Cheap And Expendable Troops

Hundreds of thousands of children, some aged only seven, are fighting in conflicts around the world often because they are regarded as "cheap" and "expendable," a report said Tuesday.

The survey by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers found that over 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.

"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," said the report, which was released in London.

Coalition spokeswoman Judith Arenas told reporters in Johannesburg that since the coalition's first survey on the problem two years ago, the number of countries using children in conflicts had risen to 41 from 31.

Over 300 children died on the battlefield in 1999 and 2000 but Arenas said the figure could be higher as there was no reliable documentation of child casualties.

The report 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.

The coalition survey 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 study 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.

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 an Gulf conflicts.

The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers was pinning its hopes to help curb the exploitation of the young in conflicts on the United Nations' Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The Optional Protocol seeks to raise to 18 from 15 years the minimum age for direct participation in hostilities and the compulsory recruitment into armed groups, laying the basis for a global ban on the use of child soldiers.

By Mike Collett-White
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