military recruitment

Jesus D. Mendez Carbajal, Project YANO Intern:

Under the Obama administration there have been more than two million deportations to date, an average of 1,100 people every day, which is a higher rate than that for any other president in the history of the United States. More than 100,000 of those have come from California. Deportations have been facilitated in California via the implementation of the Secure Communities policy in 2009, which established the sharing of the fingerprint database between local law enforcement and federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

The proposed immigration reform bill’s halt and continued deportations have sparked community organizers and activists nationwide to mobilize and stage several nonviolent civil disobedience actions calling for the stopping of all deportations and the shutdown of ICE.

7 March: By Peter James Spielmann

The Security Council on Friday condemned the recruitment of child soldiers into military forces, guerrilla movements and Islamic militias around the world and demanded an end to attacks on schools and hospitals in conflict zones.

The council unanimously approved a resolution with those demands after hearing testimony from a former child soldier from Sierra Leone, which became notorious for guerrilla groups that amputated the limbs, ears and lips of civilians to leave them as living emblems of fear.

In 2001, when he was 14, Alhaji Babah Sawaneh became the first ex-child soldier to speak before the council, and he spoke again Friday as a campaigner against the practice.

He told the council that he was "one of the children that were forcefully abducted and conscripted into an armed group at the age of 10."

Chile reformed its military service seven years ago, to focus recruitment for military service on volunteers. Ever since, Chile's armed forces were able to fill their ranks entirely with volunteers, although generally a process of conscription was started in October to select potential conscripts as a backup. In October 2008, 70,461 youth were chosen in the "sorteo general" (recruitment lottery) and had to report to the recruitment authorities, but in the end nobody was called up for military service against his will. This was repeated in the following years.

However, in October 2011, the military announced that only 14,127 persons had so far volunteered for military service, compared to 20,431 the year before. The military plans to recruit 11,340 soldiers by spring 2012, and according to the recruitment department they would need 2.5 times the number of volunteers.