Conclusion and Recommendations

 

This report began by showing that military suicide in the UK is concentrated among those who enlist into the army under the age of 18, and particularly among those who drop out of initial training.

 

It then showed that child recruits are particularly stress prone due to their adolescence and a common background of childhood trauma; and that their early military experiences – well before they may be sent to war – can also be highly stressful. In summary:

  • Adolescent young people from troubled backgrounds with heightened susceptibility to stress are sought by the army for basic combat roles.

  • They then undergo a continuously stressful process of military reconditioning (and often abuse) designed to induce obedience and ‘weed out’ unsuitable recruits.

  • While most child recruits pass out of training, a large proportion drop out with stress-related mental health problems, carrying multiple major risk factors for suicidality.

  • Overall, the impact of early life stress, stressful military experiences, and then the stresses of transition to civilian life with little social support and poor socioeconomic prospects, result in a high mental health burden for these young people.

Finally, the report set out why common arguments in favour of enlisting under the age of 18 lack evidence and coherence. While some child recruits may benefit from enlisting early, the overwhelming evidence shows that the policy is harmful to mental health and socio-economic prospects in the long term.

We believe that this report adds to the strong public health and children’s rights case for reserving military work for adulthood. In view of the evidence presented here, raising the enlistment age to 18 would lead to improved mental health outcomes for the 2,000+ or so 16- and 17-year-olds who are now enlisted every year.

Raising the enlistment age to 18 would not deny anyone the option of a military career path, only defer it. Most of today’s adolescent recruits would not be unemployed but in full-time education like almost all other young people, including those from deprived backgrounds. The option of joining up would remain open to them when they reached adulthood, psychologically and physically more robust and better able to make an informed choice in their own interests. This is the norm in most of the rest of the world.

 
 
 
 
 

We have a single recommendation to make:

1. In the mental health and socio-economic interests of young people, raise the minimum age for enlistment into the UK armed forces to 18.

The change would honour the strong recommendation of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child,169 which enjoys the support of the Children’s Commissioners for each nation of the UK,170 numerous health experts171 and children’s rights organisations,172 the public (as represented by polling),173 and the families traumatised by their experience of child enlistment.174

As we have argued elsewhere, the transition to all-adult armed forces would bring operational and economic benefits to the armed forces.175

On the evidence, it would also mean that fewer young people end their lives.

 
 

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Footnotes

169 The Committee’s General Comment on adolescence on the implementation of the rights of the child during adolescence records ‘deep concern’ that adolescent children continue to be recruited into state armed forces (para 81) and specifies that the minimum age for entry should be 18 (para 40). UN CRC, 2016a, op cit.


170 UK Children’s Commissioners, 2020, op cit.


171 For example: R Louise, C Hunter, and S Zlotowitz, 2016, op cit., K Campbell, 2022b, op cit., R Abu-Hayyeh and G Singh, 2019, op cit.


172 See, for example, letter from CRIN, 2021b, op cit.


173 A YouGov poll in 2022 found that 73% of the public believed the minimum enlistment age should be at least 18, 17% thought it should be 16 or 17 (and 1% that it should be less than 16), and 9% did not express a view. YouGov, 2022, op cit.


174 B Quinn, 2021, op cit.


175 C Cooper, D Gee, ‘Has the time come for an all-adult army?’, RUSI Commentary, 27 May 2021, https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/has-time-come-all-adult-army.