Topic: Reintegrating Former Child Soldiers
Country: France
Delegate Name: Hannah Ploof
School: Forest Hills Central High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All France position papers GLIMUN 2014 committees
Child soldiers are a very large problem in many countries in today’s world. A child soldier is someone, boy or girl, under the age of 18 that is used as a combatant, messenger, porter, cook, or a sexual service. Being one of these soldier creates many physiological and physical problems that need to be combated for the children before they are to be put back into regular society. The main countries this is occurring in are Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, Colombia, Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Uganda. Many of these countries are developing and have revolutionaries or loose government's with little control, increasing their chances of having these young soldiers. Around 300,000 children are involved in 30 conflicts worldwide and those children need to be removed from the conflicts and be reintegrated into society. For this to happen, they first need to identify the young people involved and then they will need to go through extensive amounts of therapy, education, work experience, skill building, and classes to learn basic skills that are lost due to the early age trauma experienced in the conflicts.
In 2002, the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child outlawed the involvement of children under the age of 18 in hostilities. It also required States to raise the age for compulsory recruitment and direct participation in conflicts to the age of 18. This was to eliminate the problem of there being child soldiers in the first place, but it is very hard to monitor and there is not an easy way to stop non-governmental affiliated groups from taking under age people. Besides this place of legislation, there are many things that UNICEF and NGO are doing to help out the countries in need. Things such as giving a protective environment for children, raising advocacy for the problem, providing protection and support for those harmed, and going into individual countries to assist are going on to this day.
France was one of the very first countries to sign the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and wish to help stop the cause more. Extending the efforts that UNICEF is already doing and getting the UN more involved would help. Also, there should be more legislation and the legislation already in place should be more enforced. We do not agree with child soldiers and think this is a very large problem that needs to be acted on immediately.
France will work with most countries to help solve this problem. We would really like large countries, such as England and the United States to help us tackle reintegrating child soldiers. We believe most countries will not oppose this due to the high need to stop this problem and because everyone can benefit from this problem creasing. Reintegrating the soldiers and stopping the recruitment of them can highly benefit all of the world and because of that, we would like everyone's help and believe we will face very little resistance.
