News Release: Quakers and Unitarians call for a change to the Armed Forces Bill
14 April 2011
Quakers and Unitarians say the Government has failed once more to address the right of young recruits to leave the Armed Forces.
“Human rights should not stop at the door of the barracks,” says Michael Bartlet, Parliamentary Liaison Secretary for Quakers in Britain. “At sixteen you are old enough to join the army yet too young to vote and still legally a child. The current law should respect their unconditional right to leave.”
Parliament’s Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill has completed its scrutiny of the Bill and has done nothing to address the anomaly that requires junior soldiers to make longer commitments than those joining as adults. Sixteen year olds joining the Armed Forces are required to serve for six years while those joining at eighteen are required to serve for four. After an initial six months they have no discharge as of right. Quakers and Unitarians are supporting an Amendment to the Armed Forces Bill to give those joining at sixteen the right to leave at any time before their eighteenth birthday.
“Britain is now the only EU country to regularly recruit at the age of sixteen,” says Karen Hanley, Chair of the Unitarian Faith and Public Issues Commission. “We are concerned by press reports of young soldiers being bullied.” In a recent case of extreme bullying a seventeen year old soldier had his eyes ‘superglued’ shut as part of an initiation rite. (The Sun)
New facts have come to light during the Committee process of the Bill to raise concern:
- According to an MOD answer to Parliamentary Question, Naomi Long MP, on 1 December 2010, five under eighteen year olds were serving sentences in the Military Corrective Training Centre, Colchester for having gone absent without leave.
- Between 1 January 2002 and 21 February 2011, 535 UK service personnel died in Afghanistan or Iraq. Of these 125 (23percent) were under the age of twenty two. (MOD)
- There are currently 580 sixteen year olds and 1,970 seventeen year olds serving in the armed forces. (MOD figures)
- Between April 2007 and April 2010 three seventeen year old Service personnel have been deployed to Afghanistan and two to Iraq. (MOD)
Ends
Notes to editor:
- Approximately 23,000 people attend Quaker Meetings for Worship in Britain, and there are more than 475 Meetings.
- Quakers are known formally as the Religious Society of Friends.
- Parliament’s Human Rights Committee has recommended raising the age of recruitment and safeguarding the rights of young people in the army. See: Http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt200809/jtselect/jtrights/157/15709.htm#a21
Media Information
Anne van Staveren
0207 663 1048
07958 009703
annev@quaker.org.uk
www.quaker.org.uk
