The Red Hand Campaign

Your Red Hand makes the protest visible – worldwide!

Don’t let children die for you THEY are the future! (Rahel Fuchs, Schleiz, Germany)
Colourful protest: Adolescents’ and adults’ demands are sent to UN-politicians
Photo: Aktion Weißes Friedenband According to an additional protocol from the UN Convention of Children Rights the misuse of child soldiers has been illegal since 12 February 2002. Unfortunately, the number of child soldiers has hardly changed since then. There are still about 250,000 children which are used in adults’ wars.

In order to protest against this plight until February 2011 more than 350,000 red hand prints have been collected in over 40 countries worldwide. And this campaign is still proceeding. We appeal to adults and especially to children and adolescents to collect prints of red hands: for example in schools, at city festivals, in pedestrian areas.
Hand them over or send them to the mayor, to the member of the local, regional or national parliament or the European Parliament of your electoral ward with the request to advocate the demands mentioned below and to be politically active. It is important that the representatives will inform you within a short period of time about their actions. You can also involve music singers or other celebrities and the media in your Red Hand activity to spread the protest and the demands of the campaign.
We demand:

1. “Straight 18” : Children under 18 shall not be recruited or trained by armies or any other armed group – no matter in which function (even if they are not carrying arms) or whether they join the groups “voluntarily” or are recruited by force. In addition, there should be no propaganda for recruitment directed to minors. All children below the age of 18 must be released from armies or other armed groups and supported in their reintegration in civil society.
2. Penalization of the perpetrators : Individuals, states and armed groups who recruit children and use them as soldiers must be denounced and punished. Individuals shall be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court or a national court. National states and armed groups must be condemned and sanctioned by the state community, for example by the UN Security Council (economic sanctions, travel bans and freezing of bank accounts).
3. Protection, care and support for former child soldiers : Former child soldiers need to be provided with medical and psychological care and access to scholar or professional education, especially if they flee to developed countries.
4. Granting political asylum : Former child soldiers need to be granted asylum and protection in the countries they fled to.
5. Increased financial funds for aid programmes : National and international financial resources for prevention and reintegration programmes for child soldiers should be increased.
6. Stop the export of arms : No arms, component parts or munitions shall be exported to conflict zones where child soldiers can be found. This is especially applicable to small arms and also refers to third countries that transfer weapons to conflict areas. Further, all illegal ways by which weapons reach conflict areas need to be blocked: Stop the granting of licences for arms production to non-European countries and stop the export of weapons to third countries that transmit weapons to conflict areas.

You can find more information and an instruction for the campaign on www.aktion-rote-hand.de
Please inform us about your actions, about the number of collected hands and the politician’s reactions. We want to make the international protest visible. Load up a short report and photos (here) and send us an email to info@aktion-rote-hand.de

Organisations with their own Webpage

If your organization has its own webpage, we can link the two pages: The condition is that our link leads directly to your Red Hand Day Campaign. www.redhandday.org shows that there are people worldwide standing up against the use of child soldiers.