EXAMINING THE LEGAL AND INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE PROTECTION OF THE USE OF CHILDREN AS SOLDIERS

ABSTRACT

This research work critically examines the legal and institutional framework for the protection of the use of children as soldiers and the specific objectives are to determine what protections are offered by human rights and international humanitarian law to child soldiers in armed conflicts and examine the adequacy of existing legal frameworks through state obligations and international instruments to prohibit use of children in armed conflicts. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child suggests that a child is ‘every human being below the age of eighteen.’ The recruitment of children in armed conflict violates international law, and has been criminalized at domestic, regional, and international levels. Despite clear prohibitions under international law to enlist, conscript, and actively use child soldiers under the age of fifteen, existing legislation has set a grey area for the enlistment of children between the age of fifteen and eighteen. Based on the findings, the research recommends that the responsibility to protect or respond to the needs of child soldiers should fall on States and non-governmental entities, who may be parties or adherents to international instruments, parties to the conflict, subjects of national law, and others who are bound by customary international law. Until existing legal regimes are fine-tuned and adequately enforced, there will not be adequate deterrence to ensure the prohibition of the use of children in conflict and consequently children will remain largely unprotected within the international criminal law framework.