Increasing recruitment of minors in the German army

According to the international group Tasnim News Agency, the German publication “D Site” wrote in an article: The German army is only allowed to recruit applicants under the age of 18 in exceptional cases, but statistics show that the number of such recruitments in the German army has increased significantly. hired Statistics show that the proportion of young teenagers among the enlisted soldiers has increased again. According to statistics, about 1996 soldiers were only 17 years old at the time of recruitment. This corresponds to a share of 10.6% after 9.4% in the previous year. These statistics were provided by the Federal Ministry of Defense based on requests. Meanwhile, the Social Democratic, Green and Liberal Democratic parties had agreed in the federal coalition agreement that training and service with weapons should be for Adult soldiers. Now, the German Ministry of Defense has said that 17-year-old applicants will be hired only if they pass a comprehensive test of physical and mental aptitude. Accordingly, military training also includes extensive protection provisions for minors: “In particular, this means not participating in guard service or foreign missions and using weapons only for training purposes. Underage applicants need parental consent and a six-month trial period to be recruited into the army.

The number of 17-year-old recruits in the German army has fluctuated for years. The temporary peak of such recruitments is in 2017 saw 2,126 new enlisted minors. That number has since declined and is now on the rise again.

The act of recruiting minors into the military has long been criticized. Bundestag Defense Commissioner Eva Hügel (SPD), for example, already pointed out in 2022 that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child set a minimum age of 18 for service in the armed forces, she told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung at the time. : “So it is very important to see that the German army continues to recruit minors.

The Bundeswehr is having trouble finding enough troops. Germany’s federal education minister recently urged schools to “develop a relaxed relationship with the military. I think it’s important that young officers come to schools and report what Bodensohr is doing for our security. This action angered the opposition and some politicians in the coalition government known as the traffic light.

The German army is severely facing the problem of personnel shortage. Due to Russia’s attack on Ukraine, Germany’s ability to defend itself has been exposed to public attention once again. The German Ministry of Defense recently announced that there were about 27,000 vacancies in the German army last year.

Discussions about the revival of conscription have recently picked up again in Germany. The latest debate was opened by Boris Pistorius, the new federal defense minister. In an interview with Züdewiche Zeitung in late January, he described the suspension of conscription in 2011 as a “mistake”.

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