Rights group reproaches Obama's aid to S. Sudan

NEW YORK

Human rights groups are criticising President Barack Obama's recent decision to allow South Sudan to receive US military aid despite its use of child soldiers.

“For the children of South Sudan, his legacy is clear,” Juba-based peace activist Geoffrey Duke wrote Thursday in regard to Mr Obama. “He has failed them.”

“With this announcement, the Obama administration has squandered its last chance to hold the corrupt, malignant South Sudanese leadership accountable for its crimes,” Mr Duke said in a commentary published on the Washington-based Politico website.

The president issued waivers last week that enable the US to continue providing military training and peacekeeping assistance to three East African countries in addition to South Sudan, which have recruited children into their armed forces.

A US law prohibiting military aid in such cases permits exemptions from the sanctions when the president determines that waivers are “in the national interest of the United States”.

Mr Obama invoked that provision in regard to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Somalia as well as South Sudan.

He also granted waivers under the Child Soldiers Protection Act to Nigeria, Iraq and Myanmar.

Three other countries found to be using child soldiers — Sudan, Syria and Yemen — were given no exemptions, but the US does not provide military assistance to any of them.

The number of countries with children in their armies has risen from six to 10 during Mr Obama's tenure.

“That’s a terrible legacy,” declared Jo Becker, children's rights specialist at Human Rights Watch.

“If he had used this law more aggressively, perhaps the number would not be as large. And perhaps fewer girls and boys will need to lose their childhoods and their lives while fighting other people’s wars.”

The four East African countries that can continue receiving US military training and peacekeeping support will remain ineligible to buy arms from the US.

“We've seen this approach can work,” Human Rights Watch said in response to these partial prohibitions.

“Withholding aid from DR Congo in previous years prompted its government to largely end its use of child soldiers.”

INCREASE IN CHILD SOLDIERS

But advocates and researchers are expressing dismay that Mr Obama has again spared South Sudan from the full impact of the Child Soldiers Protection Act.

The government in Juba is expected to receive $30 million next year in US peacekeeping assistance.

“There is no evidence partial waivers have worked to change South Sudan’s poor behaviour and impunity,” says the Stimson Centre, a Washington-based think tank.

Unicef points out that 16,000 children have been inducted into the ranks of armed groups in South Sudan since the outbreak of civil war nearly three years ago.

“Many, if not most, are coerced,” Unicef observes.

And the practice of forcing children to become soldiers has not stopped in South Sudan.

A total of 650 have joined warring forces in the disintegrating country since the start of this year, Unicef says.

More may be conscripted in the coming months, the UN's child agency adds.

“At this precarious stage in South Sudan's short history, Unicef fears that a further spike in child recruitment could be imminent,” warns Justin Forsyth, the agency's deputy director.

The Stimson Centre notes that President Obama has waived sanctions against Juba partly on the basis that South Sudan forces are taking part in the multinational campaign to destroy the Lord's Resistance Army.

The LRA is “infamous for its systematic kidnapping and use of child soldiers,” the think tank points out.

“The irony of supporting one government that is using child soldiers to hunt down a group that has relied upon child soldiers to wage war for decades seems to be lost on the Obama administration, which has waived CSPA prohibitions every year for South Sudan and permitted the country to receive $120 million in US military assistance and more than $20 million in US arms sales.”

Edited by Philip Momanyi