The European Union and the ACP (Africa, Caribbean and Pacific) States have joined ranks in defence of the children who, in various countries, are forced to carry arms and used as conscripts in military actions. Vitaliano Gemelli, chairman of the Commission for the petitions of the Parliament in Strasbourg, has described to SIR the content of the “Report on the rights of children and of child soldiers”, of which he is the co-author, together with his Ugandan colleague Ephraim Kamuntu, presented to the ACP-EU joint parliamentary assembly. The report, unanimously approved last October, is now being diffused among the European institutions and submitted to ratification by the Parliaments of all the ACP States, “with a view – explains Gemelli to obtaining wide political and cultural sensitization”. He adds that it is “a joint report. Its aim is to demonstrate the need to tackle together the defence of the rights of children, who have different problems, but who share the same lack of institutional representation. We have highlighted Gemelli continues no denunciation of violations, but have recalled all the conventions that States have signed and pledged to accept, and we have declared the crime against children a “crime against humanity’. Moreover, we have placed this crime under the jurisdiction of the international penal Tribunal, if States fail to pursue the perpetrators of crimes against juveniles”. The document also calls for the tracability of light weapons available on the black market, “in order to be able to identify the illegal trafficking of such weapons”. Each year the joint ACP-EU Assembly will monitor the situation and draw up a document to verify the implementation of the legislation of individual states and the application of the present report, and so put an end forever to the tragic reality of child soldiers.
