human rights" "
The tragedy of child soldiers (300,000) at the ACP-EU assembly. In the 1990s, over two million children died due to armed conflicts, and over a million remained orphaned; over six million were seriously injured or permanently disabled; and over ten million suffered serious psychological traumas. Meanwhile the number of child victims of war continues to increase. Their use as soldiers has spread with the development and proliferation of light weapons. To find a solution to this and other related problems, the joint ACP-EU parliamentary assembly met in Rome on 15 October and unanimously approved a report on children’s rights and in particular on the rights of children conscripted into the armed forces. Protection of juveniles also in the EU Constitution. The ACP-EU parliamentary assembly brings together MP of the 77 ACP countries (in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific) and 77 deputies of the European Parliament. The objective of the assembly is to promote interdependence between the northern and southern hemisphere, human rights and democracy. In pursuit of this goal, the assembly has pledged “to bring pressure to bear on their respective governments and parliaments so that children’s rights may finally become a common priority”. In particular, they have pledged to “combat poverty and the various forms of violence”. To this end, the EU’s Intergovernmental Conference was invited to “insert in the [constitutional] Treaty a juridical basis aimed at promoting and safeguarding children’s rights, as sanctioned in international law” and “in the legislation of the EU”. Appeal to the States engaged in armed conflicts. The text approved by the ACP-EU parliamentary assembly tackles the main questions relating to the rights of children: health and nutrition, children and armed conflicts, violence and abuse, the traffic in juveniles, and relations with the family. This is also in relation to what was reported in November last year by the secretary general of the UN Security Council, according to whom 600 million children throughout the world are living in conditions of extreme poverty; millions die each year from easily curable diseases; 125 million have no schooling, 250 million aged between 5 and 14 are forced to work, and 120 millions work on the streets. Today, in addition, some 300,000 children throughout the world are being used as soldiers by government forces or by armed opposition groups, especially in various African countries such as northern Uganda, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Ivory Coast and Somalia. To these governments in particular the assembly makes an appeal: to immediately put an end to the recruitment and use of child soldiers”. Girl soldiers, health and the family. In addition, the Council, the Commission and member states are urged to establish norms on the minimum age for civil and military personnel in the EU; maintain as a specific priority the question of girl soldiers who are particularly vulnerable to violence and abuse; and implement specific measures where no substantial progress is registered, e.g. in the form of sanctions on trade in natural resources, or the suspension of economic aid. The healthcare policies of the Commission and EU member countries should also devote particular attention to children and the young “in order to win the battle against diseases”, also by allocating “greater resources to the World Fund for combating AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria and for actions in the demographic and sanitary field”. Lastly, institutional, civil, social and economic policy should “assume as a priority the family and children within the family to correct the evident imbalance of society which at the European level tends to emphasize the economic aspects with the consequent weakening of social protection”.
