Child Soldiers: Counter Recruitment Efforts

Below is a list of recent local and state legislation that communities have passed to resist the improper and abusive recruitment of minors in their cities and school districts.  Learn more about the Child Soldier Protocol and how it applies to the U.S. military's recruitment tactics.

In 2004 – according to the latest available statistics from the Under Secretary of Defense – about 19,885 seventeen year old children joined the US armed forces, constituting 23% of all new reserves and 4.3% of active armed forces recruits.  These 14,933 boys and 4,952 girls represent a fraction of the youths targeted annually by military recruiters who have become an ominous presence in elementary schools across the country where students as young as 1