c. 1998 Religion News Service

UNDATED _”The army,”said Emilio Hernandez-Xigara,”was a nightmare. We suffered greatly from the cruel treatment we received. We were constantly beaten, mostly for no reason at all, just to keep us in a state of terror.” Hernandez-Xigara said he was 14-years-old when he was”drafted”_ forcibly taken from a bus by soldiers _ into the Guatemalan army, becoming one of an estimated 250,000-300,000″child soldiers”under age 18 in government, rebel or paramilitary armed forces fighting in conflicts around the world.

His comments were made in a statement released at a New York news conference Tuesday (June 30) announcing a new international coalition that will urge the world’s governments to establish an effective ban on the growing use of the young in militaries.

The announcement followed by a day the issuing of a presidential statement _ a step short of a resolution _ by the United Nations Security Council condemning the use of child soldiers.

The new coalition includes six international religious, humanitarian and human rights organizations: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Jesuit Refugee Services, International Federation Terre des Hommes, the Quaker United Nations Office and the Swedish Save the Children.

It is also supported by such groups as the Lutheran World Federation, the Geneva-based umbrella organization of some 224 Lutheran churches around the globe, and World Vision, the evangelical humanitarian and relief agency, which, among other projects, runs the Center for Traumatized Children of War in Gula, Uganda.

At the heart of the new coalition is an effort to establish an international ban on the recruitment and participation of children under age 18 through the adoption of a so-called”optional protocol”to the Convention on the Rights of the Child drafted by the United Nations.

Activists hope the new campaign will develop the same kind of grassroots”sleeper”momentum that characterized the effort to place an international ban on the production and use of land mines.

Current international standards allow children as young as 15 to be recruited into armed forces and participate in hostilities. The United States currently accepts 17-year-old volunteers into its armed forces.

In February, a United Nations working group on the Convention on the Rights of the Child considered a draft version of the”optional protocol”to submit to governments but the meeting ended in a stalemate as nation’s disagreed on adopting what the non-governmental activists call a”straight-18″_ barring participation in hostilities, conscription and voluntary recruitment of all those under 18.

During the February meeting, an overwhelming majority of countries declared themselves in favor of 18 as the age limit for participation in hostilities and there was a consensus on 18 as the age of conscription, according to Save the Children.

However, there are differing views on the age of voluntary recruitment. Some nations, like Cuba, favor 16, and the United States wants to maintain a 17-year-old standard.”The narrow self-interest of nations like the United States should not be allowed to stand in the way of global protections for children in armed conflicts,”said Jo Becker of Human Rights Watch and chair of the steering committee of the new coalition.

While much of the bickering at the international treaty level involves setting an age for voluntary recruitment, the heart of the campaign is an effort to end the participation of children in armed hostilities.

Becker and other experts estimate that”child soldiers,”some as young as 8, are involved in conflicts in 30 countries around the world. Most cases involve Third World wars in countries such as Uganda, Sudan, Burma, Indonesia, Peru and Colombia.

In Uganda, the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army has reportedly kidnapped some 10,000 children to fight in its cause.

Angelina Acheng Atyam, co-founder of the Ugandan Concerned Parents Association, said her daughter, Charlotte, was abducted 18 months ago.”She was 14 years old and went to school in a town we thought was safely south of the war zone,”Atyam said in a statement prepared for the news conference.”We knew there was trouble in the north, but it all seemed so far away. In my country, it is too easy to see only the cream that rises to the top. But beneath the surface, there is a graveyard of tortured souls.” According to a report earlier this year by the Quaker U.N. Office in Geneva and the International Catholic Child Bureau, child soldiers come from the most vulnerable sectors of their society and tend to be poor, residents of the conflict zone and from families that have been disrupted or rendered nonexistent as a result of the conflict.

Most child soldiers, the report said, start their days in support position _ as guards, porters, food handlers or messengers.

However, it adds,”Size and agility (and greater expendability) also mean that children are given particularly hazardous assignments. … Children are used in the front lines either routinely or if required for a large-scale battle. Inexperience and lack of training results in a high number of casualties.” As a first step in combatting the use of child soldiers, the new coalition said it will mount”a high profile media and lobbying campaign designed to raise awareness of the extent of the problem and to promote the need for an effective `optional protocol.'” It will also seek creation of a `core group’ of governments committed to the”straight-18″position, much as the coalition against land mines was able to forge among countries such as Canada and the Scandinavian nations that were committed to abolish the weapons.”This group … would have the task of mobilizing other governments to endorse the idea of an effective `optional protocol,'”the steering committee said in a position paper.

IR END ANDERSON