Child rights experts on Monday stressed that the state should take all feasible measures to prevent recruitment and usage of children in hostilities by armed groups. Addressing a national consultation for the ratification of the Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention of the Rights of Child (UNCRC) organized by the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC), they said that it was the responsibility of the state to take legal measures to prohibit and criminalize such practices. Arshad Mahmood, senior manager Child Rights Governance Save the
Children International said that national and international advocacy could play an important role in pressuring countries to implement international treaties. He said that the Optional Protocol to the UNCRC was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly resolution in 2000 and enforced in 2002.
The UN General Assembly had adopted a new Optional Protocol to the UNCRC, establishing a complaints procedure for the violation of children’s rights.
“The new treaty,” Arshad said, “will enable children, or their representatives, claiming that their rights had been violated to bring a complaint to an international committee of children’s rights experts if they had not been able to get remedies for these violations in their countries.”
He said that currently 150 countries had ratified the Optional Protocol and the need for this Protocol was felt as article 38 of the UNCRC was not consistent with the protection of children, as it stated that 15 year olds were not to take part in direct hostilities and prohibited the recruitment of children under the age of 15 years into armed forces. Speaking on the occasion, National Manager (Child Rights) SPARC Iqbal Detho said that once states sign or ratify international conventions, state parties are bound to make their domestic laws in conformity with international obligations. Furthermore, states were accountable for respecting, protecting and fulfilling those rights, even if those rights were violated by non-state actors.
Safdar Raza said that civil society had played its role in monitoring and disseminating information regarding UNCRC.
He said that any state that ratified the Optional Protocol must raise the minimum age of voluntary recruitment set at 15 years in the conventi
