UNITED NATIONS, June 15 -- Since the Transitional Federal Government was installed in Somalia, it has been known that it controlled its small turf by using child soldiers. The US provided salaries, the UN system provided training.
But as Mexico's Ambassador to the UN Claude Heller told Inner City Press on June 15, when a 12 year old with an enormous AK 47 is on the front page of the New York Times, what had been accepted changes. See video here.
Heller is the president of UN Security Council for June, and will chair a meeting on June 16 on children and armed conflict. After Inner City Press asked him about the TFG, Heller replied off camera that the issue will be raised on June 16.
In the interim, Inner City Press asked but the UN and US diplomats about the issues. Carolyn Vadino, a spokesperson at the US Mission to the UN, told Inner City Press that
"The United States is firmly against the use of child soldiers by all sides in any conflict. U.S. assistance provides salary support to TFG security forces. Prior to making payments to any individual member of these forces we take appropriate steps to verify the ages of such individuals to ensure that we are not funding salaries of anyone under the age of 18."
How in a war-torn environmental like Mogadishu the US claims full control over the payments to individual soldiers is not known. Another US official, speaking only on background, referred to safeguards in "the Leahy amendment." Clearly, there are more questions to be asked and answered.
At the June 15 noon briefing, Inner City Press asked UN Associate Spokesman Farhan Haq:
Inner City Press: on Somalia, there is this report of the use by the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of child soldiers, and this includes quotes from the UN saying that they’re aware of it. Since the UN provides training and some funding for the TFG forces, the UN system does, I’m wondering what safeguards are in place that the UN itself has not been either training or funding or otherwise involved in the use of child soldiers by the TFG?
Associate Spokesperson Haq: Certainly the United Nations does not approve of the use of child soldiers anywhere, and we would not encourage any of that in its operations. If I have any further information on the specifics of that, I’ll let you know. But certainly, among other things, tomorrow, we will have as one of the guests at the noon briefing, Radhika Coomaraswamy, who deals with this issue and you can certainly ask that of her as well.
We'll be there: watch this site.
Footnote: In the UN's North Lawn building on June 14, Inner City Press was approached by two Somali woman, in from Minneapolis for a conference on the Millennium Development Goals. Inner City Press was recently in Minneapolis, getting reaction from the Somali diaspora to the UN's replacement of the generally unpopular Ahmedou Ould Abdallah with Tanzania's Ambassador to the UN Augustine Mahiga.
The two women on Monday asked how to arrange a meeting to Mahiga, to tell him of Somalia's plight before he takes up his post in Nairobi. They spoke of the lack of opportunity for children in Mogadishu. But these are not voices that will be heard in Wednesday's Security Council session. But afterward and on the sidelines, there will be questions - perhaps even answers.
