The legal minimum age of military recruitment is the age at which a person is permitted to enlist or be conscripted and take part in hostilities
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Human Rights Standards:
Article 38 (2) (3), Convention on the Rights of the Child; Articles 1 & 2 Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict; Article 22 (2), African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child; Articles 8 (2) (b) (xxvi) & 8 (2) (e) (vii), Rome Statute; Article 3, ILO 138 Minimum Age Convention; Article 3 (a), ILO Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention; Article 77 (2), Additional Protocol I Geneva Convention; Article 4 (3) (c), Additional Protocol II Geneva Convention
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The Convention on the Rights of the Child sets fifteen years old as the minimum age for military recruitment and for taking direct part in hostilities. The 2000 Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, drafted in order to raise the minimum ages set out in the Convention, sets the higher age of eighteen years old as the minimum for recruitment or participation in armed conflict. If the legal minimum age of military recruitment is lower than the legal maximum age of completion of compulsory education, military recruitment may effectively undermine compulsory education