This article originally appeared in The Guardian. 

It is unacceptable that the British armed forces continue to recruit people under the age of 18. We are academics who research the armed forces or who are concerned with the wellbeing of young people, and it has been brought to our attention that the youth wing of the Scottish National party is presenting a motion to raise the minimum age of military recruitment to 18 at the SNP’s national conference. We fully support the SNP youth motion.

The UK is one of only 19 countries worldwide to recruit 16-year-olds. Other countries that do so include North Korea, Iran and Syria. No other EU or Nato member state recruits 16-year-olds. Some 2,250 minors were recruited into the armed forces in the past 12 months. The army alone enlisted 1,000 16-year-olds. This makes 16-year-olds the single biggest age group entering the army. The army states that it uses the recruitment of minors as “an opportunity to mitigate standard entry shortfalls, particularly for the infantry”. This is worrying because the infantry has the highest fatality and injury rate of any branch of the armed forces. Child Soldiers International has found that soldiers who enlisted at 16 were twice as likely to die in Afghanistan as those who enlisted aged 18 or above.

The UK’s child recruitment policy has been challenged by the UK parliament’s joint committee on human rights, the defence committee, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, major child rights organisations, Amnesty International, the National Union of Teachers, the UN committee on the rights of the child and military veterans themselves. The UK government has ignored all these calls to review the policy, and it is an issue on which the SNP should take leadership.


Dr Rhys Crilley Open University
Dr Jamie Johnson University of Sheffield
Dr Aggie Hirst City University London
Alister Wedderburn Australian National University
Dr Kevin McSorley University of Portsmouth
Dr Helen Dexter University of Leicester
Dr Katy Parry University of Leeds
Dr Melanie Richter-Montpetit University of Sheffield
Dr Joanna Tidy University of Sheffield
Dr Andrew Judge University of Glasgow
Professor Cynthia Enloe Clark University, USA
Dr Naomi Head University of Glasgow
Dr Laura Mills University of St Andrews
Dr Catherine Baker University of Hull
Dr Ciaran Gillespie University of Surrey
Dr Claire Duncanson University of Edinburgh
Dr Laura Shepherd University of New South Wales, Australia
Dr Megan Mackenzie University of Sydney, Australia
Dr Julia Welland University of Warwick
Dr Linda Åhäll Keele University
Dr Nicholas Robinson University of Leeds
Dr Harriet Gray University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Dr Victoria Basham Cardiff University
Dr Katharine Wright Newcastle University
Dr Cian O’Driscol University of Glasgow
Dr Scott Harding University of Connecticut, USA
Seth Kershner Northwestern Connecticut Community College, USA
Federica Caso University of Queensland, Australia
Professor Sally Wyke University of Glasgow
Dr Chris Rossdale London School of Economics and Political Science
Dr John Carman University of Birmingham
Alice Cree Durham University
Dr Diana Martin University of Portsmouth
Dr Nancy Taber Brock University, Canada
Dr Synne Dyvik University of Sussex
Dr Bryan Mabee Queen Mary University of London
Wesley Doyle University of Liverpool
Dr Robertson Allen Author of America’s Digital Army, USA
Professor Hugh Gusterson George Washington University, USA
Dr Matthew Flintham Kingston University
Professor Anthony Burke University of New South Wales, Australia
Albert Sargis Niebyl-Proector Marxist Library for Social Research, USA
Dr Adam Broinowski Australian National University
Dr James Eastwood Queen Mary, University of London
Professor Paul Dixon Kingston University
Dr Catriona Pennell University of Exeter
Dr Sarah Bulmer University of Exeter
Dr Brian Lagotte University of Kansas, USA
Henry Redwood King’s College London
Dr Hannah Partis-Jennings King’s College London
Dr Thomas Gregory University of Auckland, New Zealand
Dr Cristina Masters University of Manchester
Dr Tom Smith University of Portsmouth
Dr Stephen Gibson York St John University
David Gee ForcesWatch

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