On the recordFebruary 17, 2011
In 2008, this body passed the Child Soldiers Prevention Act. It was part of the William Wilberforce Human Trafficking Victims Protection Act. The bill declared that the United States would not provide military assistance to countries found guilty of child conscription. With broad bipartisan support, we declared that this is an affront to human dignity and an affront to civilization itself. We made it known that all children, no matter where they are, should be on playgrounds and not battlegrounds. Mr. Chairman, it is very difficult for us to envision that a child would be put in military fatigues, a gun in their hand, and then forced to fight. But it does happen, and it does happen in the world today. The government of Chad, to which we provide military assistance, was found guilty of using child soldiers in the 2010 State Department Trafficking-in-Persons Report. As the law we passed provided, Chad was granted a national security interest waiver in the hopes that Chad would take serious and aggressive strides toward ending this serious human rights violation and be a valuable military partner with the United States. But we have to ask, where is the progress? With the withdrawal of the U.N. mission in Chad at the end of last year, children as young as 13 years old are now being preyed upon as child soldiers.
