End to recruitment of minors to armed forces urged
Ekklesia
Quakers and Unitarians have welcomed the move by Julian Huppert, Liberal MP for Cambridge and Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton, to table an Early Day Motion calling on Parliament to raise the age of recruitment into the armed forces to eighteen.
Quakers and Unitarians have welcomed the move by Julian Huppert, Liberal MP for Cambridge and Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton, to table an Early Day Motion calling on Parliament to raise the age of recruitment into the armed forces to eighteen.
Parliament’s Human Rights Committee has already called for Government action to implement the Optional Protocol on the Rights of the Child. But as things stand soldiers joining the army as sixteen year-olds, with their parents’ support, may be held to their commitment which was made as a minor, for four years beyond their eighteenth birthday.
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