Introduced by Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Sam Brownback (R-KS) on April 19th, 2007, the Child Soldier Prevention Act of 2007 (S. 1175 — summary, fulltext) would restrict U.S. military assistance — including foreign military sales, direct commercial sales, U.S. international military education and training, excess defense articles and foreign military financing — for governments that fail to take steps to demobilize and stop recruiting children into their forces. Countries that do take these steps would be eligible for assistance in the demobilization, disarmament and reintegration processes.

The use of child soldiers contravenes official U.S. policy and practice as well as international agreements signed by the United States. Yet according to Rachel Stohl, Senior Analyst at the Center for Defense Information, the U.S. continues to supply eight of the nine countries identified by the U.S. Department of State as recruiting children into armed forces with military assistance.

Selectively granting and withholding military assistance in order to discourage governments from the using child soldiers could prove to be an effective technique to end the practice. Furthermore, the bill encourages the expansion of funding to rehabilitate former child soldiers, as well as cooperation with international legal structures that can bring to justice those who recruit child soldiers. Numerous human rights and defense organizations support this legislation, including Human Rights Watch, the Center for Defense Information, Amnesty International USA and WorldVision.

This bill is still in the first step in the legislative process. After they are introduced, U.S. Senate bills are deliberated, investigated and revised by committee before they are scheduled for general debate in the Senate. Currently S. 1175 is under consideration by the Senate Foreign Relations and Judiciary Committees, and may undergo significant changes yet.

The full text of Senate Bill S. 1175 is available here. A Question & Answer document about the bill can be found here.

If you are a U.S. citizen, speak out and get involved by asking your representative in Congress to support the Child Soldier Prevention Act of 2007 (S. 1175).