Security Sector Reform

The intersection—or rather, the cross-purposes—of U.S. national security and human rights policies emerged last week after news broke that President Obama waived four countries’ violations of the Child Service Prevention Act (CSPA) in favor of continued security assistance funding. Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Sudan, and Yemen all rank high on the State Department’s 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report list of violators of the child soldier prevention standards set forth in 2008’s CSPA.

The Canadian government will build a new national headquarters and launch a first-aid training program for police in Haiti, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon announced Thursday.

Speaking in Montreal, the minister said the projects are Canada's latest investments in rebuilding the main institutions of the impoverished Caribbean nation following January's devastating earthquake, which killed as many as 300,000 people and destroyed most of the country's infrastructure.

The U.N.'s top advocate for child soldiers, Radhika Coomaraswamy, told Turtle Bay she was "very disappointed" by U.S. President Barack Obama's decision to waive a prohibition on military assistance to foreign armies that employ youths in their fighting ranks. But she urged the U.S. military to use its influence to convince these countries to sign pacts with the U.N. designed to end the conscription of children.

NAIROBI, Kenya -- Somalia's government will work with the United Nations to release and rehabilitate child soldiers in its army, a U.N. envoy who tracks the recruitment of child soldiers said Wednesday.

The number of children in the Somali army is unclear, but a plan to be developed by the Somali government will help establish the extent of the problem, said Radhika Coomaraswamy, the U.N. special representative for children in armed conflict.

The Obama administration quietly waived a key section of the law meant to combat the use of child soldiers for four toubled states on Monday. Today, the White House tells The Cable that they intend to give these countries -- all of whose armed forces use underage troops -- one more year to improve before bringing any penalties to bear.

President Obama has granted a waiver allowing four countries to continue receiving U.S. military aid even though they use child soldiers, officials said Wednesday.Human rights groups reacted with surprise and concern, saying the decision would send the wrong message.

20 October 2010 – The head of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Chad, which also has a mandate for the Central African Republic (CAR), said today that the force is handing over its tasks to local military units that will assume security responsibilities in Chad when blue helmets leave at the end of this year.