Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign And Commonwealth Affairs, what recent representations he has made to his counterparts in the (a) EU and (b) UN Security Council on stopping the practice of using child soldiers.

The UK is an active member of the United Nations Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict, which consists of Security Council members, and which leads the international response on the issues of child soldiers and child protection. We work particularly closely with allies and like-minded states on the Council, notably France, the Netherlands and Sweden, to advance common efforts and UK objectives in this area.

In November 2017, my colleague Lord Ahmad, the Minister for the Commonwealth and the United Nations, participated in an open debate of the UN Security Council on Children in Armed Conflict, focused on the findings of the UN Secretary-General's 2017 Annual Report. Lord Ahmad welcomed the work of the UN and of the Secretary-General's Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict, and reiterated our concern about the continuing grave violations committed against children in conflicts around the world.