US Labor Dept lends support to combat use of child soldiers

US Labor Secretary Elaine Chao on Wednesday launched a multi-million dollar project in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), to end the recruitment and support the rehabilitation of child soldiers in the Great Lakes region of Africa, the US Department of Labor reported. Funded by the US Department of Labor, the US $7 million International Labor Organization/International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labor (ILO/IPEC) Global Child Soldiers programme is part of a new $13 million global initiative Chao announced at a May 2003 Department of Labor-sponsored conference, "Children in the Crossfire: Prevention and Rehabilitation of Child Soldiers". That meeting brought together 500 representatives from nations and agencies committed to ending the use of children as soldiers. The launch was part of Chao's four-day visit to Africa to highlight US efforts to end the worst forms of child labor including using children as soldiers and trafficking in children, and to promote programmes in the workplace to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS. "The forced recruitment of children as combatants is one of the worst forms of child labor and must be eliminated," Chao said. "Here in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, encouraging progress has been made in demobilizing and repatriating child soldiers. Our hearts go out to these survivors, many of whom have very little hope of building a better life without our collective help." Besides the DRC, the programme would also develop comprehensive strategies to help former child soldiers in neighbouring Burundi and Rwanda, as well as in other countries such as the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Colombia, a Labor Department communique stated. It noted that the US was a signatory to ILO Convention No. 182, which condemns the forced recruitment of children for use in armed conflict as one of the worst forms of child labor. The Convention calls upon countries to assist one another in eliminating all adverse forms of child labor as a matter of urgency. Citing conservative estimates, the Labor Department said that more than 300,000 children had been forcibly recruited to fight by government-sponsored armed forces or by other armed groups in more than 30 conflicts around the world.