Gregory Campbell – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Gregory Campbell on 2014-06-24.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, on how many occasions he has raised the issues of child soldiering and progress on tackling it with his counterparts in other countries in the last two years.

Mark Simmonds

Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC) is an important personal priority. I am leading a campaign to prevent the recruitment of child soldiers and to protect children from becoming victims of sexual violence in five priority countries: Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Somalia, South Sudan, Chad and Burma. Over the last two years, I have raised this issue with counterparts in Chad, Sierra Leone and DRC, as well as most recently with the Somali President and the Minister of the Interior in South Sudan during visits in April this year. My Right Honourable Friend, Hugo Swire MP, also discussed the issue during a visit to Burma in January.

During the recent End Sexual Violence in Conflict Summit, I hosted a Ministerial roundtable on CAAC attended by UN Special Representative of the Secretary General for CAAC. Ministers from Sierra Leone, DRC and Somalia underlined their commitment to ending the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict.