Please Participate before February 12th - Learn How

Help Stop the Use of Child Soldiers:
Write a letter to your Members of Congress urging them to co-sponsor the Child Soldier Prevention Act of 2007.

By Mail:
Download a sample letter then mail or e-mail to your elected representatives. Locate addresses at: www.senate.gov and www.house.gov.

By Phone:
Dial the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and request to be connected to your elected representative.

Write to Your Local Newspaper:
Urge your local newspaper and radio/television news programs to do a story about child soldiers!

Learn more:

• About the Child Soldier Prevention Act
• About child soldiers

Share information about the bill with your friends, classmates and colleagues.

Act Now! Support the Child Soldier Prevention Act of 2007
Limit US Military Assistance to Governments Using Child Soldiers

Today, an estimated 250,000 children are serving in armed conflict in 20 countries around the world. These “child soldiers” include boys and girls, sometimes as young as eight years old, serving in government armies, government-linked militias, and armed opposition groups. They serve in all aspects of contemporary warfare as spies, messengers, guards, cooks, porters, security officers, and too often, as front-line combatants. Many female child soldiers are forced to serve as sex slaves or “wives” of military commanders.

Although many child soldiers are found in non-governmental armed opposition groups, the State Department reports that governments in nine countries are implicated in child soldier use. The US government provides military assistance to ten of them.

Some of these governments recruit children into their own armed forces, while others are directly linked to militias that use children in warfare. They include: Burundi, Chad, Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Uganda. US military assistance to these countries ranges from small amounts of funding for military training to hundreds of millions in weapons, training, and military financing. US tax dollars should not be used to support the exploitation of children as soldiers. Moreover, US weapons should not end up in the hands of children.

The Child Soldier Prevention Act (S1175) is bipartisan legislation introduced by Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Sam Brownback (R-KS). The bill would restrict five categories of US military assistance (International Military Education and Training, Foreign Military Financing, Foreign Military Sales, Direct Commercial Sales, and Excess Defense Articles) to governments described above until they end any involvement in the recruitment or use of child soldiers. The bill would not automatically cut off these military assistance programs; governments taking concrete steps to end child recruitment and demobilize child soldiers would remain eligible for assistance directed solely towards the professionalization of their forces for up to two years before any prohibition on assistance would be imposed.

This bill will provide clear incentives for governments currently implicated in the recruitment and use of child soldiers to end this practice and demobilize children from their forces. It also encourages the United States to expand funding to rehabilitate former child soldiers and work with the international community to bring to justice rebel armed groups that kidnap children for use as soldiers.