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Report: Children Used as Soldiers in 41 Countries
More than 300,000 children �� some as young as 7 �� are fighting as soldiers in 41 countries, an international children's rights group said in a report released Tuesday. They are being used as front-line fighters, minesweepers, spies, porters and sex slaves, according to the report by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers.
Children are often forced to guard the oil and diamond fields that finance African insurgencies. "Every child with an AK-47, however small they are, as long as they can hold up that weapon, is turned into an effective killer," coalition spokeswoman Judit Arenas said at a news conference Tuesday.
The London-based coalition includes several human rights groups, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and World Vision International.
Governments recruit children to fight because of "their very qualities as children �� they can be cheap, expendable and easier to condition into fearless killing and unthinking obedience," the report said.
Though the number of child soldiers worldwide has not changed much in recent years, the number of countries where they are used has increased to 41 from about 30 three years ago, Arenas said.
Africa's wars involve more than 120,000 children, the report said, while Myanmar, the southeast Asian country also known as Burma, has the world's highest number of child soldiers �� 50,000.
Rebels in the Philippines and Papua New Guinea use child soldiers, and children are fighting in conflicts in Macedonia and Colombia, it said.
The use of child soldiers has decreased in the Middle East and Latin America as conflicts there have ended.
Even countries not at war have problems, Arenas said. Children of Kurdish descent in Sweden and Turkey are being recruited to return to their ancestral land and fight for Kurdish independence, she said.
Most child soldiers are 15 to 18 years old, but cases of soldiers as young as 7 are listed in the report, the first global survey of its kind.
Child soldiers are often given drugs to make them fearless. A 14-year-old rebel soldier in Sierra Leone said those who refused the drugs were killed, according to the report.
The U.N. General Assembly adopted a protocol in May 2000 calling on governments to prevent troops younger than 18 from taking part in combat. The United Nations says 79 countries have signed the treaty, but only six have ratified it.
In 87 countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, youth are recruited into government armed forces, paramilitaries, civil militia and non-state armed groups, though they are not necessarily used in combat. The United States allows voluntary enlistment at 17.
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