Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to help partner countries to build institutional capacity to decrease the use of child soldiers in conflict.

We provide funding to support the work of the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict's to implement UN Action Plans with relevant UN Member States. This includes technical missions to monitor violations committed against children.

We also appreciate the expertise which civil society organisations can bring to tackling this issue, and we are currently providing funding to strengthen the monitoring, reporting and response by civil society actors in Nigeria, South Sudan, Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Burma.