South Sudan

Coomaraswamy said efforts are also underway to end the use of child soldiers in the world’s newest country, South Sudan.

“Well, in South Sudan we have an action plan with the SPLA. And I must say that the SPLA in Juba and around the capital I think is child (soldier) free. But the remote regional commanders still I think have child soldiers. But the U.N. has agreements to go into SPLA camps and to verify whether there are children. Then of course there are the sort of ethnic-based militias. That’s much more difficult. And I think there we still have to see how we can make headway,” she said.

While some NGOs estimate there are hundreds of thousands of child soldiers around the world, she said there’s no way to be sure.

“No, the number is not known now. Earlier numbers were estimated purely on the rolls in Africa in Liberia and Sierra Leone. But now, of course, we’re finding child soldiers in Afghanistan, in Somalia, in Iraq and some of the new wars. So, I don’t think we have an estimate. It would be very difficult to estimate,” she said.

Despite that, Coomaraswamy believes that with enough effort, the use of children soldiers can be brought to an end within 25 years.

The special representative of the secretary-general for children and armed conflict says welcomed the TFG’s commitment to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child.