UN votes to monitor child soldiers and abuses during armed conflict News
UN votes to monitor child soldiers and abuses during armed conflict

[JURIST] The UN Security Council [official website] Tuesday unanimously adopted a resoluton to closely scrutinize and keep track of all countries and rebel organizations that abuse children in any way or recruit children as soldiers [UN press release]. Resolution 1612 allows the UN to monitor the governments and rebel organizations in Burundi, Ivory Coast, Congo Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia and Sudan beginning this year and extending the monitoring in 2006 to Colombia, Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Uganda. The vote on the resolution has been delayed since February when the UN prepared a report [PDF] on the topic of children and armed conflict [JURIST report] in 12 countries across the world. Reuters has more.