Child soldiers in rebel group hardly news to AFP

IT is no surprise that armed Muslim groups, including the newly-formed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) of expelled Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) Commander Ameril Umbra Kato, are using child soldiers, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) said on Friday.

“We have known that (use of child soldiers) for a long time,” said Maj. Enrico Gil Ileto, the acting chief of the Armed Forces’ Public Affairs Office.

“But we have no official figures on the number of children being used as combatants” by the MILF, he added.

The Muslim insurgent group does not subscribe to existing local and international laws prohibiting the use of children younger than 18 as combatants, the military official explained.

“They claimed that they have their own law to follow that allowed even children to take up arms,” Ileto said.

The use of child soldiers is strictly prohibited under Protocol II of the Geneva Convention and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children.

It is also prohibited under existing local laws.

Child soldiers were spotted by local media during a recent interview with Kato at an undisclosed area in the Mindanao region in southern Philippines.

One of them carried a backpack with “USAID” (United States Agency for International Development) and “Save the Children”— a non-government organization established in Britain to help protect children worldwide—printed on it.

According to Ileto, the bag could be part of the aid regularly given by Washington to poor communities in Mindanao.

“There are lots of aid given by the US government in Mindanao and the bag could be part of that aid,” he said.

The use of child soldiers is not limited to the MILF, with the communist New People’s Army (NPA) also allegedly recruiting children as combatants.

Records from the AFP’s Civil Relations Service showed that over the last 12 years, the military has neutralized a total of 340 NPA child soldiers, whose ages ranged between 15 and 18.

Of that number, 209 surrendered to the government, 119 were captured, and 12 were killed in action. –WILLIAM B. DEPASUPIL REPORTER, Manila Times