CHILD SOLDIERS PLEDGE FOR INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT
>
>Olara Otunnu, the Secretary-General's Special Representative for
>Children and Armed Conflict, said yesterday that when the
>International Criminal Court was established he would work to ensure
>that people responsible for recruiting child soldiers were among the
>first to be indicted.
>
>He was speaking at the second of two meetings on child soldiers,
>both of which featured short, moving speeches by child victims of
>war, including two former child soldiers.
>
>"I don't think I could ask even my worst enemy to go through what I
>went through. It's too painful. I don't feel like any other human
>being," said China, who was forced to take up arms when she was nine.
>
>Ishmael joined up when he was 14 "to get revenge for my parents'
>deaths. But I was killing other people's parents. It's a disturbing
>cycle of revenge."
>
>At an earlier meeting, a Security Council session on children in
>conflict, 17-year-old Elisa brought a message to diplomats and
>ministers from the Children?s Forum: "War and politics have always
>been an adult game but children have always been the losers."
>
>And she urged, "I hope you will remember my words."
>
>It marked the second time that a child has addressed the Security Council.
>
>At another session on the issue, presented on Monday by the US
>Council on Foreign Relations, participants were told that the
>existence of several international legal instruments meant there
>could be real international action against people who used children
>as soldiers, including a protocol to the Convention on the Rights of
>the Child, three Security Council Resolutions on children and armed
>conflict, and the Convention itself. But the International Criminal
>Court would be the strongest mechanism of all.
>
>Once the Court was activated after July, said Otunnu, the priority
>would be to "activate the international court of public opinion."
>

Los Angeles Times
May 8, 2002 Wednesday Home Edition

Ex-Child Soldiers Appeal for End to Recruitment;
United Nations: World body seeks to enforce a ban on the practice.
Accounts of lost youth precede a meeting today on children's rights.
by WILLIAM ORME, TIMES STAFF WRITER

They tote machine guns more than half their size, and they kill
people more than twice their age. They see themselves as soldiers,
not children.
They often die in combat before they reach adulthood--and if they do
survive, they do not readily adapt to civilian life.
"Our childhood has been taken away from us, and none of you can give
that back," China Keiletsi, a Ugandan who served as a rebel soldier
from age 9 to 20, told a group of U.N. officials and children's
rights activists here Tuesday. "But I hope that everyone in this room
will work to make sure that no other child in this world should go
through that," Keiletsi, now 25, said after describing a life of
abduction, carnage, numbing brutalization and unquestioning
obedience. "I beg you."
For decades, from West Africa to Central America to Southeast Asia,
adolescents and even preteens have been pressed into military duty by
government and guerrilla forces alike.
But the United Nations--with broad new support from the major powers
here--is now seeking to enforce a worldwide ban on the use and
recruitment of child soldiers.
"For far too long, the use of child soldiers has been seen as merely
regrettable," said Kofi Annan, the U.N. secretary-general, addressing
the gathering Tuesday. "We are here to ensure it is recognized as
intolerable. Even on the battlefield, there are minimal norms of
conduct that must be upheld."
Several international treaties prohibit sending minors into combat,
but the provisions have rarely been enforced. At least 300,000
combatants younger than 18 are fighting in armed conflicts around the
world, U.N. agencies estimate.
The Security Council has asked Annan to submit a list in October of
any known violators of these prohibitions.
Under the rules governing the new International Criminal Court,
anyone who sends children younger than 15 into combat faces possible
prosecution for war crimes, U.N. officials said Tuesday.
"We are here to put parties to conflict on notice that the use of
child combatants will carry consequences," Annan said.
With about 60 prime ministers and heads of state scheduled to gather
here today for a special General Assembly meeting on children's
issues, the U.N. is also trying to increase support--and funding--for
its rehabilitation programs for newly surrendered and disarmed child
soldiers. In pilot projects in Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone and Congo,
thousands of young ex-combatants are now in these "demobilization
camps," which offer schooling as well as psychological therapy.
"It becomes a normal thing--killing someone was as easy as doing
anything," said Ishmael Beah, a 20-year-old from Sierra Leone who was
forced to serve as a rebel soldier for three of his teenage years.
After eight months in a U.N. rehabilitation program, Beah, now a
charming, effortlessly eloquent young man, said, he was able to
resume classroom studies. But he still suffers from nightmares and
wrestles with a deep sense of guilt. "I was killing someone else's
parents," he said.
Because underage soldiers are impressionable and obedient, they have
been responsible for "some of the very worst wartime atrocities" in
recent years, said Olara A. Otunnu, a senior U.N. official
specializing in the problems facing children in armed conflicts.
Since 1999, Otunnu has traveled to war zones seeking pledges from
governments and rebel groups that they will no longer send anyone
younger than 18 into combat. He says he has now received 59 such
commitments, many in sub-Saharan Africa, where the problem is most
acute.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, where thousands of young boys
have fought as insurgents and as government troops in recent years,
President Joseph Kabila and leaders of the opposition Congo
Liberation Movement pledged a year ago to immediately halt the
recruitment of child soldiers. They also agreed to permit U.N.
inspections of military camps to ensure compliance and promised that
armed minors would be transferred to U.N. facilities for former child
soldiers.
But reports persist of young boys and girls fighting on both sides in
Congo. And thousands of children abducted from northern Uganda are
now in rebel camps across the border in Sudan, Otunnu said Tuesday.
In Angola, where Otunnu is headed next week, the army and the rebel
National Union for the Total Independence of Angola both have young
teenagers in arms, he said.
If these practices do not cease, Otunnu said, "we will work to ensure
that the very first prosecutions in the International Criminal Court
are of those who recruit these child soldiers."

--
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
Ms. Shantha Rau
Information Services Coordinator
NGO Coalition for the International Criminal Court

777 UN Plaza 12th Floor
New York, New York 10017
USA
Telephone +1 212 687 2176 Faxsimile +1 212 599 1332
Email [email protected]
Web http://www.iccnow.org
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

To: email:
Unsubscribe: [email protected]
Subscribe: [email protected]
Contact owner: [email protected]
Get help: [email protected]
Get 1 post/day: [email protected]
Stop email: [email protected]
Restore defaults: [email protected]

Para suscribirse a la lista en espanol,
envie un email a: [email protected]
Pour souscrire a la liste d'information en français,
envoyer un e-mail: [email protected]

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/icc-info/messages
Coalition for an International Criminal Court:
http://www.iccnow.org

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/