Overview

How many children are involved in armed conflict?

It is estimated that some 300,000 children – boys and girls under the age of 18 – are today involved in more than 30 conflicts worldwide.

Why are children used in armed conflict?

Children are more likely to become child soldiers if they are separated from their families, displaced from their homes, living in combat zones or have limited access to education. Children may join armed groups as the only way to guarantee daily food and survival.  Due to the proliferation of small arms – and their ready availability worldwide – children can easily carry a weapon and be taught to operate it.  Children respond to orders well, are very unlikely to escape and are easy to brainwash.  Vast numbers of children in war-torn countries lack parental figures – many of them have been killed – and are seeking an authority figure.  Other children are on the run, often hungry, without proper shelter or any economic opportunity, and the possibility of an adult providing food, direction, shelter is appealing.  Sexual and physical abuse is rampant in many military and rebel organizations and easy to inflict on a child.

In some situations, the involvement of children in conflicts as soldiers may even be accepted or encouraged. Children may ‘voluntarily’ take part in warfare, not realizing the dangers and abuses they will be subjected to. Most likely these children are responding to economic, cultural, social and political pressures.

The particular situation of girls in conflicts continues to require further attention. The potential risk of sexual violence, abuse and exploitation of children and women increase during armed conflicts, and specific measures must be taken to ensure their security and to strengthen their decision-making abilities. Still, in many instances, programmes to demobilize and reintegrate child soldiers fail to identify appropriate strategies for gaining access to these girls and young women. Ways must also be found to address the needs of girls abducted during war to serve as sexual slaves and who may have no alternative to remaining under the custody of their abductors.

What exactly is a child soldier?

According to the 1997 Capetown Principles, a child soldier is anyone under the age of 18, “who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity, including but not limited to cooks, porters, messengers and anyone accompanying such groups, other than family members. The definition includes girls recruited for sexual purposes and for forced marriage.”

Child soldiers are used in practically every region of the world.  Currently, there are child soldiers fighting in 17 countries: Afghanistan, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Colombia, Côte d?Ivoire, the DRC, India, Iraq, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Myanmar, Philippines, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Thailand and Uganda.

For the last three decades, human rights organizations have pressured nations and armed groups to eliminate the use of child soldiers in their ranks, with only limited success.

What is the impact on the life of the child who is introduced into armed conflict?

More and more studies are being done on the impact of direct participation in armed conflict on children.  Every year, new reports and research on psychological treatments, therapies, and programs for helping child soldiers recover are being made available.   Mental health problems range from depression, to post-traumatic stress disorder, to anxiety, to insomnia, to name a few.  Thankfully, children of war, both victims and direct participants, have been shown to be remarkably resilient.  Many of them – with the proper treatment – have been successfully reintegrated into society and are able to continue on to a productive, peaceful adulthood.

Why is the recruitment and introduction of child soldiers into modern conflict such a pressing human rights issue?

Children are the innocent victims of war.  At all costs, they should be protected from the effects of warfare.  At the very least, they should be able to live a life free from any direct involvement in fighting.  Public awareness of this issue, from the hard work of advocates at human rights organizations, governments, journalists, writers, filmmakers, and former child soldiers who have shown courage by telling their story, has finally increased to a point that people are outraged.  The more people learn about the use of child soldiers, the more they want it stopped.