Conditions of participation of children in the armed forces

The children and the youth are the most important and active layers of the society and they are the future makers of the country; during the three decades of imposed wars and its continual caused many economic, social, unemployment problems at the country level and as a result most of the people and families of the societies compelled to force their children to work and keep stable their economic position, where some of them enrolled their children in different classes of police and army and as well as non-governmental organizations

Therefore some of relevant responsible because of the lack of awareness about the rights of the children and or by ignoring the law intentionally (Against the article 56 of constitution) are attracting and hiring the children under age of eighteen years; in the structure of the army it is also identified that the age of the persons should be between eighteen to thirty-five years old.

The childhood and youth periods are identified in different laws of the country and as well as in the international convention of children’s right; where the different authorities can make sure and consider these points while attracting and hiring the people.

For further clarification about the current situation of the children and youth I have conducted an interview with Mr. Muhammad Bilal Siddiqi the head of children section of independence human rights commission of Afghanistan and I need your attention in this regard.

Question: Based on different laws of Afghanistan what are the conditions of participation of children in the armed forces?

Answer: About the prohibition of children in the armed forces the conditions are totally clear; those children who are under eighteen years old have no rights to be hired by the Police, Army and or any other security related organizations. Similarly, the Police law, constitution of Afghanistan and many other laws of Afghanistan are clearly prohibiting the children hiring in such organizations and it is clearly mentioned that if the organization is governmental or the opposition, they are not allowed to armed the children before they get eighteen years old.

Excluding the Afghanistan Laws; the international laws has also clearly forced on this issue and then especially in the international convention of children’s right it is mentioned that the children should not be admitted in different classes of armed forces, where it is at the country level, provincial or between two countries.

In the recent years; the United Nations released a notification which is also clearly prohibiting the admission of the children under armed forces.

Question: Are the investigations conducted by this commission show that the children are hired under different classes of the armed forces?

Answer: We cannot totally refuse that the children are not under the different classes of the armed forces but there are proofs and evidences with the commission which shows that the children are working under different classes of the national police and national army and these data are taken when the conditions of the children were taken under consideration by this commission. Whenever we had interviews with those children who were kept in the steerage centers they were claiming that they were hired in that national army as a soldier and even some children were nominated as traditional police and after committing a crime and then their identification of age it was proven that they were between 15 to 16 years.

Question: In the sectorial Ministries like Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Interior Affairs and the Directorate of Intelligence; is there any branch of the independence human rights commission or not which monitor their different activities?

Answer: Absolutely yes, in the two ministries including Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior Affairs they have established sections for the monitoring of the human rights or support of human rights; though it is good that these sections are established but unfortunately these institutions are not having effective ways of doing their activities as required.

Question: What are the reasons which cause the children join the armed forces?

Answer: There are different reasons which causes that the children join the armed forces either in national police or national army and or the oppositions…

One of the reasons could be the weak implementations of the law in Afghanistan which could lead that children join the armed forces…

The second reason could be the lack of registering the childbirths which means that whenever a child is born there is not a system to record and when this child grown up to be know how old is he/she and the lack of census is the other problem where a person can take another ID with a new name and age the he/she wants and some of our people are have three to four ID Cards currently it is all because that we are not having proper active systems in these regards.

Poverty in the family can also cause that the children move towards the armed forces and or oppositions in order to get some money from them.

And finally whenever there is no monitoring by relevant governmental organizations these problems mostly occur i.e. to match the faces of the people with their ID Cards that how close their faces are with their photos.

Question: Is there any statistics with the commission about the children who joined the armed forces of the country and also about the life conditions of these children or not?

Answer: Based on my point of views; there are not accurate and exact statistics in this regard with the independence human rights commission which shows the number of children joined national army, national police and the oppositions but we can say that there are children who are involved with these groups.

Question: What could be the negative impact of joining of these children on themselves and on the society?

Answer: It will bring horrible effects because whenever the child is having a weapon on his arm and during the fight he saw lots of violence then obviously it will have its effect on him; from the psychological point of view it will have its effects on him as well and in total all those children who are going to the wars mostly loses their hearing sense and it cause disability in them and it is clear that whenever a child become disabled then it has a direct effect on his family and relatives and in future we would be going to hand over him to the society and he would have responsibility to serve for the society but unfortunately these children won’t be able to serve for the society but they would be a burden on the society.

The negative impact of enrolling these children with the armed forces is too much because these children will addict with cigarettes and other drugs and this will not only have negative effect on the child but in the long term it would negatively affect the society.

Question: As a last question I would like to ask you that; what activities should be considered for the solution of these problems?

Answer: whenever the laws which are for the children are implemented properly then this problem can be prevented, creation of occupation for the jobless people then especially for those who are the responsible of their families are much important because they are busy in different kind of activities including working with armed forces but if the work facilities are provided then they may not join or continue working with armed forces.

Creation of a strong system or registration of the persons who are working in different classes of police and it is also to mention that there is no standard for calculating the accurate ages in Afghanistan.

Reducing the poverty level in Afghanistan; this can also be effective in this regard.

To create a monitoring system in governmental organizations to control the hiring of people; and to identify punishments for those who are hiring the children, so that others not repeat.

Dear audience this was the discussion that is presented to you; until the next discussion good bye….