Report Slams Use of Child Soldiers
By Mike Collett-White
Originally published by Reuters, June 12, 2001
LONDON (Reuters) — Hundreds of thousands of children, some only seven, are fighting in conflicts around the world and Britain is one of the countries that sends troops into battle under the age of 18, a report said Tuesday.
The survey by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers found that more than 300,000 children under 18 were fighting for government forces or opposition groups at any one time.
While most child soldiers are aged between 15 and 18, the youngest recorded in the Child Soldiers Global Report is seven.
"Unfortunately, children are still being seen as expendable commodities that can be deployed for military purposes," coalition spokeswoman Judith Arenas said.
"Often children are recruited because of their very qualities as children—they can be cheap, expendable and easier to condition into fearless killing and unthinking obedience," the report added.
It found 120,000 minors were participating in conflicts across Africa. Among the worst countries in recent years were Angola, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan and Uganda.
In Sierra Leone up to 30 percent of state-backed Citizens Defense Forces in some areas are between seven and 14 years old while in Burundi and Rwanda military schools appear to serve as backdoor recruitment centers for tens of thousands of children.
In Uganda, the Lord's Resistance Army "abducted children from their schools, communities and homes to camps in Sudan, forcing them to commit atrocities and become sexual slaves."
A recent Reuters report on LRA captives returning home to Uganda said that children, some as young as six, were forced to hack to death fellow child captives who tried to escape.
ASIA IS PROBLEM REGION
The report also found widespread child participation in armed conflicts across Asia, naming the worse affected countries as Afghanistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Cambodia. Myanmar has one of the highest child soldiers rates in the world, it said.
In Sri Lanka, The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had mobilized special battalions of teenage girls and boys, some as young as 10.
The report said that 49 children, including 32 girls between 11 and 15, were among 140 LTTE personnel killed in a battle with security forces in October 1999.
The report also turned its fire on developed countries, including Britain which it said was the only European country routinely to send 17-year-olds into combat.
"Britain routinely insists on deploying troops before the age of 18," Arenas said.
"It is recruiting youths who have just left school without many qualifications, and so must ask itself whether it is really getting the best soldiers it could."
A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Defense, which is struggling to recruit and retain personnel, said British forces did their utmost to avoid sending under-18 troops into battle, although it happened in the Falklands and Gulf conflicts.
She said that around 5,500 troops out of a total strength of 200,000 were under 18, of whom only 1,000 were trained and therefore eligible to be sent to fight.
The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers wants all countries to set 18 as the minimum age for military recruitment.
