US adds Pakistan, Turkey to child soldier recruiter list
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Washington DC, July 03: In the major development, United States has recently added Turkey and Pakistan to a list of countries that are implicated in the use of child soldiers over the past year. This is the first time a NATO member has been listed in the Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA) list.
The CSPA list consists of foreign governments that have recruited or used child soldiers. The entities reviewed for this designation include armed forces, police, other security forces, and government-supported armed groups.
In its 2021 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report U.S. State Department determined that Turkey was providing "tangible support" to the Sultan Murad Division in Syria, a faction of the Syrian opposition that Ankara has long, supported and a group that Washington said recruited and used child soldiers. According to the US child, a soldier is defined as any person under 18 years of age who takes a direct part in hostilities or who has been compulsorily recruited into governmental armed forces, police, or other security forces.
This designation could lead to sanctions on military assistance on the listed countries. The CSPA prohibits listed governments in the following US programs: International Military Education and Training, Foreign Military Financing, Excess Defence Articles, and Peacekeeping Operations. Some programs undertaken pursuant to the Peacekeeping Operations authority, are exempted. Additionally, the CSPA also prohibits the issuance of licenses for direct commercial sales of military equipment to such governments.
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Apart from Turkey and Pakistan, the list also includes Afghanistan, Burma, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. It is worth noting that three countries - Congo, Somalia, and Yemen - have appeared on the CSPA list since 2010 when the designation started. Nine others - Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Burma, Nigeria, South Sudan, and Syria - have appeared more than once over the last 10 years.