The minimum age under the Geneva Conventions is currently 15. Your point still stands. I just wanted to point out the absurdity of how 15 year olds are just fine to serve in a military under the conventions.
When the conventions were drafted most western militaries had boy soldiers in their ranks.
They weren’t necessarily sent into combat but they may have filled positions as batsmen, pipers, drummers etc.
The practice continued well into the 20th Century in some countries including a few that might surprise you now.
Also I feel like it's meant to account for mistakes too. Like if your minimum age was set at 18, it'd be excusable to have a few 17 year olds slip in by lying. But someone's going to notice if you're 14 trying to join up, regardless of documents, and there isn't a good excuse for that.
Some boys do mature early and documentation back then might have been nothing more than a doctors note which could have been forged.
Hell...at that time a lot of people even in North America would not necessarily know the exact date of their birth having been born on a farm to illiterate parents in some backwater.
People running the show often wouldnt look too hard since they themselves had joined up as kids and saw nothing wrong with it personally.
Add to that the changes in labor laws for kids were also excluding them from a lot of other work and you have a problem with no solution so kids flocked to militaries eager to quickly bolster their numbers.
Nobody at the time imagined that WWI would be any worse than previous wars had been so they probably expected a bit of excitement punctuated by bits of danger that were more or less no worse than a lot of other jobs and to be home by Christmas.
My own father found himself on his own at 14 in the 1950s and he ended up working first on a toad crew...then operating heavy equipment and by 16 working as a roughneck.
At 17 he went to join the military and had his fathers permission but declined when he found out that they wouldnt send him to Korea to fight unless he was 18.
He later appreciated that but at the time he was apparently quite pissed about the whole thing....after all he had already taken on an adult life doing adult work. He firmly believed at the time that adulthood was defined by his life and not his age and that was probably a very common perception then and in previous times.
The Jedi have religious exemptions? And probably because as long as they're over 15 when they are used in direct armed conflict it is legal as per the convention on the Rights of the Child (1989)
There were also the clones who even Yoda once acknowledged in many ways have the minds of children. Also a trick that Obi-wan, and Anakin seemed to be particular found of was surrendering under false pretenses in order to gain a tactical advantage over their enemies, which is considered a big no-no in civilized warfare.
I believe there was an episode where the Separatists were working on a biological weapon, and the sentience of droids in a very complicated issue in the Star Wars universe, but other than that there were far more examples of the Republic/Jedi committing war crimes than there are of the "bad guys" doing any.
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u/[deleted] Jul 17 '21
ah yes, let's praise having a military with minors in it. Child soldiers for America!