The US cannot be complicit in allowing child soldiers

In its newly released 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report, the Biden administration provided a glaring, but largely unnoticed, admission that it has failed to implement a key provision of U.S. law aimed at preventing the recruitment and use of child soldiers.

The report acknowledged that the administration has yet to finalize a congressionally mandated list of governments complicit in child soldier recruitment or use. With this list responsible for spurring urgently needed U.S. child soldier prevention efforts, its delay could have potentially severe consequences.

The plight of children caught in conflict is growing increasingly dire. In 2022, the United Nations verified the highest number of grave violations against children in conflict on record. Despite decades of concerted action to end the use of children as tools of war, the recruitment and use of child soldiers remains one of the most widespread abuses inflicted upon children in conflict, with the UN having verified the recruitment and use of 7,622 child soldiers last year — a 21 percent increase compared to 2021.

Among those implicated in the use of child soldiers are security forces and armed groups led or supported by governments that rely heavily on U.S. defense cooperation to sustain their security operations. Somalia, for example, which recruited and used dozens of child soldiers in 2022, is among the most significant recipients of U.S. military aid in sub-Saharan Africa, with U.S. security assistance to and peacekeeping operations in the country amounting to roughly $3 billion over the past decade.

By conditioning some of the most sought-after U.S. arms, equipment and training on compliance with international law and norms around children and armed conflict, the Biden administration can incentive governments implicated in the recruitment or use of child soldiers to put an end to these horrendous practices.

It can do so by utilizing the Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA), which Congress passed in 2008. The CSPA requires the secretary of State to include in the Trafficking in Persons Report an annual list of governments whose armed forces, police or other security forces, or government-backed armed groups, recruit or use child soldiers. Governments included on this so-called CSPA list are prohibited from receiving certain types of U.S. arms sales and military assistance the following fiscal year, absent a presidential waiver or other exception.

Despite the Biden administration committing to center its foreign policy around human rights and elevate humanitarian considerations in U.S arms export decision-making — commitments closely aligned with the objectives of the CSPA — the administration failed to comply with the CSPA’s most basic requirement this year. By not including this year’s CSPA list in the 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report by June 30, the president has, for the first time since the law took effect, failed to meet its statutory deadline for reporting to Congress on governments subject to CSPA prohibitions. Although the report briefly notes that the list “was not final” at the time of publication but “will be updated as soon as possible,” it has still not been released nearly a month after its mandated due date.

While this delay may seem trivial, it has the potential to seriously undermine U.S. child soldier prevention efforts.

Following the release of each year’s CSPA list, the executive branch has until the end of September, when the fiscal year ends, to determine whether there are any national security grounds to waive the law’s prohibitions for any CSPA-listed countries. These determinations require careful balancing of the U.S. government’s interest in providing countries with otherwise-prohibited assistance, on the one hand, and its desire to leverage positive child soldier reforms, on the other, and often involve extensive inter- and intra-agency collaboration as well as consultations with non-governmental experts. Striking the right balance between these competing imperatives in just a few short months can be exceedingly difficult under the best of circumstances.

With the Biden administration having now delayed releasing this year’s CSPA list by nearly a month, it will be forced to make these waiver determinations on an even shorter timeline, which runs the risk of it making hasty, ill-informed decisions that fail to strike the right balance between U.S. national security interests and human rights commitments.

By failing to release this year’s CSPA list, the administration has also struck another unfortunate blow to a law already plagued by implementation issues. Over the years, presidents have routinely omitted governments from their CSPA lists that were widely reported to use child soldiers, including in some cases for overtly political reasons. Presidents have also made liberal use of national interest waivers, allowing CSPA-listed countries to receive a staggering 96 percent of the arms and assistance subject to CSPA prohibitions. While it is not too late for the Biden administration to reverse these trends, its failure to comply with the CSPA’s reporting requirement has so far only served to reinforce the sense that the U.S. is not committed to applying the law to its full potential.

If the Biden administration is serious about centering human rights in U.S. foreign policy, including in the realm of security cooperation, it should move immediately to finalize and release this year’s CSPA list and redouble its efforts to ensure the full and effective implementation of this vitally important law.

Ryan Fletcher is a research associate at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan research center located in Washington, D.C.