WRITTEN QUESTION E-2028/01

by Alexandros Alavanos (GUE/NGL) to the Commission

(13 July 2001)

Subject: Child soldiers

The Financial Times reported on 13 June 2001 that 8 000 children are serving as soldiers, many of them not in countries in a state of war but in Member States of the European Union. 7 000 children under the age of 18 in the UK are serving soldiers and are even involved in military operations in Kosovo.

In the light of this violation of children's rights, will the Commission say:

1. how it will protect the rights of children to live in a secure environment, and

2. what measures it proposed should be taken to deal with this problem when the protocol against the use of child soldiers was drawn up at the UN conference held in Geneva last January?

Answer given by Mrs Diamantopoulou on behalf of the Commission

(4 September 2001)

The Commission would like to draw the Honourable Member's attention to Council Directive 94/33/EC of 22 June 1994 on the protection of young people at work(1) which applies to any person under 18 years of age having an employment contract or an employment relationship defined by the law in force in a Member State and/or governed by the law in force in a Member State. The Directive obliges Member States to ensure that young people are protected from any specific risk to their safety, health and development which is a consequence of their lack of experience, of absence of awareness of existing or potential risks or of the fact that young people have not yet fully matured.

With regard to the question on the forced recruitment of children, the Commission would also like to draw the Honourable Member's attention to the adoption, in 1999, of International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention No 182, the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention. This Convention obliges ratifying countries to take immediate measures to prohibit and eliminate the worst forms of child labour. The worst forms of child labour are defined in the Convention as including forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict, as well as, more generally, work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children. The Commission strongly supports the efforts of the ILO to promote the effective implementation of Convention No 182. To this end, the Commission adopted a Recommendation to the Member States on 15 September 2000, urging them to ratify Convention No 182 where they have not yet done so. The Commission is pleased to note that 87 countries have ratified the Convention to date, including nine Member States of the Union.

The Commission further notes that the Union has taken a strong stand on this issue in international fora. At the 57th session of the United Nations (UN) Commission on Human Rights this year, the Union underlined the importance of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child concerning the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict and called upon States, when ratifying the Protocol, to adopt the highest possible standard for voluntary recruitment, recognising that under the Convention persons under 18 years are entitled to special protection.

On 12 June 2001, the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Labour launched its report Global Report on Child Soldiers 2001. The report demonstrates that approximately 300 000 children are engaged in armed fighting in 41 countries around the world. The Commission believes that whether these children are recruited for combat by government armed forces, by paramilitaries, or by other non-state armed groups, it is a human tragedy.

The Commission channels concrete support to children affected by armed conflict through several funding initiatives. One initiative is under the European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights (Chapter B7-7) for 2000 where substantial support has been provided to a project undertaken by the United Nations

international children's emergency fund (Unicef) in Sierra Leone regarding the protection and reintegration of children associated with the fighting forces and other children separated from their families as a result of the conflict. Another initiative is taken in the context of Community humanitarian assistance. Children are a cross-cutting priority for Community humanitarian assistance in 2001, and the Commission Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO) has spent more than 40 million on projects targeting the needs of war-affected children since the beginning of 2000. At an operational level, special attention is being paid to health, emergency education and psychosocial assistance, because these three sectors are pivotal to all child-related assistance.

At a policy level, the Commission has also sought to increase its contributions to the development of better tools for assisting and protecting children. Within this context, it is currently funding two research projects on child soldiers. One project is the Multidisciplinary study on the problem of child soldiers in Africa by the Red Cross Belgium, which seeks to elaborate durable, stable, institutional and operational intervention strategies for the Red Cross Movement. The other project is the Save the Children United Kingdom project on Child Soldiers and Children Associated with the Fighting Forces: Guidelines for Best Practice, which aims at producing a manual for people working with child soldiers, drawing on the wider experience of the aid community.

(1) OJ L 216, 20.8.1994.