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participated in hostilities it had been as irregulars – partisans or resisters. Such participation was consequently seen by the Allied powers as voluntary and heroic or (at best) an unfortunate necessity. It was seen as something exceptional and not, consequently, requiring legal regulation; being unlikely to be repeated. Second, and more profoundly, the regulation of children’s participation in hostilities was
Following the conclusion of the two APs, the locus of the development of the law relating to the recruitment and use of children in hostilities moved from the arena of international humanitarian law to that of international human rights law. An article regulating the participation of children in hostilities appears in the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). However, following dissatisfaction with the provisions contained in the CRC, in 2000 an Optional Protocol (OP) to the CRC on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict was adopted to cure their defects. Difficulties in the negotiation of the OP, however, meant provisions on child recruitment were also included in a 1999 ILO treaty, ILO Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour. The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child is the only regional human rights treaty specifically concerned with children's rights.
General customary international law applies to all states, so any such rules would constitute a minimum standard of behaviour below which states could not fall without being in breach of their international obligations regardless of which treaties they were party. In addition, many of the recruiters of child soldiers are not state governments but non-state groups. Since 1989, not only has there been a number of new treaties covering children's recruitment and use in hostilities, but the issue has been dealt with extensively by the political organs of the UN. In Prosecutor v. Samuel Hinga Norman, the Appeals Chamber of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, while addressing the issue of at what time child recruitment became a war crime, also considered the customary status of the rule prohibiting the recruitment and use of children under 15 to participate actively in hostilities.
This book provides a critical exposition of the international law concerning child soldiers. It starts by looking at the situation of child soldiers in the world today, examining why children are recruited into armed forces and groups; why they volunteer for military service; and, once recruited, what treatment they receive. The book explores how perceptions of childhood and children's rights have changed, and how this has affected the ways in which child soldiers have been treated. It describes the activities of the United Nations with regard to the child soldier phenomenon. The book examines the legal regulation of the recruitment and use of children in hostilities. It shows that although international law comprehensively regulates the recruitment and use of child soldiers, owing to the plethora of treaties on the subject, states' obligations continue to differ and children can still lawfully be recruited and used to participate in armed conflict. The book discusses how, once recruited into armed forces and groups, international law treats child soldiers. It considers the status of child soldiers as combatants and as persons in the power of an adverse party in both international and internal armed conflicts, and states' obligations with regard the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of child soldiers. An unusual feature of how child soldiers are viewed is that they are often seen as both victims of human rights abuses and as human rights violators. Finally, the book examines the extent to which the recruitment and use of child soldiers is an international crime.
both states and non-state groups to cease the illegal recruitment and use of child soldiers. Chapters 4 , 5 and 6 examine the legal regulation of the recruitment and use of children in hostilities. The relevant international humanitarian and human rights treaties are discussed ( Chapters 4 and 5 ), as are the role of customary international law and the extent to which the law regulates the activities of non
activities of such groups, culminating in the prohibition of all recruitment of children by them set out in the OP. However, the growth in legal regulation has not been accompanied by any increase in compliance. The child-soldier phenomenon cannot be addressed simply by the promulgation of new standards. Indeed, it could be argued that continued stress on a ‘straight-18’ standard serves to
. Public managers must be experts not in the service their agency is in charge of delivering but in performance and personnel management, budgets, shifting political s trategies, 132 Neoliberal power and public management reforms customer dialogue and the development of organisational mission and values. The instilling of an entrepreneurial ethos in civil servants hinges on a wide range of mundane techniques of government that have invaded the public administration of OECD countries since the 1980s. These include legal regulations, non-legal contracts (individual
alone is not always right. Not only am I churlish, I confess I also tweak the framework of much of Harris’s discourse. For my concern is not with bioethics per se, but with that delicate relationship between bioethics and public policy. I shall contend that in terms of law and policy, the reasonable Professor Harris is not always right. To compensate for such an ‘unfriendly act’, however, I also contend that Harris’s uncompromising and consistent 120 From ethics to policy and practice ethical arguments make an invaluable contribution to debate on policy and legal
parties dominate the theoretical discussion about mediation. The theorising which takes as its starting point conflict theory in general, on the other hand, places pacific third-party activities among other forms of conflict resolution. Third-party intervention is one form of conflict resolution among legal regulation, the deterrence model and bargaining and negotiation. In a version of the theorising
compare the extent to which the Labour Party, the PS, and the SPD differ in their dealings with the EU, and second, explain the differences and commonalities. The three parties do not operate in a vacuum, and a number of factors are expected to shape the three parties’ dealings with the EU. These are: the legal regulations of internal party organisations; the parties’ EU positions; the financial resources available to the parties; and their status as parties in government or opposition. To be sure, a direct causal relationship between these factors and the parties