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Child Solders
The majority of the world's child soldiers are involved in a variety of armed political groups. These include government-backed paramilitary groups, militias and self-defence units operating in many conflict zones. Others include armed groups opposed to central government rule, groups composed of ethnic religious and other minorities and clan-based or factional groups fighting governments and each other to defend territory and resources.
Most child soldiers are aged between 14 and 18, While many enlist "voluntarily" research shows that such adolescents see few alternatives to involvement in armed conflict. Some enlist as a means of survival in war-torn regions after family, social and economic structures collapse or after seeing family members tortured or killed by government forces or armed groups. Others join up because of poverty and lack of work or educational opportunities. Many girls have reported enlisting to escape domestic servitude, violence and sexual abuse.
Russia toys with schoolboy soldiers
Ivan can assemble an AK-74 assault rifle in just over 20 seconds. He learned that skill in school.
Stepping into Ivan's classroom is like stumbling several decades back in time. Rows of teenage boys stand in lines at their desks, stripping down Kalashnikovs at high speed.
For these boys, the lessons are voluntary - a chance to play at being soldiers. But gas masks and guns were once as normal in Soviet schools as physics classes or maths.
Military ‘adoption’ of orphans
A project for the military to “adopt” or sponsor orphans, homeless children and children from single-parent families was implemented from 1997 and formalized by presidential decree in 2000. The regulation, entitled “On enrolling underage citizens of the Russian Federation as wards of military units and providing them with essential allowances”, permits boys between
the ages of 14 and 16 to be voluntarily enrolled and attached to military units.8 The government has argued that army sponsorship provides accommodation and education in a country where an estimated three million children are orphaned – the term being used to include fatherless or abandoned children – and where social services face grave financial constraints. The program has been criticized for inflicting harsh conditions on children and exposing them to the risks of bullying, other abuse and the hazards of military training.
Recent figures were unavailable, but the Defence Minister said in 1999 that Russian military institutions were accommodating 35,000 orphans and homeless children, and that 12,000 were receiving “full room and board and [were] enlisted in logistics units, military orchestras and cadet schools housed in … disbanded military academies”.
This figure appeared to include an estimated 5,000 students enrolled at official military training establishments, not all of whom were orphans.11 During the late 1990s another 7,000 reportedly lived permanently on military bases. The remaining 23,000 were non-permanent residents, many of them attached to military units on a part-time basis, to attend summer training camps or to obtain food. Together, these children formed “boys’ squads” which were reportedly integrated to varying degrees into regular units of the Russian army.
FORTY HOURS TO MAKE MEN OUT OF SCHOOLBOYS
Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov has signed a Moscow government decision obliging all tenth-graders of general secondary schools and students of vocational schools to undergo military training from April 20 to July 20. The training will be organised on the territory of the Taman motorised rifle and the Kantemirovskaya tank divisions, and every young man without health problems will within forty academic hours be introduced to the organisation and procedure of military service, laws on defence and other relevant legal acts, and to weapons and combat equipment adopted in ground forces. He will also shoot from an automatic rifle and a machine gun, get his first marching drill and fulfil norms in military sport. Forty hours is equivalent to five working days. The newspapers sounded the alarm. "Generals will again be torturing our boys!" - these are the most harmless words addressed to the schoolboys' parents and the students themselves by some of the media.
Their fears are understandable. Following the tragedy of the last year, when one of the schoolchildren died after running a long distance in a gas mask at a similar training in Khanty Mansiisk, any new military pre-conscription classes evoke serious misgivings. Won't they harm the boys' health, will the lads be treated with respect and care, and will not the military make them do what only well-trained professional soldiers can perform?
Ask the Russian Federation to ratify Child Soldiers Protocol
Every year thousands of children continue to fight and die in wars around the world, and many thousands more are left physically and emotionally scarred for life.
On 25 May 2000, the UN General Assembly adopted by consensus the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict. This represents a milestone in protecting children from participation in armed conflicts.
As of 2 May 2006,107 states were parties to the Protocol including three (France, UK and USA) of the five permanent members of the Security Council but not the Russian Federation and China.
The Russian Federation signed the Protocol on 15 February 2001 and has supported numerous Security Council resolutions urging states to ratify it*. However, despite these positive actions the Russian Federation has yet to ratify it and to incorporate its provision into national law.
To mark the sixth anniversary of the Protocol’s adoption, AI, together with the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, is calling on the Russian Federation to ratify it without any further delay. At the time of ratification the country should make a binding declaration setting 18 years as the standard minimum age for voluntary recruitment into its armed forces.
Child Soldiers Still on the March
The coalition says that "at least 60 governments, including Australia, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, and the United States continue to legally recruit children aged 16 and 17."
Influential groups such as the G8 (the leading industrialized nations, comprising the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia), the United Nations, and the European Union (EU) have all adopted positions against the use of child soldiers, Kelso said. "There are a lot of good things on paper, but they have not been translated into action," he said.
Four members of the Security Council – Algeria, Benin, China, and Russia – have not ratified the child soldiers treaty arising from the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
For these boys, the lessons are voluntary - a chance to play at being soldiers. But gas masks and guns were once as normal in Soviet schools as physics classes or maths
Originally posted by devilwasp
I am part of such an orginisation, the sea cadet corp. I learned to fire weapons from the age of 12 onwards and still do when I get the chance.
If you wish to have the debate over VOLUNTARY "cadet" style orginisations then make another thread in below top secret or PTS but frankly I dont see the russian army using these children as soldiers. Until I do all your doing is highlighting something that is being done across the globe; training.
Originally posted by Souljah
Many of these "boy squads" did serve in Chechnya and are as we speak integrated to varying degrees into regular units of the Russian army - which means they are no longer "boy squads". And you have to ask yourself, if many of these boys really did "Volunteer" for this - or was there just not many other options for them? I understand you (kind of) for apporving this kind of "boy squads", since you do not live in Russia and you have plenty of choices at your hand, yet you choose to be a sea cadet. Very well. Do you think those boys had the same choices as you?
Originally posted by Souljah
Originally posted by devilwasp
I am part of such an orginisation, the sea cadet corp. I learned to fire weapons from the age of 12 onwards and still do when I get the chance.
Shooting weapons from age of 12 is something you are proud of?
Seriously - you should get another "hobby".
I see you just can not wait to join the real army, go and visit new and insteresting lands, meet new and interesting people - and kill them.
Anyway, I do not find this kind of brainwashing of a young mans mind any good.
Wanna shoot and kill people for your job?
If you wish to have the debate over VOLUNTARY "cadet" style orginisations then make another thread in below top secret or PTS but frankly I dont see the russian army using these children as soldiers. Until I do all your doing is highlighting something that is being done across the globe; training.
Many of these "boy squads" did serve in Chechnya and are as we speak integrated to varying degrees into regular units of the Russian army - which means they are no longer "boy squads". And you have to ask yourself, if many of these boys really did "Volunteer" for this - or was there just not many other options for them? I understand you (kind of) for apporving this kind of "boy squads", since you do not live in Russia and you have plenty of choices at your hand, yet you choose to be a sea cadet. Very well. Do you think those boys had the same choices as you?
Originally posted by Souljah
Shooting weapons from age of 12 is something you are proud of?
Seriously - you should get another "hobby".
I see you just can not wait to join the real army, go and visit new and insteresting lands, meet new and interesting people - and kill them.
Anyway, I do not find this kind of brainwashing of a young mans mind any good.
Many of these "boy squads" did serve in Chechnya and are as we speak integrated to varying degrees into regular units of the Russian army - which means they are no longer "boy squads".
I understand you (kind of) for apporving this kind of "boy squads", since you do not live in Russia and you have plenty of choices at your hand, yet you choose to be a sea cadet.
Do you think those boys had the same choices as you?