RESOLUTION(1)

on child soldiers

The ACP-EU Joint Assembly,

- meeting in Strasbourg (France) from 29 March to 1 April 1999,

- having regard to the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child,

- having regard to the 1996 United Nations report by Mrs Graca Machel (A/5/306) and the appointment of Mr Olara Otunnu as United Nations Special Representative for the impact of armed conflict on children,

A. deploring the fact that worldwide more than 300000 children under 18 are currently participating in hostilities,

B. regretting the fact that several countries, including African countries, are particularly affected by the phenomenon of children participating in armed combat,

C. whereas children suffer disproportionately from the hardships of military life, at both a physical and an emotional level,

D. whereas to the number of children killed in combat or mutilated by anti-personnel mines must be added those whose physical, mental and psychological needs have been neglected in societies engaged in long-lasting wars,

E. whereas since 1993 a United Nations working party has been examining an optional protocol to the International Convention on the Rights of the Child aimed at setting the minimum age for recruitment into the armed forces at 18,

F. whereas the statutes of the International Criminal Tribunal, adopted in Rome in July 1998, stipulate for the first time that the recruitment and use in combat of children under 15 constitutes a war crime,

G. welcoming the new United Nations policy concerning a minimum age for taking part in operations by UN peace-keeping forces, military observers and civil police forces,

H. stressing that one of the primary objectives of the future ACP-EU Convention should be to promote, by means of a serious, sustained effort by all signatories, the prevention of use of children in armed conflicts, as well as their protection and rehabilitation in society,

1. Condemns the use in combat of child soldiers, whether by regular government forces or armed rebel groups;

2. Calls on the ACP countries and the EU to ban any participation by children in armed conflicts and to raise public awareness of the international instruments and national laws on the rights, protection and welfare of children;

3. Calls on the Commission and the ACP countries to take prevention, protection and reintegration measures and, in particular, to put in place programmes aimed at allocating resources to demobilising and reintegrating into society children who have taken part in armed combat in the ACP countries;

4. Regards as an urgent need the adoption of an additional protocol to the International Convention on the Rights of the Child forbidding the recruitment and use in armed combat of children under 18, and calls on the ACP countries and the EU to support all international initiatives to this end and to introduce identical provisions into their own legislation;

5. Calls on the United Nations working party to complete as a matter of urgency a protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and calls on the Council to adopt a joint action promoting the adoption of this protocol, while making the fight against the use of child soldiers a policy of the ACP-EU partnership;

6. Instructs its Co-Presidents to forward this resolution to the ACP-EU Council, the Commission, the United Nations Special Representative for the impact of armed conflict on children and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

(1) Adopted by the ACP-EU Joint Assembly on 1 April 1999 in Strasbourg (France).