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Posted 6:51 PM by Mary

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ETHICS-NEWS: Vol 1, #2
February, 2003

TOPIC: "CHILDREN AND ARMED CONFLICT": the Optional Protocol and U.S. military recruiting.
Edited by Mary Beaty, Moderator, CEBO.org.

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The new Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child has raised the military recruiting age to 18. The US has signed the protocol. Is the US “No Child Left Behind” Act, mandating recruiting access to schools and student records (and supporting government-produced hi-tech media recruiting campaigns) in conflict with the UN Protocol?

BACKGROUND:

1. THE OPTIONAL PROTOCOL ON INVOLVEMENT OF CHILDREN IN ARMED CONFLICT
The US Dept of State issued a Fact Sheet on December 23/24 2002, on the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, indicating they now have no objection to ratification. Unicef.org

Here is a response by Carol Bellamy (the first US head of UNICEF):
"The United States government is now officially a states party to this protocol although it has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. (UNCRC). The articles of the Optional Protocol stipulate measures that states parties must take to be in compliance with this international agreement. Within two years of each state’s ratification of the Protocol, that government must submit a comprehensive report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child on measures taking to implement the provisions of the Protocol.

"The US remains the one states party to the United Nations that has not ratified the UN Convention to the Rights of the Child. The Ratification of this Optional Protocol is a move in the right direction that might create opportunities for discussion of the UNCRC”.

2. THE PROTOCOL on MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Bellamy said "The Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict prohibits the active participation of children under the age of 18 in hostilities - and imposes strict limitations for the recruitment of children into armed forces and groups. We also believe every ratification should be accompanied by a strong declaration endorsing 18 as the minimum age for voluntary recruitment - and by steps to incorporate the new standard into national legislation."

3. THE PROTOCOL on CHILD SOLDIERS:
One of the intentions of this protocol is to prevent forced recruitment of child solders.

NGO press briefing from the Office of the special representative for the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, Olara Otunnu from January 2003. NGO Press Briefing: "Children and Armed Conflict", sponsored by the Permanent Mission of Mexico to the United Nations. [Webcast: Archived Video - 37min]

Human Rights Watch:
"The new child soldiers protocol establishes eighteen as the minimum age for direct participation in hostilities, for compulsory recruitment, and for any recruitment or use in hostilities by non-governmental armed groups. It is technically an optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict.

"Previous international standards had allowed children as young as fifteen to be legally recruited and sent into war. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (which has been ratified by every government except the United States and Somalia) generally defines a child as any person under the age of eighteen. However, in situations of armed conflict, the convention set the lower age of fifteen as the minimum age for recruitment and participation in armed conflict. The new protocol helps to correct this anomaly.

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II. US MILITARY RECRUITMENT and DOMESTIC LEGISLATION
1) U.S. NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT

American Friends Service Committee:
No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law by President George Bush on January 8, 2002, is touted by many as a federal bipartisan success story designed to impact the way children learn in school and how schools and states are held accountable to students, parents and educational communities. It is an elaborate reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 that, among other things, initially offered grants to low income school areas and established the federal lunch and milk programs. In spite of the new act’s overwhelming support by Washington legislators and policy makers, it is starting to come under fire for a well-hidden section entitled Sec. 9528. Armed Forces Recruiter Access to Students and Student Recruiting Information.

The section grants military recruiters access to students' private information. With this access, recruiters can make unsolicited calls and send direct-mail recruitment literature to a young person’s home. Parents, students, public education activists and those working to demilitarize the nation’s schools are beginning to see the legislated “open door” policy for military recruiters as a clear violation of the Privacy Act of 1974. They are studying the law and the options available to counter its influence. The act’s coercive language forces schools and institutions receiving assistance under the act to comply with its directive. Non-compliance means that schools could face the relinquishment of federal funding.

No Child Left Unrecruited Mother Jones:
"The recruiters cited the No Child Left Behind Act, President Bush's sweeping new education law passed earlier this year. There, buried deep within the law's 670 pages, is a provision requiring public secondary schools to provide military recruiters not only with access to facilities, but also with contact information for every student -- or face a cutoff of all federal aid. 'I was very surprised the requirement was attached to an education law,' says Shea-Keneally. 'I did not see the link' ."

2.) RECRUITMENT PROPAGANDA

ZMAG:
”The U.S. military enlists 400,000 young people per year, and more and more of its $1.9 billion recruiting budget is aimed directly at high schools.
“Opportunity” is one of the buzzwords of the recruiters' pitch, from TV ads to the Cinema Van - along with “money for college.” Almost all young people who go to a recruiter's office are drawn by the promise of money for college, a promise based on the Montgomery GI Bill.

But recruiters openly admit that it's a lure. They promise a young person that he or she can enter the field of their choice, even if it's an extremely competitive MOS (military occupational specialty), and neglect to mention the high likelihood of job reassignment. They call it “job training,” even though few veterans report using their military experience in civilian life. (The military's own special “retraining” program for unemployed veterans currently has over 50,000 on the waiting list.) They emphasize opportunities for women without mentioning that one-third of recent women veterans report having been raped, with 90 percent reporting some sexual harassment (Veterans Administration, 1995). They call it equal opportunity for African-Americans, ignoring racism inside the military and the glass ceiling for most enlisted personnel of color.

Child Care not War Fare Objector.com:
"Recruiters are salespeople with a quota to meet. If students are learning about the military from recruiters alone, they're getting only part of the story. Their education is being shortchanged."

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III. RESOURCES FOR STUDENTS and PARENTS

Central Committee for Conscientous Objectors:
CCCO's Military Out of Our Schools Campaign works … to restrict recruiter's access to schools and gain equal access to talk about the realities of military life and present alternatives to military service. CCCO's GI Advocacy Program has three broad goals: to inform GIs about their rights; to recruit and support military counselors and GI advocates in every part of the United States; and to maintain a complete and updated set of resource and reference materials.

Helping Out: a guide to military discharges and GI rights.
DEP: 400,000 young people enlist in the military every year. Those who believe they made a mistake do not know where to turn. Recruiters, under pressure to retain every recruit they sign up, often do not tell recruits how to end their military obligation. When a recruit enlists in the military, he or she is commonly placed in the Delayed Enlistment Program (DEP). Members of the Delayed Enlistment Program take an oath of enlistment, sign an enlistment agreement obligating them to military service, and are given a date to report for active duty.,,.Even though recruiting commands forbid threatening involuntary activation, some recruiters will go so far as to threaten arrest or large fines if the recruit does not report for active duty. Recruiters have also been known to tell members of the DEP that they must fail high school or get pregnant to be released form their military obligation…

OPTING OUT Advocates of the act and Section 9528 point to the “opt-out” clause written into the act which, if implemented, gives parents and students the opportunity to request that their information not be released without parental signatures….This clause, however, is controversial due to its vagueness about how an educational institution must inform parents and students of the option. School districts around the country are not using a uniform system to let parents know about the act. As a result many parents may never find out that their information is being handed over to the military.

The act links military recruiting with the type of access recruiters from institutions of higher education are generally given. Equating military training as comparable to a college or university education is disingenuous and presents a problem for parents or students wishing for their information to not to be released under the assumed “opt-out” clause. The variety of ways school districts across the country are informing students and parents of their option makes it possible for a young person to inadvertently have their information not released to institutions of higher education. This could happen if a school sends home a form to be returned with a signature that doesn’t allow for selective opting out.

CIVILIAN ACCESS vs MILITARY. The statute directs schools to afford the military the same access it offers to post-secondary educational institutions or prospective employers implying erroneously that schools have policies to illegally supply employers and colleges with private student information. Career fairs and college fairs are traditional ways for employers and colleges to reach out to potential applicants and should be the only access option for recruiters of a discriminatory employer such as the military. Many military recruiters, aware of the repercussions of non-compliance with the act, use the statute to enter high schools unannounced and roam the halls trying to drum up business. The threat of being labeled unpatriotic or of potentially losing federal funds is enough to make some schools look the other way and allow the military recruiter more access than college and civilian employment recruiters are allowed.

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IV. HI –TECH RECRUITING targeting YOUNGER GRADES

AFSC.org:
Education advocates charge that Channel One, the school TV channel, violates journalistic and advertising standards by recruiting students for the military with direct links to Army recruitment on its on-line internet web site. Channel One runs a commercial satellite television network viewed by 40% of the nation's middle and high school students, as well as a youth-oriented, interactive web site.

YOUR TAX MONEY: ARMY SHOOTER GAMES

AmericasArmy.com January 15, 2003
"The United States Army, with "Americas Army: Operations" being heralded as one of the largest and best first person shooter games, is proud to bring to the gaming community the ability to rent their own servers running on state of art high performance computing technology through goamericasarmy.com

"It is with great pride that we bring yet another first from the United States Army in enhancing the community and their gaming experience. The game is designed to communicate information about the many opportunities that the Army has to offer; it is a 3D first person shooter that offers players to immerse himself or herself into the world of a US elite soldier…You can download it from americasarmy.com or pick up CD versions from your local Army recruiter."

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V. CONCLUSION

While not forcibly recruiting minor children into active duty, the United States does not seem to be reconciling its domestic legislation for military recruitment of children under 18 with the provisions of the Optional Protocol. There is a lack of adequate information resources for children exposed to sophisticated and ubiquitous recruitment propaganda, as well as protections against early enlistment, de-enlisting, and other legal protections. This topic could be investigated in depth in the time period before the states party musts report to the UNCRC.

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Posted 5:26 PM by Mary

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ETHICS-NEWS VOL. 1, #1
January, 2003.

TOPIC: CLONING: Ethical questions.

"All women become like their mothers; that is their tragedy"
----Oscar Wilde, Importance of being Earnest

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Ethical questions abound in the debate on cloning, but there is a dramatic gulf between policy, resolutions, legislation and the reality of the marketplace. As USA Today says: "The real issue is: How do we think morally about a topic where science has outstripped our traditional ethics?''

The debate seems to be divided into two major camps: Playing God, vs. All Science is Good Science, with another division of therapeutic cloning vs. reproductive cloning.

But grey areas are extensive, in ethics, legal, moral and even the commercial world (especiall patents). There a strong fear that cloned humans will be warehoused by unscrupulous breeders for spare parts. There is concern about the human rights of clones, including copyright and custody: a clone's legal father may be her grandfather.

And there is a good whiff of both Frankenstein and Ubermensch as well as nanotechnology fears.

Here are a few recent articles and some background material.

ARTICLES:

** UNESCO CHIEF CONDEMNS HUMAN CLONING
New York, Dec 30 2002
UN.org: cloning
UN.org.news
"The head of UNESCO, Director-General Koichiro Matsuura, today categorically condemned any research or practice directed towards reproductive human cloning and urged the international community to quickly act to ban such activities as ... scientifically risky but also ethically unacceptable, constituting as they do an intolerable violation of human dignity".

.**How to make a clone (good illustration)
tribuneindia.com
DNA from a skin cell or any cell in the body is inserted into an egg that has been stripped of most of its own DNA.The problem lies with the DNA that has been taken from a mature adult cell that will make the clone. Genes in adult DNA are programmed for the daily activities of adult living, but those necessary for instructing an embryo to develop and become a fetus have been shut down since embryonic development.

Human Reproductive Cloning: How far to go?
The Economist, Jan 2, 2003
"Like the war on drugs, bans on supply will not cut off demand. The desperation of infertile or bereaved couples is as all consuming as any craving for dope. The only hope of restraining this yearning will be to give such people hope, talking openly about the risks of cloning for mothers and babies, and explaining that the technology is advancing slowly but surely until it is safe. Only then may people wait, as they do for many experimental therapies, rather than turn to the renegades."

**Good roundup on cloning science debate from New Scientist (British)
New Scientist: cloning
What would it be like to be an exact copy of your parent?
Who is working towards human cloning? Could cloning be the end of humanity, and the start of something quite different?

**Background material and a lively forum discussion on the BBC website
BBC.co.uk

**Short article on stem cell cloning (therapeutic) vs. somatic cell nuclear transfer (reproductive) and US congressional debate.
Hospital managemen.net

**Pro-reproductive cloning, balanced against therapeutic cloning:
TheAge.com
"The moral objections are fewer than against cloning stem cells. Human cloning will happen, whether the present claims made in Miami by Brigitte Boisselier of Clonaid turn out to be true or not, and we shall have to face the question at some time ... There is almost universal agreement among scientists and legislators that it is wrong to clone humans. The reason for that condemnation is not so clear. Probably, it was a device to make stem cell research seem more acceptable".

**Pro-cloning site
Humancloning.org Features some rather odd arguments: to avoid Downs syndrome, just clone yourself. Avoid silicon breast implants by cloning your own enhancements, etc.

**Even Islamic clerics disagree.
Islam-online.net
Prominent Muslim scholar Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi also asserted that “viewed from the Islamic general objectives, rulings, and texts, human cloning is completely prohibited.” However, Lebanon’s top Shiite scholar Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah endorsed a different viewpoint, allowing human cloning if its positive aspects overweight negative ones. He stressed, however, that it is prohibited to use the organs of a cloned baby as “spare parts” in organs transplant operation

OTHER BACKGROUND RESOURCES:

Talks on global cloning ban at UN were suspended in Nov, 02, primarily at the insistence of the US. Here is the text of the UNESCO statement, the Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights

UNESCO Bioethics committee

AMA bioethics page

Bioethics.net lists of resources Knowledge tool database. Includes radio interviews, websites, pdfs

President's Council on Bioethics Cloning report.

Human Genome Project Cloning Fact Sheet.
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This newsletter compiled by moderator Mary Beaty for CEBO.org, the Council of Ethics Based Organizations, is a group of ethics based NGOs affiliated with the United Nations Department of Public Information.

"Representing our individual organizations but joined in common cause, we have formed a council of peers to share information and raise awareness of ethical humanist responses to UN-related initiatives in the fields of human rights, intellectual and religious freedom, peace and conflict, corporate ethics, and sustainable development."

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