Thank you.
It's a pleasure that you're here before this committee.
I just want to say that both the U.S. and Canada have signed and ratified several international conventions. Although we've ratified the international Convention on the Rights of the Child, I believe the U.S. and Somalia are still the only two countries that have not ratified it. Everybody else has in fact ratified the two very important conventions. I think it's one of the most widely signed and ratified conventions to date. It clearly establishes protocols on the rights of children, and child soldiers in particular.
There is a whole feeling that in the U.S., both in the terminology and the labelling of things, there is new language that has been formulated around the Law of Armed Conflict: things like unlawful enemy combatants, the meaning of which we don't really know exactly. There are all these definitions being used by the U.S. to justify its actions in the legal proceedings before the courts, yet one would have to say it was outside of the international law and norms that have been framed over so many years.
So where does the U.S. get this authority to impose these types of actions if it is in fact outside of international law, and some would argue maybe outside of domestic law as well in the U.S.? The U.S., even if it has not ratified these conventions, has certainly signed many of them, and particularly signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child. So how do you get your legal authority to pursue this if in fact you might be operating outside the law?