of children for military purposes has been slow, partly because many national armed forces have relied on children to fill their ranks. After the Cold War ended, the number of armed conflicts grew and the use of children for military purposes surged, affecting as many as 300,000 children worldwide annually by the end of the 1990s. In World War II, child soldiers fought throughout Europe, in the Warsaw Uprising, in the Jewish resistance, and in the Soviet Army. In World War I, in Great Britain 250,000 boys under 18 managed to join the army. Throughout history and in many cultures, children have had extensive involvement in military campaigns. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) defines a child as any person under the age of 18.

2016 sg children and armed conflict report