U.N. report on child soldiers
omits Palestinians
Kofi Annan vows to 'identify and take measures against the violators'
December 17, 2002
Although U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's new report to the Security Council condemning nations and movements that recruit child soldiers identifies 23 different offending parties -- from Afghanistan to Burundi, from Colombia to Nepal, and from the Philippines to Sudan – one entity particularly known for massive recruitment of child warriors is conspicuously absent: the Palestinians.
The report was released yesterday with great fanfare.
"For the first time in an official report to the Security Council, those who violate standards for the protection of war-affected children have been specifically named and listed," said Olara Otunnu, Annan's special representative for children and armed conflict. It is "an important step forward in our efforts to induce compliance ... with international child protection obligation," he added, according to an Associated Press account.
The report is Annan's third to the council on children and armed conflict, and names as offenders Burundi, Congo, Liberia, Somalia, Colombia, Myanmar, Nepal, the Philippines, Sudan, northern Uganda and Sri Lanka, Angola, Kosovo, the Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau and others.
According to a United Press International report, Annan boasted about major gains in the fight against child involvement in war with two new U.N. laws earlier this year: the "Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child," which sets 18 years as the minimum age for compulsory recruitment and direct participation in hostilities; and the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court, which now classifies conscription, enlistment or use in hostilities of children below the age of 15 as a war crime in both international and civil wars.
At the same time, although unmentioned in the U.N. report, many Palestinian children continue to be raised, virtually from birth, to be "jihad warriors." Indeed, the ever-escalating intifada-cum-war in the Middle East has relied from the start on children as front-line combatants. The increasing popularity of radical Islamism in the aftermath of 9-11 and the resulting U.S. war on terror has only strengthened this macabre, death-glorifying movement.
Many Palestinian children are taught to hate Jews and to glorify "jihad," violence, death and "martyrdom" almost from birth, as an essential part of their culture and destiny.
The intentional recruitment of children to die as suicide bombers is accomplished through constant indoctrination in the mosques, by way of television programming, and in the school classroom.
Of the latter, Meyrav Wurmser, Ph.D., an expert in Middle East politics who taught at the U.S. Naval Academy and Johns Hopkins, says: "It's very scary – it's a state-run educational system that teaches its children to be martyrs."
Referring to Palestinian textbooks, she said: "What we see is the cynical use of children, who are exposed to a state-run ideology that pushes them to their death, in the name of Palestinian nationalism. Children are taught to idealize death, to view it as a positive. In many cases, they are told that death is not death at all, but rather the beginning of a new life."
Wurmser is currently the executive director of The Middle East Media & Research Institute, or MEMRI, and has published extensively on the Middle East and Arab and Israeli politics.
"The state threatens children if they're not willing to commit jihad," says Wurmser, "and tells them they will be punished by God if they do not commit jihad. If they do commit jihad, they and their families will be benefited by the state. [Their families] are promised major financial benefits if they kill themselves in suicide attacks against Israel."
To get over the fear, explained Wurmser, "they are told by their teachers that they're not going to die at all. There is definitely an element of denial they are exposed to."
This is not to say that some parents won't object to having their children converted to terrorists, says Wurmser, "but in the more religious families, there is no sense of sorrow. We see Palestinian mothers who have lost children - especially parents from very fundamentalist Muslim backgrounds -- who are not upset at all, but who say their sons have brought great honor to their families." This is typical, she says, of "radical national Arab regimes who have adopted the Islamic line."
Meanwhile, this week's report from Annan, in sounding the alarm, insists that more needs to be done to raise awareness of new age limits for military involvement, and to strengthen monitoring and reporting mechanisms "to identify and take measures against the violators."
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