Will the United Nations be able to stop non state actors using child soldiers?

The international criminal court has been around for more than a decade but has only now handed down its first sentence. Thomas Lubanga was found guilty of abducting children and forcing them to fight as child soldiers back in March. Now the court has sentenced him to 14 years in prison. The chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said he was seeking a much more severe sentence of 30 years "in the name of each child recruited, in the name of the Ituri region". However Lubanga maintained his innocence and his supporters maintain that "When a hoard of people attacks you, your family, your friends, is it then wrong to defend yourself? There were massacres here, beheadings. How do you react to that? These people [at The Hague] don't understand anything." Essentially they are arguing that he was simply defending himself and his family. Anyone in the west might consider this argument to be completely irrelevant especially in a crime that involves the use of child soldiers but should we really be so quick to judge? Child soldiers were used in the west as recently as World War II and it has only recently become an issue that we are concerned about. There is now a UN target that all government armies around the world will not have any child soldiers by 2015 and the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan are the two remaining nations not to agree. However this would only solve a small part of the problem as the biggest recruiters are rebels, drug lords, and other groups that are not affiliated with the state. These groups are much more difficult to sanction and are unlikely to be willing to negotiate as they are mostly illegal and wanted by the state or internationally already. Peter Wittig, Germany's ambassador to the UN and chairman of the Security Council working group on children in conflict argues “We have to look at the next steps: how do we deal with rebel groups in various conflicts who persistently continue to recruit child soldiers? Perhaps we have to push the envelope further and apply the whole range of instruments at our disposal". But is it likely that new sanctions will be much help?

Debatabase debate: This House would require the ICC to allow a defence of “cultural relativism” to the crime of recruiting and using child soldiers.http://idebate.org/debatabase/debates/peace-security-human-rights/house-require-icc-defence-%E2%80%9Ccultural-relativism%E2%80%9D-crime-recruiting-child-soldiers

http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/jul/10/icc-sentences-thomas-lubanga-14-years

http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/mar/14/thomas-lubanga-verdict-congo-reaction?intcmp=239

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g-NMMVC1OmozOzH4B7OrpxvwSfeQ?docId=CNG.8d57630d4e660c745c3ce9dda11a4600.e1