ABSTRACT

THE ROLE OF THE UNITED NATIONS

Iqbal Rullya R, IN PREVENTING AND REDUCING
CHILD SOLDIERS IN INTERNAL
2013 /ARMED CONFLICT
Faculty of Law, Syiah Kuala University
(iv, 72), pp., bibl.

M. Putra Iqbal, S.H., LL.M

The increasing of child soldiers in internal armed conflict has become a

problem and taken attention of many parties in the world particularly the United
Nations. The United Nations is the biggest organization which has obligation to
maintain world's peace and security and solving the humanitarian problems.
Nowadays, one of their focuses is in preventing and reducing child soldiers in
internal armed conflict The United Nations in this case focus to the role of the
General Assembly, the Security Council, the Special Representative of Secretary
General for Children and Armed Conflict and The United Nutions Children's Fund
(UNICEF) in preventing and reducing child soldiers
This research aims to look at the United Nations role in international law
making process for child soldier prevention; how the legal and non-legal actions are
conducted by the United Nations to prevent and reduce the involvement of child
soldier in internal armed conflict; and obstacles faced by the United Nations in
preventing and reducing child soldiers.
In order to compile data in the research, library research is applied to get
secondary data, through reading, citing and analyzing data that are related to object
of research. The methodology apply is normative research.
Based on the research, there are several laws that have been made by the UN
for child soldiers prevention including the UN Convention on the Rights of the
Child, Optional Protocol of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child,
Additional Protocol II of the Geneva Convention, the Security Council Resolutions
and Cape Town Principles. For the legal and non legal actions that conducted by the
UN in preventing and reducing child soldiers including give sanction, advocacy,
monitoring and reporting, promoting, naming and shaming, giving aids such as
food and education, cooperation with local partners or other NGOs and make
recommendations. The obstacles faced by the UN are difficult to reduce child
soldiers while a new conflict increase, failure to apply programs such as
reintegration process psychological treatment will make children join back to
armed groups, cross border recruitment, re-recruitment of ex-child soldiers, and
failed to apply a strategy which has made.
It is recommended that the UN need to create a clear regulation that has
heavy punishment that applied to its member or countries or militias that use and
recruit child soldiers and the UN should make more cooperation with its state
members or other NGOs or other governments to monitor children or ex-child
soldiers are not recruited again by armed forces or militias.