§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Bill Rammell)Officials in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Ministry of Defence have completed all the necessary work to enable the Government to proceed to ratify the Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict.
We intend to complete the ratification process with the United Nations as soon as possible. To begin the formal process, I have today laid before Parliament an Explanatory Memorandum which explains the steps taken to meet our commitment to the provisions of the Protocol.
In particular, since 1 September 2002 Army personnel under 18 are no longer routinely deployed on operations outside the United Kingdom, although they may continue to participate in purely humanitarian missions where no hostile forces are involved. Furthermore, all three Services now have procedures in place to ensure that, wherever it is feasible to do so without undermining operational effectiveness or the safety of personnel, under 18s are removed from their units when there is deemed to be a greater than low risk of direct involvement in hostilities.