Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what information his Department holds on the use of child soldiers by the Afghan local police.

Afghanistan is one of seven countries included in the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General for Afghanistan’s campaign “Children, Not Soldiers” which aims to end the recruitment and use of children by Afghan Government security forces.

We share the concerns of the UN Special Representative on the continued recruitment of children in the Afghan security forces, and the lack of oversight of recruitment for the local police forces. While Afghanistan has made some progress, including the adoption of a presidential decree criminalizing child recruitment by Government security forces in 2015, significant efforts are needed to fully implement the Action Plan.

The UK welcomes the creation of six child protection units in recruitment centres and is encouraging Afghanistan to expand this to all provinces. We urge the Government of Afghanistan to hold to account the perpetrators of child recruitment.