Iran signs protocol on children’s rights

Iran has signed the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child which seeks to ban the use of children in armed conflicts.

The Protocol serves to ensure that nobody under 18 will be forced to fight in war or be pressed into military service.

“As a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the signing of the Optional Protocol demonstrates Iran’s commitment to defending children’s rights within the framework of Islamic and local regulations,” Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said at the treaty signing ceremony on Tuesday.

The Gabonese Republic and the Republic of Malawi also ratified the Optional which calls for increasing the age of voluntary recruitment to a minimum of 18 years.

“Today is a landmark day for children,” Radhika Coomaraswamy, UN secretary general’s special representative for children and armed conflict, said at the special event held at the UN headquarters in New York City.

“With your action today,” she continued, “you added your country to a list of member states that have stepped forward to strengthen a growing moral consensus that war is no place for children and to make certain that the right of boys and girls to have a childhood of learning without disruption and playing without fear is respected in every land.”

The universal ratification campaign called “Zero under 18” was launched in May 25th 2010 in a bid to achieve the universal ratification of the Optional Protocol by 2012. The treaty entered into force on 12 February 2002.