Several State Department officials have accused Secretary of State Rex Tillerson of violating a law designed to prevent U.S. aid from going to countries that conscript child soldiers.
In a confidential “dissent channel” memo, the senior policy experts said Tillerson ran afoul of the Child Soldiers Prevention Act when he decided in June to remove Iraq and Myanmar from a list of countries that use child soldiers, Reuters reported Tuesday. The officials also criticized Tillerson for rejecting recommendations from senior staff that Afghanistan be added to the list.
Tillerson’s decision on the child soldiers list ran contrary to assessments by the State Department’s regional bureaus for the Middle East and Asia, the U.S. envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the department’s human rights office, according to the dissent memo and other documents reviewed by Reuters.
“Beyond contravening U.S. law, this decision risks marring the credibility of a broad range of State Department reports and analyses and has weakened one of the U.S. government’s primary diplomatic tools to deter governmental armed forces and government-supported armed groups from recruiting and using children in combat and support roles around the world,” the officials wrote in their July 28 memo.
Passed in 2008, the child soldiers law prohibits the U.S. government from sending arms or supplies to foreign countries that recruit people under the age of 18 to who “takes a direct part in hostilities as a member of governmental armed forces.” The law gives presidents the authority to waive the prohibition if it serves the “national interest.”
The decision to keep Iraq, Afghanistan and Myanmar rankled many State Department officers, especially because the department had publicly acknowledged that children were being conscripted in those countries. Their complaints were relayed to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, whose Democratic members have raised concerns about Tillerson’s compliance with the law.
Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the ranking member of the committee, said last week that Tillerson’s decision “sent a powerful message to these countries that they were receiving a pass on their unconscionable actions.”
Lawmakers have little power to reverse the Trump administration’s position, given the wide latitude presidents have to issue waivers to the law. The Obama administration frequently granted such dispensations to Iraq and Myanmar, as well as others including as Nigeria and Somalia.
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