Via OpinioJuris, news that President Bush signed into law the Child Soldiers Accountability act, which "makes it a federal crime to recruit knowingly or to use soldiers under the age of 15 and permits the United States to prosecute any individual on US soil for the offense, even if the children were recruited or served as soldiers outside the United States." Human Rights Watch approves. Let me echo Kevin Jon Heller and send my kudos to Senator Dick Durbin, the act's sponsor, and President Bush for signing it into law. To learn more about this terrible global scourge, visit the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers.

The Times' intrepid Africa reporter Jeffrey Gettleman plays tourist in Eritrea for a guest spot on Sunday's travel section. The picture he paints of Eritrea's architectural wonders makes the capital, Asmara, sound like an intriguing place to visit. There is almost no crime, the climate is near perfect, and the Italian-influenced cuisine sounds delectable. It recalls, the title of his article suggests, La Dolce Vita.

Gettleman does include a "hefty caveat" for potential American tourists. (And, it should be noted, the Eritrean-American relationship took another turn for the worse today when the United States banned arms sales to Eritrea over accusations that the government in Asmara is arming Islamist Somali insurgents. As Gettleman says:

American-Eritrean relations are at a historic low point, with American officials accusing the Eritrean government of sponsoring terrorism in Somalia. It's a long story, having to do with the chaos in Somalia and the poisonous relationship between Eritrea and its much larger neighbor, Ethiopia, which happens to be America's new B.F.F. (best friend forever) in Africa and is currently occupying Somalia. The Eritreans paint themselves as victims of a Western conspiracy.

UN officials and peacekeepers might also think twice before visiting as the government is not very hospitable to their kind. Last spring the United Nations Mission to Ethiopia-Eritrea (UNMEE) was forced to shut down after Asmara effectively withdrew its consent for the mission. More recently, the Eritrean government refused to meet with UN investigators on a fact-finding mission to the site of a clash between Eritrean and Djibouti armed forces.

Joking aside, I don't doubt that Asmara is a nice place to visit. I just wish the Eritrean government behave more cooperatively toward the United Nations.

An actress, a diaper manufacturer, and UNICEF join forces to help eradicate tetanus.

Actress Salma Hayek appealed on Thursday to mothers to support a global campaign to eliminate tetanus, which kills a newborn baby every three minutes in a poor country.

Hayek, spokeswoman for the Pampers/UNICEF campaign against tetanus, went to Sierra Leone last week to take part in an vaccination drive against the disease.

For each specially-marked pack of Pampers diapers sold through year-end, Procter & Gamble has pledged to donate a vaccine. UNICEF hopes to wipe out the scourge, blamed for the deaths of 140,000 babies and 30,000 mothers each year, by 2012.

"I had no idea how much it was going to really personally move me ... to actually see it in Sierra Leone," Hayek told a news conference in Geneva.

Sierra Leone is among 50 countries where newborn babies and mothers die of tetanus, which has been eradicated in industrial countries, according to the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF).

Read the full article here, and contribute to the campaign here.

Great column from Neal Peirce in the Seattle Times.

Imagine the next president of the United States moving decisively to slow down the world's population growth as it arcs from today's 6.7 billion toward a predicted and perilous 9.2 billion by 2050.

The cost to the U.S. Treasury could reach $1 billion a year. Worth it? Consider what a proactive U.S. global family-planning effort might achieve:

* By moderating population growth, there'd be some lessening of catastrophic food and water shortages afflicting less-developed nations.

* Global-warming dangers wouldn't rise quite so rapidly.

* The rights and life prospects of millions of women around the globe might be enhanced.

* Significant worldwide totals of abortions and infant deaths could be avoided.

* Democracy and stability would be promoted around the world as fewer nations faced the turmoil easily triggered by high birth rates creating population "bumps" of poor and resentful youth.

* With a clear, unequivocal U.S. lead, other countries and the United Nations might expand their international family-planning assistance.

Even if one of their number is surrounded by a half-dozen heavily-armed American warships in a tense stand-off, pirates on Somalia's coast seem as eager as ever for plunder.

Armed Somali pirates attacked four ships, including an Italian crude-oil tanker, in what a maritime piracy watchdog said on Friday was a "critical level" of attacks in the Gulf of Aden.

"It is one of the highest number of attacks in a single day in the same area," said Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau's (IMB) piracy reporting centre in Kuala Lumpur.

He said the vessels were attacked on October 1 by Somali pirates armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades in the notorious waterway.

"We are warning ships to be on high alert. Pirates are attacking ships almost every day. It is at a critical level now," he said.

"Three hijacked vessels were released a few days ago and it now appears this group of Somali pirates are looking for ships to hijack again."

For the sailors out there, check out IMB's "Weekly Piracy Report" and, through reader Franklin, these observations on how to navigate pirate-infested waters, as well as this neat Google map of pirate activity.

In a report on the emptying of half of Somalia's capital -- perhaps 500,000 of its million or so inhabitants have fled fighting between al-Shabab militants and Ethiopian forces -- the BBC includes this poignant quote from the commander of the beleaguered African Union mission in the country:

"I need more troops, I need more equipment," he said, repeating the common refrain of peacekeeping commanders.

But the diplomat-general was wise enough to add: "I also need more political support, I need more diplomatic support. You cannot impose a solution on Somalis, you can only encourage peace".

This is "common refrain" for a reason, of course. No one can appreciate more than the commanders on the ground the desperate equipment shortages that peacekeepers face. Yet the fact that this "diplomat-general" recognizes that political and diplomatic investment is equally important attests to the fact that the conflict in Somalia, like any other, can only be solved with pen and paper in negotiations, not with guns and tanks on the streets of Mogadishu.

In this week's UN Plaza, Matthew Lee and I discuss a range of issues before the United Nations. In the clip below, we stray from Somali piracy to the dispute over the an oil rich region of Sudan to violence in Kashmir.