Child Soldiers Prevention Act

Child Soldiers Prevention Act
Acronyms (colloquial)	CSPA
Enacted by	the 110th United States Congress
Effective	December 23, 2008
Citations
Public law	110–457 (Title IV)
Statutes at Large	122 Stat. 5044 through 122 Stat. 5092 (48 pages)
Legislative history
	Introduced in the House as the "Child Soldier Prevention Act of 2008" (H.R. 7311) by Howard Berman (D–CA) on December 9, 2008; Committee consideration by Foreign Affairs, Energy and Commerce, Judiciary; Passed the House on December 10, 2008 ; Passed the Senate on December 10, 2008 ; Signed into law by President George W. Bush on December 23, 2008;

This article relating to law in the United States or its constituent jurisdictions is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

The Child Soldier Prevention Act (CSPA) is a United States federal statute signed into law by President George W. Bush on December 23, 2008.^[1] The law criminalizes leading a military force which recruits child soldiers. The law's definition of child soldiers includes "any person under 18 years of age who takes a direct part in hostilities as a member of governmental armed forces."

The law was also intended to prevent arms trade by the United States with suspected countries, although the president may waive this rule for specific countries in the national interest. President Barack Obama most recently waived the application of this rule in September 2016 to Burma, Iraq, and Nigeria, and partly to Somalia, South Sudan, Rwanda and Democratic Republic of the Congo.^[2]^[3]

On July 28, 2017, a memo written by about a dozen officials at the United States Department of State said that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson breached the CSPA when he decided in June to exclude Afghanistan, Iraq, and Myanmar from the list altogether.^[4] The memo, which was sent through the Dissent Channel, was sent to Brian Hook, the Director of Policy Planning.^[5] On September 1, 2017, Hook responded to the memo by acknowledging that the three countries did use child soldiers but said it was necessary to distinguish between governments "making little or no effort to correct their child soldier violations...and those which are making sincere—if as yet incomplete—efforts."^[4]