"If we don’t stand up for children, then we don’t stand for much"
—Marian Wright Edelman

Defining Child Soldiering

Child Soldiering is the systemic abduction, coercion, recruitment and use of children as combatants and in other abusive combat-related roles into which children are forced or coerced, including as “recruiters” of other children as soldiers, to kill, rape, maim, intimidate and torture, or serve as cheap or unpaid servitude, and/or as sex slaves to military or paramilitary forces. It refers to government, rebel forces, warlord groups, mercenary and private military contractor abduction, recruitment and conscription of children as soldiers and servants in declared or undeclared wars or conflict.

Global Scope

At any given time, there are 300,000 or more children engaged as child soldiers throughout the world, with the majority in Africa. As most military organizations, especially rebel forces, warlords, proxy armies and participants in covert actions, do not keep records of children serving as combatants, the exact numbers of children serving as soldiers on behalf of combatant forces is difficult to determine. Whatever the exact current number, these numbers are growing, and it is generally agreed that 300,000 is a low, or “soft,” figure. The exact figure is likely much higher. There are also millions of former child soldiers suffering physical, psychological and emotional trauma, trapped as child laborers, as prostitutes or unemployed. All require intensive, holistic rehabilitation, restorative services and reintegration into society.

Child soldiering takes place throughout the African continent, in Central and South America, in parts of Europe and throughout Asia. Burma/Myanmar, Angola, Afghanistan, Honduras, Sierra Leone, Guatemala, Chechnya, Colombia, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Mozambique, Liberia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Bhutan, Sudan, and Iraq are but a few of the places in which child soldiering continues to take place or former child soldiers suffer from the physical, psychological and emotional trauma of their ordeals.

Children are “trained” under the most brutal and inhumane conditions to become killers, rapists, torture and to perform mayhem. One major purpose of these brutal tactics is to create a climate of fear and terror among civilian populations. Girls are frequently gang-raped, serve as sex-slaves and/or “marry” soldiers. Children are used, in addition to killing, as spies, sentries, bodyguards, cooks, porters, servants, messengers, and to plant mines and bombs.

The training of children causes psychological trauma and instills fear and obedience into child soldier units. Children are beaten during military training, often drugged, and forced to commit acts of cruelty, including the killing of other children, family members and civilians. Many children are forced to kill family members or neighbors in their village or town when they are abducted. Failure to kill upon demand results in the killing of the disobedient child. Hence, children kill both out of fear and conditioning. In time, many children become conditioned to killing, and use killing, rape, maiming, and torture as a source of power, security and group identity.

Most former child soldiers do not reintegrate from their combat or combat related roles to mainstream or traditional civilian society; most remain in an exploited condition – as cheap labor or prostitutes. Many continue lives of criminality fostered by years of both being victimized by and committing gross acts of violence. Combined with having missed normal childhoods and the opportunity to mature, most former child soldiers also remain unskilled, uneducated, drug or alcohol dependent and therefore, unemployable. Many work as cheap labor in mines or in criminal enterprises. Many suffer guilt and shame from having committed atrocious acts, including against their own families and communities.

The presence of child soldiers where cease-fires are being negotiated threatens peacemaking. Impressionable and driven by fear and obedience, children trained to kill are used by local warlords, profiteers, and those on the fringes of power as a means to keep the chaos going, creating an environment of fear which is essential for armed conflict to thrive.