International Regulations On The Use Of Child Soldiers

Child soldiers refer to children under18years old recruited or used in anyconventional or non-conventional armed forces. Both girls and boys who are used asfighters, cooks, porters and messengers belong to this category. Historically, there arechild soldiers in ancient military conflicts. However, this has become the mostchallenging issues of modern warfare much more recently. At least86countries andregions involve in the problem of recruiting child soldiers. Most of them are leviedstraight into the army, suffering great torture to the point of intolerable.Given that, the phenomenon of child soldiers has aroused the concern of theinternational community. Thus the international regimes preventing the use of childsoldiers emerged. These regulations include international treaties, UN GeneralAssembly and regional treaties. Relevant regulations have made great progress inraising global awareness and building partnerships. This has helped to mainstream theprotection of child soldiers within United Nations system. Many governments havemade commitments to renounce the recruitment and use of child soldiers. Consideringthe more realistic case, the non-compulsory international regimes can’t force it’smember states to comply with regulations. Therefore, in addition to establishing asound monitoring and reporting mechanism, giving full play to the forewarningfunction of new media, more importantly, the governments enact and implementnational laws to protect the demobilized child soldiers. Establishing and maintainingthe rule of law at national level to ensure the criminals against children to be held toaccount. Thus the international regimes will function better.