Child Soldiers Global Report 2001 - United States of America

Mainly covers the period June 1998 to April 2001 as well as including some earlier information.

• Population:
  – total: 276,218,000
  – under-18s: 71,442,000
• Government armed forces:²⁰⁵⁷
  – active: 1,384,400 – National Guard and Select Reserve: 864,600
  – paramilitary: 53,000
• Compulsory recruitment age: no conscription
• Voluntary recruitment age: 17
• Voting age (government elections): 18
• Child soldiers: indicated in government armed forces – 23% of new recruits are 17; 0.24% have completed training and are assigned to units
• CRC-OP-CAC: signed on 5 July 2000; does not support "straight-18" position.
• Other treaties ratified: GC; ILO 182

• National recruitment legislation permits the entry of 17-year-olds into the armed forces. Only an extremely small per centage are ready for deployment under the age of 18. Nevertheless, 17-year-olds have served in US operations in the Gulf War, Somalia and Bosnia. Harassment and intimidation of young people in the military have been reported. The involvement of children from a very young age in military school programmes is a matter of concern.

CONTEXT

The United States of America maintains one of the largest militaries in the world, and as of 30 September 2000, had more then 250,000 military personnel stationed outside the United States in more than 140 countries. The largest US military presences are in Germany (69,000), Japan (40,000) and South Korea (37,000).²⁰⁵⁸ There have been 39 US military deployments or engagements between 1990 and 1998,²⁰⁵⁹ including the deployment of 665,476 troops in the 1991 Iraq war; 25,800 troops to Somalia in 1992-93; over 21,000 to Haiti in 1993-95; 58,000 to Bosnia in 1995-96; and 31,788 troops engaged in the 1998 "Operation Desert Fox" bombing of Iraq.²⁰⁶⁰

GOVERNMENT

National Recruitment Legislation and Practice

The United States currently maintains an all-volunteer military force, and accepts both male and female recruits from the age of seventeen.²⁰⁶¹ Permission from a parent or legal guardian is required for any enlistee who has not yet reached the age of eighteen. The present draft law (50 USC App. 454.455) allows for conscription at age eighteen, although the draft has not been activated since 1973, at the end of the Vietnam war.

Child Recruitment

According to the Defense Department's most recent statistics, 23% of new recruits into the US armed services are seventeen at the time when they sign their enlistment contracts.²⁰⁶² The majority of new recruits enter the armed services through the Delayed Entry Programme (DEP), which allows individuals to wait for up to a year before reporting for training. This programme is particularly targeted to students who enlist while still in school, but select a date after their graduation to report for training.

Six per cent of new active duty recruits are seventeen years old at the point when they report for training.²⁰⁶³ Approximately one-fifth of these are girls. Training periods for new recruits range from four to six months: four months for the Navy and Air Force, five months for the Army, and six months for the Marine Corps. By the completion of their training, the vast majority of service members have turned eighteen. The Defense Department reports that of those enlisted troops who have completed training and been assigned to units, 99.76% are age eighteen or older.²⁰⁶⁴

As of 30 September 2000, the number of seventeen-year olds on active duty was 3289: 1343 in the Army, 973 in the Navy, 379 in the Marine Corps, and 594 in the Air Force.²⁰⁶⁵

Despite a significant reduction in the size of the US armed forces over the last decade, the military has found it increasingly difficult to both recruit new soldiers and retain junior officers. Fiscal year 2000 was the first year since 1997 that each of the four services – Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines – met their recruitment goals.²⁰⁶⁶ Shortfalls during previous years briefly renewed public debate over reactivating the draft,²⁰⁶⁷ and prompted the services to step up recruitment significantly. For example, the Air Force increased its advertising budget ten-fold between 1993 and 1999, from $7.7 million to $76 million, and is increasing the number of its recruiters from 800 in 1999 to 1500 by early 2001.²⁰⁶⁸ Currently, the Defense Department spends $11,000 per recruit in advertising and recruitment costs.²⁰⁶⁹

Treatment of Young Recruits

The pressure to meet recruitment quotas has led some military recruiters to harass and intimidate young people who join the Delayed Entry Programme and subsequently decide that they do not want to enter military service. Although individuals enlisting into the DEP sign an enlistment contract, those who change their minds before induction may request separation from the programme without prejudice (i.e. no dishonourable discharge, no punishment, no reserve duty). The Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Management Policy states, "the Services consider enlistment in the DEP a serious commitment, but they do not require youth to enter military service against their will during peacetime."²⁰⁷⁰ In 1998, between 11 and 19 per cent (depending on the branch of service) of DEP enlistees asked to be released from service.²⁰⁷¹

A 1999 investigation into the DEP by an Atlanta television station found that "when young men and women changed their minds, they say military recruiters intimidated, threatened, and even outright lied to them in an effort to bully them into enlisting."²⁰⁷² The investigation found that recruiters threatened young people with arrest, bad discharge and blacklisting when they asked to be released from their agreements. Non-governmental organizations have reported similar cases of harassment, including one seventeen-year old who was reportedly repeatedly threatened with jail and told he would be denied any government loans for college if he refused to report for training.²⁰⁷³

Girls, who account for approximately 18% of new recruits and 24% of reserve recruits,²⁰⁷⁴ are vulnerable to sexual harassment by military recruiters. In 1999, one school district in Washington state banned recruiters from schools after several Army recruiters from a local recruiting station were investigated for sexual harassment of high school girls.²⁰⁷⁵ An investigation by a national magazine into sexual harassment by military recruiters cited similar incidents and quoted one veteran Army recruiter who estimated that up to 15% of male recruiters sexually harass females considering recruitment.²⁰⁷⁶

Child Deployment

Recent US military practice has been to assign soldiers to units, including combat units, after completion of their basic and technical training. Any soldier who is still seventeen after completion of his or her training may therefore be assigned to a combat unit and deployed into combat operations. Although as noted above, the number of such seventeen-year old troops is extremely small (less than one-quarter of one per cent), the United States has acknowledged that seventeen-year old soldiers served in US operations in the Gulf War, in Somalia, and in Bosnia.²⁰⁷⁷

In June 1999, the Defense Department reported that less than 100 seventeen-year-olds served in combat units at that time, and that these soldiers were stationed primarily in the Balkan region.²⁰⁷⁸

The Defense Department was unable to give more recent figures in response to a March 2001 request. The Defense Department is also unable to provide information on casualties among seventeen-year old troops. However, of the 148 US soldiers killed during the Gulf war, none are believed to have been under the age of eighteen.²⁰⁷⁹

Military Training and Military Schools

Military-run programmes exist for children as young as eight. In the Young Marines, boys and girls from age 8-18 wear uniforms, are assigned military ranks, and participate in "boot camp" and rifle drills. The programme has over 200 units nation-wide, and has grown from approximately 8,000 participants in 1998 to 14,865 in early 2001.²⁰⁸⁰

A far larger number of children – over 380,000 in 1999 – participate in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC). JROTC, established in the United States in 1916, is an elective high school course taught by retired military personnel at approximately 2700 secondary schools in the United States. The military provides each unit with uniforms, instructional and other materials, and shares the cost of the military instructors with local schools. Students can enrol in JROTC as cadets beginning at age fourteen. Over 40% of cadets are girls.²⁰⁸¹

The programme's stated goal is "to motivate and develop young people."²⁰⁸² Its curriculum includes communication skills, leadership, physical fitness, history and citizenship and drug abuse prevention. JROTC cadets also participate in military drills with both real and dummy firearms. Some JROTC programmes also have a marksmanship component and are taught how to use guns in firing ranges.²⁰⁸³

About 40% of JROTC cadets go on to pursue careers or reserve duty in the military²⁰⁸⁴ and JROTC cadets who finish high school are much more likely – by five times – to sign up for the military right straight from school than non-cadets.²⁰⁸⁵ Although the armed forces officially state that JROTC is not a recruiting programme (and cadets are not members of the armed forces), a March 1999 policy memorandum ordered Army JROTC instructors to make Army recruiting efforts a part of their official duties.²⁰⁸⁶ In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee on 9 February 2000, then Defense Secretary William Cohen referred to JROTC as "one of the best recruiting devices that we could have."²⁰⁸⁷

The Defense Department has proposed expanding JROTC to an additional 700 schools by the year 2005.²⁰⁸⁸ In 1999, Congress approved a plan to expand Army JROTC to 250 new schools over the next five years.²⁰⁸⁹ During the same period, the Navy plans to increase its JROTC units from 435 to 700 schools,²⁰⁹⁰ and the Air Force from 609 to 945.²⁰⁹¹

JROTC programmes are most often found in schools with a high proportion of non-white students, and 59% of JROTC cadets are minority youth (compared with approximately 25% of the general population). JROTC is also disproportionately found in the South and in poor communities. Sixty-five per cent of JROTC units are in southern states.²⁰⁹²

Both students and non-governmental organisations have criticised the programme for introducing guns into schools and promoting violence. In February 2000, high school students in Kansas charged that Navy JROTC in local schools violated school weapons policies, and petitioned their school board to reconsider whether JROTC merited academic credit.²⁰⁹³ In November 1999, the Chicago Public Schools abolished rifle classes taught as part of JROTC programmes in 33 city high schools after widely publicised school shootings in Colorado and other parts of the country. The schools chief said, "We don't want to send a contradictory message in the school by on the one hand discouraging the use of firearms and being tough on violence and then on the other having a marksmanship curriculum."²⁰⁹⁴

DEVELOPMENTS

International Standards

The United States of America signed the CRC-OP-CAC on 5 July 2000 but does not support a "straight-18" position. Prior to January 2000, the United States strongly opposed efforts to raise the international minimum age for recruitment or participation in armed conflict to eighteen. The US agreed that the 15-year limit established by the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions was "unacceptably low," but argued in favour of a seventeen-year age limit for both voluntary recruitment and participation, in accordance with domestic US law and practice.

Ultimately, however, the US agreed to join in a consensus adoption of the draft text which became the Optional Protocol. After its adoption, President Clinton hailed the protocol as "a historic achievement to protect the world's children."²⁰⁹⁵

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2057 Annual Report to the President and the Congress, Annual Defense Report, Secretary of Defense, 2001. Figures as of 30/9/00.

2058 Ibid.

2059 Center for Defense Information Military Almanac, 1999, p. 40-42.

2060 Ibid.

2061 10 USC 505, first embodied in statute in 1917.

2062 US Department of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, citing statistics from Population Representation in the Military Services, fiscal year, 1999 (not yet published).

2063 Ibid.

2064 US Department of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs.

2065 Ibid.

2066 American Forces Press Service, 3/10/00.

2067 See, for example, Myers, Steven Lee, "The Short-Handed Military: A Wisp of a Draft,", New York Times, February 7, 1999 and McCormick, David, "The Draft Isn't the Answer,. New York Times, 10/2/99.

2068 Abrams, Arnold, Newsday, 19/2/00.

2069 Army Ads Open New Campaign, Washington Post, 21/9/00.

2070 Population Representation in the Military Forces, FY98.

2071 Ibid.

2072 Fox 5 Atlanta, "GI Lies", first broadcast 8/11/99.

2073 "Gerard Gratiot: Rescued from the DEP,. The Objector, Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, Fall 1999.

2074 Population Representation in the Military Services, Fiscal Year 1998, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Force Management Policy), 9/99.

2075 Milner, Glen, "Patterns of Behaviour: Army Recruiters and the Sexual Harassment of Female Recruits,. unpublished article, 12/2/00.

2076 Thompson, Mark, "Offensive Maneuvers: The Army, Already Troubled by Sexually Predatory Drill Sergeants, Has a Problems with its Recruiters Too,. TIME magazine, 5/5/97.

2077 United States demarche on involvement of children in armed conflict, 3/98.

2078 Olsen, Elizabeth, "UN Agency Adopts Treaty on Child Labour,. New York Times, 18/6/99.

2079 Associated Press, "US officials remember Gulf War Casualties in Kuwait", 26/2/01.

2080 Young Marines of the Marine Corps League Headquarters, telephone conversation, 5/3/01.

2081 American Friends Service Committee.

2082 US Army Junior ROTC, http://www-rotc.monroe.army.mil/jrotc/goal.asp

2083 "Does JROTC help our efforts to prevent school violence?. American Friends Service Committee National Youth and Militarism Programme, http://www.afsc.org/youthmil/html/issues/schools/jrotc.htm

2084 Associated Press, "Army Expands Junior ROTC Programmes,. 30/7/99.

2085 American Friends Service Committee.

2086 Army Cadet Command Policy Memorandum 50 – US Army Recruiting Command (USAREC) Partnership Initiatives (30/3/99).

2087 Congressional Quarterly Daily Monitor, 18/2/00.

2088 American Friends Service Committee.

2089 "Army Expands Junior ROTC Programmes,. op. cit.

2090 Associated Press, "Navy Plans to Expand Junior ROTC in High Schools,. 21/12/99.

2091 DiDomenico, Senior Master Sgt. Holly, "Military Maneuvers: Air Force JROTC Expands in Schools,. The New Orleans Times-Picayune, 12/3/00.

2092 American Friends Service Committee.

2093 Beem, Kate, "Students Question Value of JROTC,. The Kansas City Star, 29/2/00.

2094 "A Hard Look at Violence from Rifle Classes to Game Brawls, Schools Struggle to Send the Right Message,. The Chicago Tribune, 16/11/99.

2095 Statement by President Clinton, 21/1/00, The White House, Office of the Press Secretary.