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Odongo, Godfrey --- "The regional African legal framework on children: a template for more robust action on children and armed conflict?" [2019] ELECD 1714; in Drumbl, A. Mark; Barrett, C. Jastine (eds), "Research Handbook on Child Soldiers" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 279

Book Title: Research Handbook on Child Soldiers

Editor(s): Drumbl, A. Mark; Barrett, C. Jastine

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section: Chapter 13

Section Title: The regional African legal framework on children: a template for more robust action on children and armed conflict?

Author(s): Odongo, Godfrey

Number of pages: 19

Abstract/Description:

Child soldiering is and has been in the past a global and not just an African phenomenon. At present, the involvement of children as soldiers is a growing feature of conflict situations outside Africa, and children under the age of 18 continue to be recruited into state armed forces in the UK and US (among other states). That said, considerable innovative legal and policy work has occurred within Africa. The African Union (AU) (formerly known as the Organization of African Unity (OAU)) is the umbrella continental body that brings together 55 African states with the aim of greater integration and regional collaboration on norms and policies in social, political, economic and other matters. In the late 1980s, the OAU sought to develop a specific Pan-African legal instrument to combat child soldiering, among other scourges. The adoption in 1990 by the OAU of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child is a significant and positive example of a regional effort to deploy a legal framework to combat child soldiering. This chapter argues that the Charter offers the potential for a more robust system for enforcing international legal principles governing the impact of armed conflict on children.