Children of the World

             The use of children for military purposes has been an issue in this world for over twenty years. There have been many proposed policies, in order to stop these rebellious practices and rebellious leaders. Those who want to stop these practices and leaders have something in common. Everyone wants to stop and capture the leaders behind all the use of children around the world for military purposes. The point where these groups of people collide is when it comes to HOW to stop these leaders.  Groups like ILO (International Labor Organization), UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees), UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) and many more other groups get together as one and try to come up with one plan that will rescue all 300,000 child soldiers around the world. ILO established a convection in 1973 stating, “pursue a national policy designed to ensure the effective abolition of child labour…the minimum age for admission to employment or work which by its nature or circumstances in which it is carried out is likely to jeopardise the health, safety or morals of young persons” ILO wants to bring these convection back into force in order to advance in the process of saving children. They have all different ways into thinking they can stop these leaders. For one, they planned to put some type of surveillance inside the camps where these leaders keep the children. They do this to study every move they make at every time of the day. Spread Debchaudhury a student from the University of California wrote a paper over child soldiers stating, “the UNSC Working Group, in concert with NGOs and human rights’ group managed to make some, slight (largely nominal) progress in addressing the violations against children…A Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism has been put into place” This shows that part of the policy all these groups proposed has been put into action.

            Not only the policy for saving the kids is being debated, but also the policy of what to do once the children have been saved. Some groups state that these children have to be placed in their original homes with their families and loved ones. Other groups argue this policy due to the fact that they want to establish these children in the place where they were being captured in the first place. There has been cases were children who were saved are put back in their old home and are re-recruited by the same rebellious leaders.  These group of people that are arguing about not allowing them to go back to their home suggest they have to establish schools for the loss of education the kids had while they were captive, counseling centers for those who suffered trauma and cant get over of what they went through and last but not least, a new home were they can sleep with both eyes closed and not have to worry of who are what is coming for every night. 

            Overall,  all the proposed policies people and group have brought to the table is kill the rebellious leaders and capture the children. That is the main point for all the proposed policies everyone is mentioning. The only difference for each and every one of their policies is the “How?” The difference is the strategy in how to kill the leaders, how do they manage to save the children.  As the CEO of UNICEF, Anthony Lake once said, “the most important thing is the safety and health of the children”. This is the reason why every single organization puts aside their difference and get together as one to become stronger and to find a solution to save all those innocent kids that are trapped in a horrible life.

References

            Debchaudhury, S. (2014). No Freedom from Fear: Child Soldiers in Burma. Global Studies Journal, 7(3), 41-51.

            MUKHAR, R. (2014). CHILD SOLDIERS AND PEACE AGREEMENTS. Annual Survey Of International & Comparative Law, 20(1), 72-100.

            About the Issues:. (n.d.). Retrieved April 16, 2015, from http://www.child-soldiers.org/international_standards.php