"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not." ~~Thomas Jefferson

"Who will protect us from those who protect us?"

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. ~ Thomas Jefferson

"None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free." ~~Goethe

03 October 2012

Child soldiers...

 
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama issued a new executive order last week to fight human trafficking, touting his administration's handling of the issue.
 
"When a little boy is kidnapped, turned into a child soldier, forced to kill or be killed — that's slavery," Obama said in a speech at the Clinton Global Initiative. "It is barbaric, and it is evil, and it has no place in a civilized world. Now, as a nation, we've long rejected such cruelty."
 
But for the third year in a row, Obama has waived almost all U.S. sanctions that would punish certain countries that use child soldiers, upsetting many in the human rights community.
 
Last week Obama issued a presidential memorandum waiving penalties under the Child Soldiers Protection Act of 2008 for Libya, South Sudan and Yemen, penalties that Congress put in place to prevent U.S. arms sales to countries determined by the State Department to be the worst abusers of child soldiers in their militaries. The president also partially waived sanctions against the Democratic Republic of Congo to allow some military training and arms sales to that country.
 
Human rights advocates saw the waivers as harmful to the goal of using U.S. influence to urge countries that receive military assistance to move away from using child soldiers and contradictory to the rhetoric Obama used in his speech.
 
"After such a strong statement against the exploitation of children, it seems bizarre that Obama would give a pass to countries using children in their armed forces and using U.S. tax money to do that," said Jesse
 
Eaves, the senior policy advisor for child protection at World Vision.
The Obama administration doesn't want to upset its relationships with countries that it needs for security cooperation, but the blanket use of waivers is allowing the administration to avoid the law's intent, which was to use force the U.S. government to put a greater priority on human rights and child protection when doling out military aid, he said.
 
"The intent in this law was to use this waiver authority only in extreme circumstances, yet this has become an annual thing and this has become the default of this administration," Eaves said.
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The Romney campaign has made Obama's record on human rights a feature of its foreign-policy critique, with top advisers accusing the president of giving the issue less importance.
 
"Barack Obama has broken with a tradition that goes back to Woodrow Wilson about human rights and values animating our foreign policy. This administration has not been an effective voice for human rights," said Romney campaign senior adviser for foreign policy Rich Williamson, who also served as George W. Bush's special envoy to Sudan, told The Cable in July.
 
Bush signed the child-soldiers law in 2008. It prohibits U.S. military education and training, foreign military financing and other defense-related assistance to countries that actively recruit troops under the age of 18. Countries are designated as violators if the State Department's annual Trafficking in Persons report identifies them as recruiting child soldiers. The original bill was sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.
 
Jo Becker, advocacy director for the children's rights division at Human Rights Watch, told The Cable that where the United States has used some pressure, such as in Congo, where there was a partial cutoff of military aid last year, there was a positive effect.
 
"After years of foot-dragging, Congo is close to signing a U.N. action plan to end its use of child soldiers," she said. "But in other countries with child soldiers, including South Sudan, Libya and Yemen, the U.S. continues to squander its leverage by giving military aid with no conditions."
 
NSC Spokesman Tommy Vietor did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
 
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What do you think about this?  

Just more criminal activity by the criminals in the current administration? 
 
Stay safe.

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