Children Recruited to Fight With Rebels in Libya - Reports (UPDATED 1500GMT)

Child soldier, photo courtesy Oxfam.org(HN, March 31, 2011) - Teenage children are joining the fight to oust Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, according to reports.

The British broadcaster, Independent Television News (ITN), today broadcast images of rebel soldiers that are clearly below 20 years old. One of them, Ahmed Saled, brandishing a large knife and wearing a Nike shirt, said he was 17 and claimed his mother knew that he had joined rebel forces.

The development comes amid reports that the US is preparing to arm the rebels, who are vastly outnumbered and out-powered by Gaddafi forces. If children are indeed recruited it creates a tricky situation for the Obama Administration and allies - many of whom are in the forefront of the campaign to abolish recruitment of children in conflict.

In 2000 then U.S. President Bill Clinton signed the Child Soldier’s Treaty - an Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Treaty raised the age for conscription and participation in conflict to 18 from the old international standard of 15 and requires governments to take "all feasible measures to ensure that members of their armed forces who have not attained the age of 18 years do not take a direct part in hostilities."

"Many of these combatants are young, are poorly trained, are child soldiers," Emira Woods, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies and an expert on U.S. foreign policy with a special emphasis on Africa and the developing world, told Jim Lehrer on PBS News Hour, referring to the current conflict in Libya.

She said the region is already awash in arms and that arming the rebels "could be a disaster."

The rebels are not the only side to be accepting children in the conflict.

Earlier this month, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said it has received reports that child soldiers are being recruited to fight for Gaddafi loyalists.Child soldiers guard a road in the DRC. Credit: UNICEF

UNICEF spokeswoman Marixie Mercado was quoted as saying there is "a serious concern" that child soldiers are among the mercenaries that Gaddafi is hiring to attack rebel forces. She reportedly said the mercenaries had come from Chad, Niger, Central African Republic and Sudan's Darfur region, all places "with known child soldiers."

The U.N. special envoy for children in armed conflicts, Radhika Coomaraswamy, has also quoted reports that children are being killed and injured by taking up arms in Libya.

- HUMNEWS staff, wires