America is now funding child soldiers

CHILD SOLDIERS PREVENTION ACT DOES NOT FIX THE PROBLEM

Last week, President Barack Obama accepted the recommendation of the State Department and provided the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Yemen and Chad waivers to the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008.

In many places around the globe, child soldiers are used as a result of instability in governments. This instability reflects a lack of governmental control and necessary funds for development.

Children become soldiers because of a lack of other opportunities. They lack the tools to possess the freedom to go to school and live “normal” lives as children. Their countries have been debilitated by violence, and they see a life as a soldier as their only opportunity for a better life.

It is difficult for Americans living in a country of great economic prosperity and political security to conceptualize this kind of existence and disempowerment. Thus in 2008, Congress passed the Child Soldier Prevention Act as an attempt to appease American interest in ending the usage of child soldiers by removing funding of these countries.

In theory this act would help curb child soldier usage, but in reality this has not been the case. The law has virtually done nothing to reduce the numbers of child soldiers.

Samantha Power, the National Security Council’s senior director of multilateral affairs and human rights, said, “Our judgment is we’ll work from inside the tent.”

Merely imposing sanction on countries that already have a lot of problems doesn’t accomplish anything productive.

Thus, Obama and other proponents of waiving this act for the aforementioned countries believe that they would be better able to combat child soldier usage through working with the countries rather than merely ignoring their problems and stopping our aid to these nations.

“In each of these countries we are working with the governments to stop the recruitment of child soldiers or demobilize those who may already be in the ranks,” P.J. Crowley, a State Department spokesman said. “These countries have put the right policies in place but are struggling to effectively implement them. These waivers allow the United States to continue to conduct valuable training programs.”

Though we are very much opposed to the idea of children working as soldiers, we believe that we can only stop these human rights issues by working with these countries to help solve the problems that lead to the usage of child soldiers in the first place.

Sanctioning and removing funding for these already desperately poor countries will not help the children who have been recruited as child soldiers.

We can only help end children’s work as soldiers through providing infrastructure and education that will help empower these children and provide them alternative opportunities for their futures.

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S ACTIONS THREATEN OUR MORAL INTEGRITY

Last week, President Obama sent an executive order to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton instructing the State Department to waive the Child Soldier Prevention Act for several African and Middle Eastern nations that are well-known to use child soldiers in their armies.

The law bars the U.S. from giving military aid to countries that use child soldiers.

Apparently, the forced use of young children in armed conflicts is no bar to ending U.S. military aid.

Regardless of whether the act actually helps to end the use of child soldiers in armies around the globe, giving aid to nations that use them is an ethically unsupportable action for the United States or any nation.

The United States should never be supplying military aid to any nation that forces children as young as 6 or 7 to engage in violent conflicts.

The Child Soldiers Prevention Act’s long-term purpose might be to eventually end the use of child soldiers, but this is not the first reason why the United States should not make exceptions to it. Obviously, ending the use of child soldiers is not going to happen with a single American law.

But it’s a good law nonetheless, simply because it is an obvious moral blunder for any nation or organization to ever fund child soldiers.

President Obama used the vague justification that our national security interests trumped human rights concerns in the nations for which he voided the law.

But the very integrity of our nation, a nation that supposedly values basic human rights for all, the freedom of people across the globe and (in particular) the rights of children to have a fair shot, is put in serious jeopardy by directly funding armies that employ child soldiers.

Using children as soldiers is always morally wrong, regardless of the national security circumstances.

No individual should be able to tolerate the use of our tax dollars to fund child soldiers.