Submitted by crinadmin on
SPARC demands that the Government of Pakistan immediately ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict. The recent two incidents of 12 May in Karachi and Lal Masjid in Islamabad are proof that children are being recruited by organisations for armed conflicts in Pakistan which train and prepare them for military actions and conflicts. The intensive coverage of the 12 May Karachi carnage showed that youth and children as young as 15 years old were given arms and used as a shield for political conflict. The Lal Masjid incident has highlighted once again the continuing use of children by madrassahs in Pakistan. In February 2000, Pakistan's Interior Minister claimed that only "one per cent" of madrassahs in Pakistan sent their students for military training in Afghanistan. Though there is no reliable statistics on the subject, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in October 2003 urged Pakistan to take effective measures to ensure that children below the age of 18 years were not involved in hostilities. It recommended that the government develop a comprehensive system for the reintegration and recovery of children who have participated in hostilities, in collaboration with non-governmental and international organisations. Pakistan is among those few countries signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and not to the the Protocol. Pakistan's neighbours like India, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Bangladesh all have ratified the protocol. Article 38 of the Convention specifies 15 as the minimum age for recruitment into a State's armed forces and calls on the States to, "take all feasible measures to ensure that persons who have not attained the age of fifteen years do not take a direct part in hostilities". The Optional Protocol to the CRC about Children in Armed Conflict was declared in 2001. It did not compulsorily raise this age of 15 as the minimum recruitment age for a State's armed forces. It, however, did declare the minimum age of recruitment into "armed groups" as 18. The Optional Protocol was adopted by resolution A/RES/54/263 of 25 May 2000 at the fifty-fourth session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, adopted by the UN General Assembly in May 2000, prohibits governments and armed groups from using children under the age of 18 in hostilities; bans all compulsory recruitment of under 18s; and raises the minimum age and requires strict safeguards for voluntary recruitment. Article 4 of The Optional Protocol also provides: "armed groups that are distinct from the armed forces of a State should not, under any circumstances, recruit or use in hostilities persons under the age of 18 years." It requires States Parties to take "all feasible measures to prevent such recruitment and use, including the adoption of legal measures necessary to prohibit and criminalize such practices." SPARC demands from the Government of Pakistan to ratify the Optional Protocol immediately without reservations and take effective steps to criminalise underage recruitment by non-state actors and prosecute those responsible.