A group of approximately 12 State Department officials have accused Secretary of State Rex Tillerson of violating a U.S. law which is intended to prevent foreign armies from enlisting children, Reuters reported citing internal government document.
According to the confidential “dissent” memo, Tillerson breached the Child Soldiers Prevention Act with his decision from June, when he did not include Iraq, Myanmar and Afghanistan on the U.S. list of counties that use children as soldiers. This law says that the children under 18 should not be “recruited, conscripted or otherwise compelled to serve as child soldiers.”
Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Mali, Sudan, Syria and Yemen are all on the list. United States can more easily give military assistance to countries that are not on the list. The documents show that the decision of Tillerson was at odds with an unanimous recommendation by the heads of the state Department’s regional bureaus overseeing embassies in the Middle East and Asia, the U.S. envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, the department’s human rights office and in-house lawyers.
“Beyond contravening U.S. law, this decision risks marring the credibility of a broad range of State Department reports and analyses and has weakened one of the U.S. government’s primary diplomatic tools to deter governmental armed forces and government-supported armed groups from recruiting and using children in combat and support roles around the world,” said the July 28 memo.
Tillerson’s adviser Brian Hook in September responded to the memo and said that the three countries did use child soldiers, but he added that it was necessary to distinguish between governments “making little or no effort to correct their child soldier violations … and those which are making sincere – if as yet incomplete – efforts.”
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