- Updated February 24, 2026
Children are profoundly affected by armed conflicts around the world. Children often shoulder the burden of conflict and are recruited and used by armed groups to serve on the frontlines and/or in support of armed operations. National militaries, government-supported paramilitaries, and non-state armed groups all recruit and use child soldiers. Those recruiting child soldiers often rely on weapons and military assistance from some of the world’s leading arms exporters. The United States is one of the few countries in the world that conditions arms sales and military assistance on a government’s record of child soldier use. In 2008, Congress passed a law, aimed expressly at preventing the exploitation of children in armed conflict, by leveraging U.S. arms sales and military assistance to prompt governments to end the recruitment or use of child soldiers. The law, known as the Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA), took effect in 2009 and contains several elements to help prevent and ultimately end the use of children as tools of warfare around the world.
The CSPA requires the U.S. Secretary of State to publish an annual list of countries whose armed forces, police or other security forces, or government-backed armed groups recruit or use child soldiers.1The CSPA states that the term “child soldier” means any person under 18 years of age who takes a direct part in hostilities as a member of governmental armed forces, police, or other security forces; any person under 18 years of age who has been compulsorily recruited into governmental armed forces, police, or other security forces; any person under 15 years of age who has been voluntarily recruited into governmental armed forces, police, or other security forces; or any person under 18 years of age who has been recruited or used in hostilities by armed forces distinct from the armed forces of a state; and includes any person above who is serving in any capacity, including in a support role such as cook, porter, messenger, medic, guard, or sex slave. This list, commonly referred to as “the CSPA list,” is published in the U.S. Department of State’s annual Trafficking in Persons report. Once identified, these countries are prohibited from receiving certain types of U.S. military assistance, training, and defense equipment in the following fiscal year.
The CSPA prohibits several types of U.S. arms sales2The transfer of U.S. military equipment, defense services, or weapons to a foreign country, foreign private firm, or international organization via sale, lease, loan, or grant. The CSPA Implementation Tracker uses the term to refer to sales conducted under the Direct Commercial Sales program. and military assistance3The provision of U.S. military education, training, equipment, financing for U.S. arms, or weapons to a foreign country. The CSPA Implementation Tracker uses the term to refer generally to assistance provided under the Excess Defense Articles, Foreign Military Financing, International Military Education and Training, and Peacekeeping Operations programs, as well as assistance provided under Section 333, 1206, and 1208 authorities. that fall under both Departments of State and Defense accounts, including:
Arms Sales
- Licenses for Direct Commercial Sales of military equipment
Military Assistance
- Excess Defense Articles
- Foreign Military Financing
- International Military Education and Training
- Peacekeeping Operations
- Certain Department of Defense authorities, including Section 1206/333
Within Section 404(c) of the Act, the U.S. president may choose to waive the law’s prohibitions against any or all countries identified on the CSPA list during a given year, if so doing is deemed to be in the “national interest of the United States.”
More on the 2018 Frederick Douglass Amendment…
Congress amended the CSPA’s scope in the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act of 2018 (enacted in 2019) to cover “police, and other security forces” using child soldiers.4Congress.gov. “H.R.2200 – 115th Congress (2017-2018): An act to reauthorize the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, and for other purposes.” January 8, 2019. https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/2200. Notably the amendment does not permit law enforcement assistance to be withheld from those countries.
Within the amendment Congress also stipulated that presidential waivers to the CSPA may only be granted if the president “certifies to the appropriate congressional committees that the government of such country is taking effective and continuing steps to address the problem of child soldiers.”
The amendment further requires the U.S. Department of State to report annually in the Trafficking in Persons report on how the U.S. government implemented the CSPA’s provisions during the previous year. The report must include countries identified on the previous year’s CSPA list, a description and the amount of any U.S. arms sales or military assistance withheld under the law’s terms, a list of any waivers or exceptions granted by the administration, the administration’s justifications for those waiver or exception determinations, and a description and the amount of any arms sales and/or military assistance provided pursuant to a waiver.