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Abstract
Drones or unmanned piloted vehicles represent the pinnacle of ranged weapon technology that ensure a fast strike, low cost and with almost no boots on the ground. This type of new technology also brings a new requirement for governments that use these devices, a requirement that dated air force training cannot offer, but a mobile phone or controller can offer it wholesome. The idea of downplaying war to sound very hip and cool and fun for the younger crowd has been around since the 1970's, when the Vietnam war recruiters were using the idea that war was a good investment for children and teens, because it offered them a future-proof job and access to entertaining tools, but kept out the negative aspects of participating in an armed conflict. Now we see a resurgence in the way military recruiters use such trends to draw in the crowd.
In this regard, the situation of using children and teens, or more precisely ones who have video-games as a time investing hobby, has been considered by the regulated armed forces for some time now, but due to international treaties that govern child protection this has been deemed impossible to accomplish. Should child protection treaties be revised or not, and if they should, could drones be the entry point for taking part in armed conflicts or other armed situations?
Keywords: drones, soldiers, videogames, treaties, conventions.
1.Introduction
This paper will focus on answering issues regarding the usage of children as potential drone pilots and how international law tries to fight a known issue in governemnts around the world. Furthermore, the paper will focus on how international law subjects dealt with child recruitment and how modern military practices outpace the law of nations. To effectively define the focuses, this paper will outline current legal instruments and practices of states, even if said states did ratify some or all legal instruments, they still do not uphold them and furthermore, disobey them entirely because internal legal instruments allow them do so.
While other authors have indeed offered their point of view on child recruitment in regular armed forces, this paper took inspiration from Tonje Hessen Schei's work entitled "Drone", a war documentary with human rights focuses, and tries to outline more legal...