Israel Law Review
- Israel Law Review / Volume 43 / Issue 02 / January 2010, pp 360-380
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press and The Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2010
- DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0021223700000807 (About DOI), Published online: 19 March 2012
Articles
Protecting Children in Armed Conflict: Harnessing the Security Council's “Soft Power”
Matthew Happold*
Abstract
The United Nations Security Council's recent involvement in the protection of children in armed conflict, particularly by seeking to prevent the recruitment and use of child soldiers, has attracted little attention from international lawyers. However, the process, initiated by Council Resolution 1612, has interesting parallels with non-compliance mechanisms in international environmental law and can be seen as an innovative attempt to harness the Security Council's “soft power” to engage both State and non-State parties to conflicts.
Footnotes
* Professor of Public International Law, University of Luxembourg. Correspondence should be addressed to: Matthew.HAPPOLD@uni.lu. This Article originated as a paper presented at the Minerva Center for Human Rights, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the ICRC Delegation to Israel and the Palestinian Territories' November 2009 conference on “Securing Compliance with International Humanitarian Law: The Promises and Limits of Contemporary Enforcement Mechanisms.” I am grateful to the organizers for their invitation to present and to the participants for their comments on my paper. The usual disclaimer applies.
