{"id":8423,"date":"2010-11-22T00:00:31","date_gmt":"2010-11-21T23:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=8423"},"modified":"2010-11-18T02:07:05","modified_gmt":"2010-11-18T01:07:05","slug":"white-house-says-child-soldiers-are-ok-if-they-fight-terrorists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2010\/11\/white-house-says-child-soldiers-are-ok-if-they-fight-terrorists\/","title":{"rendered":"White House Says Child Soldiers Are OK, if They Fight Terrorists"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou cannot be completely happy with all these wounds\u2014both in your body and in your mind.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u2014<\/em>15-year old child soldier<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The phenomenon of child soldiers, like genocide, slavery and torture, seems like one of those crimes that no nation could legitimately defend. Yet the Obama administration just decided to leave countless kids stranded on some of the world\u2019s bloodiest battlegrounds.<\/p>\n

The administration stunned human rights groups<\/a> last month by sidestepping a commitment to help countries curb the military exploitation of children. Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy<\/em> reported<\/a> that President Obama issued a presidential memorandum<\/a> granting waivers from the Child Soldiers Prevention Act<\/a> to four countries: Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and Yemen. The memo instructed Secretary of State Hilary Clinton that it is in our \u201cnational interest\u201d to continue extending military aid to those countries, despite their failure to comply with the rules Congress passed and George W. Bush signed in 2008.<\/p>\n

A thumbs-up for child soldiers from the pen of President Obama? Whitehouse spokesperson P.J. Crowley explained it was a strategic decision<\/a> to ease the 2008 law. The rationale is that on balance, it\u2019s more effective for the U.S. to keep providing military assistance that will help countries gradually evolve out of the practice of marshaling kids to the battlefield, rather than isolating them.<\/p>\n

According to the Christian Science Monitor, Crowley argued<\/a>, \u201cThese countries have put the right policies in place\u2026 but are struggling to correctly implement them.\u201d\u00a0The New York Times reported that administration spokespeople also cited the countries\u2019 crucial role in global counter-terrorism efforts.<\/p>\n

Strategically granting certain countries a pass on child rights reflects Washington\u2019s warped attitude toward the global human rights regime. The U.S. has failed to ratify, or simply ignored, numerous human rights protocols, and our ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child<\/a> has languished. Human Rights Watch points out, \u201cOnly the United States and Somalia, which has no functioning national government, have failed to ratify the treaty.\u201d (Although we did ratify two optional protocols in 2002, relating to child soldiers and other forms of exploitation.)<\/p>\n

Somalia, by the way, is one of just two countries that the White House allowed to be\u00a0sanctioned under the 2008 law; the second was Burma. Presumably this is because Somalia is not receiving direct military funding, reports the Monitor. Yet the U.S. continues to support Somali government forces<\/a> as they fight Islamic insurgents\u2014with the help of a large force of child soldiers. (To their credit, Somalia has at least promised the U.N.<\/a> they\u201dll stop arming kids eventually, according to the Washington Post).<\/p>\n

Maybe you could argue that the U.S. is so \u201cadvanced\u201d it needn\u2019t bother with rules about children\u2019s rights to education and whatnot. Obama\u2019s waivers might be seen as realpolitik in areas like Yemen, whose military we support<\/a> as part of our sprawling counter-terrorism operations.\u00a0But the bottom line is that the administration has carved out an exception to a law intended to ethically guide the flow of U.S. aid money around the world.<\/p>\n

According to the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers<\/a>, which holds America to the same scrutiny that countries like Uganda and DRC routinely face in the media, we benefit indirectly and directly from the exploitation of child fighters:<\/p>\n

In 2006 the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) registered 59 children in detention during 16 visits to five places of detention or internment controlled by the USA or the UK in Iraq. US soldiers stationed at the detention centres and former detainees described abuses against child detainees, including the rape of a 15-year-old boy at Abu Ghraib, Iraq, forced nudity, stress positions, beating and the use of dogs. Following US troop increases in Iraq in early 2007, US military arrests of children there rose from an average of 25 per month in 2006 to an average of 100 per month. Military officials reported that 828 were children held at Camp Cropper by mid-September, including children as young as 11. A 17-year-old was reportedly strangled by a fellow detainee in early 2007.<\/p>\n

In August 2007 the USA opened Dar al-Hikmah, a non-residential facility intended to provide education services to 600 detainees aged 11-17 pending release or transfer to Iraqi custody. US military officials excluded an estimated 100 children from participation in the program, apparently on the grounds that they were \u201cextremists\u201d and \u201cbeyond redemption\u201d.<\/p>\n

Omar Khadr<\/a>, the young Canadian detainee at Guantanamo Bay, remains trapped in a Kafkaesque quasi-judicial system without regard to the fact that he was a child when captured. Rights advocates like Monia Mazigh in Ottowa<\/a> have called for Khadr to be recognized as a child soldier, but the administration seems to think securing a conviction in Kangaroo Court takes precedence over international law. And because Khadr, like the other Gitmo prisoners, is identified with that faceless dark horde<\/a> the U.S. has branded \u201cterrorists,\u201d Americans aren\u2019t even inclined to see him as a human being, let alone as a juvenile soldier deserving of sympathy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So America\u2019s hypocrisy on children in war has many layers<\/a>. Obama condemns the practice in theory, then undermines federal law by issuing waivers for our partners in Africa and the Middle East. And of course, Washington sees no problem with punishing child soldiers as adults when they\u2019re aligned with the terrorists who are bent on destroying America.<\/p>\n

UN Treaties alone obviously won\u2019t demobilize all the world\u2019s child soldiers, but their main role is to put down a legal placeholder. And it\u2019s that moral guidepost that the U.S. undermines every time it waives parallel U.S. laws based on the \u201cnational interest<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s memorandum may look jarring on paper, but it\u2019s grimly consistent with Washington\u2019s agenda of waging war indefinitely, without boundaries, against an enemy we can no longer really define. The U.S. supports warfare that uses children as weapons, warfare that kills civilian children indiscriminately, warfare that ultimately sends our own children to perish on foreign soil. And so America marches on in a world of conflict where the first casualty is innocence itself.<\/a><\/p>\n

________________________<\/p>\n

Michelle works and plays in New York City. Besides freelance reporting, her various occupations have included ethnographic research in Shanghai and coat-checking at a West Village jazz club. Her writing has also appeared in In These Times, South China Morning Post, Women\u2019s International Perspective, and her old zine, cain.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 colorlines.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The administration stunned human rights groups last month by sidestepping a commitment to help countries curb the military exploitation of children. Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy reported that President Obama issued a presidential memorandum granting waivers from the Child Soldiers Prevention Act to four countries: Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and Yemen. The memo instructed Secretary of State Hilary Clinton that it is in our \u201cnational interest\u201d to continue extending military aid to those countries, despite their failure to comply with the rules Congress passed and George W. Bush signed in 2008.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}