Earlier this week, Marcy Wheeler noted that the White House had issued a memorandum waiving the prohibition on military aid to countries that use child soldiers with respect to Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Yemen. All four of which were listed in the 2008 Child Soldiers Prevention Act as countries to whom funding should be prohibited because of their use of child soldiers.
The reason? Josh Rogin reports that the White House is concerned that the funding ban could jeopardize the anti-terrorism efforts the administration is undertaking in those countries:
Essentially, the administration decided that it could not ensure that the offending countries would be able to abide by the law in time -- the breach of which would have required Washington to pull funding. In the end, the administration's calculus weighed in favor of continuing to fund several ongoing assistance programs like military training and counterterrorism advising. They decided to give each country at least one more year to implement reforms before sanctions are brought to bear, according to the official.
If the government doesn't see prosecuting child soldiers as unethical, then it's hard to see why funding countries that employ them would be. After all, the entire point of a "child soldier" is that their service is coerced, and if a 15-year-old is just as responsible as an adult for being pressed into the service of a terrorist group, then there's really no such thing as a child soldier.
The irony? Last year, the Justice Department inaugurated a new Human Rights Section that was meant to prosecute people residing in the U.S. who are guilty of "international human rights violations including the torture, war crimes, genocide and child soldier statutes."
Does that include people from countries we give money to?
