(New Beginnings, No. 16)
Published as Peter McCarthy.
‘I would like to give you a message. Please do your best to tell all the world what is happening to us, so that other children don’t have to pass through this violence.’ (From a 15-year-old girl abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda.)
As many as 250,000 children under 18 have been conscripted to serve in conflicts in more than 30 countries. Many are recruited from the age of 10, and sometimes as young as 5 years.
Hundreds of thousands more children have been recruited, both into governmental armed forces and armed opposition groups. In Myanmar (Burma), children from 15 to 17 years old have been press-ganged from schools and orphanages by government soldiers to serve in the army.
In many countries, both girls and boys are used as soldiers, but girls are especially at risk. While many children fight in the frontline, others are used as spies, messengers, sentries, porters, servants and sexual slaves.
The widespread availability of modern lightweight guns enables children to become efficient killers in combat. They are so light that children can easily use them, and so simple they can be dis- and re-assembled by a child of 10.
Child soldiers are often used for special tasks, including committing atrocities against their own families and communities. In Mozambique, recruiters hardened children by forcing them to kill people from their own villages. In Peru, the rebel group, Shining Path, forced children to eat body parts of those they killed.
During the Iran-Iraq war, some 15,000 Iranian child soldiers launched human wave attacks on Iraq, chanting together ‘Come on, come on, plunge on. Those who step on mines will go to paradise’. They were used to clear mine-fields for the experienced soldiers who followed behind. Children are often used to lay and to clear landmines.
The problem is most critical in Africa and Asia, though children are also used as soldiers by governments and armed groups in many countries in the Americas, Europe and the Middle East. During the civil war in El Salvador from 1980 to 1992, about 80% of the soldiers were under 18 years of age.
While some children are recruited forcibly, others are driven into armed forces by poverty, alienation and discrimination. Many children join armed groups because of their experience of abuse at the hands of State authorities.
Children are used because they are easier to condition into fearless killing and unthinking obedience. They are often supplied with drugs and alcohol.
Children are injured and sometimes killed during harsh training regimes. They are often treated brutally, and punishments for mistakes or desertion are severe.
The longer that conflicts continue, the more likely that children will be exploited as soldiers. When this is done, all children in a conflict zone may be suspected and targeted by the warring parties.
According to the Centre for Defense Information, Washington DC, USA, in the past decade, two million children have been killed, and three times as many have been permanently disabled or seriously injured in war.
Since 1994, a United Nations’ working group has been trying to develop new international standards that would protect children from the horrors of war. It is lobbying to raise the minimum age for military recruitment to 18, but it has encountered opposition from the United States and Britain.
For more information, check out www.child-soldiers.org or read “The Invisible Soldiers: Child Combatants”, The Defense Monitor, Vol.26, No.4, (July 1997), and Vol.25, No.5, (July 1996); Amnesty International, “Uganda: ‘Breaking God’s commands’, the destruction of childhood by the Lord’s Resistance Army”, 18 September 1997, AI Index: AFR 59/01/97.