Children in Combat

THERE IS MUCH that the United Nations cannot be expected to do, but it can focus attention on human rights issues, particularly in lawless places where nobody else has much influence. For the past several years, the U.N. Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Olara Otunnu, has been building a framework to put pressure on armies that send children into battle, particularly in the kinds of places where neither the laws of war nor generally accepted standards have penetrated. According to information he has compiled during travels to Colombia, Sri Lanka, Congo and elsewhere, more than 250,000 children are exploited in conflict, as child soldiers and porters, spies and sex slaves. In the past decade, more than 2 million children have been killed in battle, and more than 6 million have been injured.

Mr. Otunnu has now presented his report on child combatants to the U.N. Security Council. Unusually, for a U.N. document, it names names, concluding with a list of offenders. Very unusually for the United Nations, which is rarely involved in internal conflicts, it lists both governments and insurgent rebel groups that exploit children. Among them are the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, the Janjaweed of Sudan, the Communist party of Nepal, as well as both irregular rebel forces and government forces in Uganda, Burma and Congo. Mr. Otunnu proposes specific actions, mostly involving careful, continued monitoring of these conflicts by existing regional and U.N. authorities. Already, he says, his list has generated a reaction from groups that 10 years ago might have ignored international criticisms. Because they rely on international connections for weapons, supplies and support, and because many hope to take power, they appear more sensitive to U.N. criticism than might have been expected. This is "more than just words," he says. "This is concrete, tangible."

Perhaps fearing the specificity of these recommendations, the Security Council has not yet developed a resolution based on them. This is an area where the U.S. government, if its diplomats were to take an interest, could push the United Nations to make a difference. Monitoring the use of children in the informal, insurgent wars that torment so much of the developing world might inhibit those who would otherwise violate the norms without a second thought.