Children are being recruited and used as soldiers ”on a massive scale” around the world, with groups in 15 countries handing weapons to youngsters in armed conflict, according to a UN report issued on Friday.
Despite international efforts to ensure that children under the age of 18 do not take part in hostilities, the report names 22 new groups fighting in Burundi, Colombia, Congo, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Myanmar, Sudan and Uganda that have been found to be recruiting or using children as fighters.
Groups in seven other countries — Afghanistan, Nepal, Northern Ireland, Philippines, Russia’s Chechen Republic, Somalia and Sri Lanka — are also giving weapons to youngsters, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in the report to both the General Assembly and the Security Council.
”Children continue to be the main victims of conflicts,” the report said. ”Children are killed, made orphans, maimed, abducted, deprived of education and health care, and left with deep emotional scars and trauma. … Refugees and internally displaced children are especially vulnerable to violence, recruitment, sexual
exploitation, disease, malnutrition and death.”
The report called on the United Nations to develop a system to monitor and report violations committed against children by parties to conflict. It said the list of groups using child soldiers should be updated annually, and it urged the Security Council to consider sanctions against persistent violators, including travel bans, arms embargoes and freezing assets.
While some progress has been made to demobilise child combatants in Colombia, Congo, Somalia and Sudan, the report said, ”children are being recruited and used as child soldiers on a massive scale.”
In Colombia, for example, the report said ”approximately 7 000 children remain within the ranks of armed groups and an additional 7 000 children are involved in urban militias, many of which are associated with these armed groups.”
It said the Marxist-inspired Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the smaller leftist National Liberation Army and the right-wing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia all ”continued to recruit or use children as soldiers.”
”Fear of recruitment has led many families to flee their homes in rural areas,” it added.
In Uganda, the Lord’s Resistance Army, a shadowy organisation fighting President Yoweri Museveni, abducted over 8 000 children during the past year, ”the highest level of abduction in 17 years of conflict,” the report said.
The country’s army, the Uganda People’s Defense Forces, and its allied Local Defense Units also recruit and use children — and the army has recruited youngsters who have escaped or been rescued from the Lord’s Resistance Army, the report said.
Annan said child soldiers were a new development in Ivory Coast during the past year — with all sides in the conflict recruiting or using them. The former French colony has been tense and divided since a September 2002 civil war that was officially declared over in July.
In Liberia, during the upsurge of fighting in June and July, ”there was a marked increase in the recruitment of children by all parties.” Some were recruited from camps for displaced people in Liberia and some from refugee camps in neighboring Guinea, it noted.
All sides in Somalia’s conflict continue to recruit children, the report said, and a recent study found that ”a large number of children have either carried a gun or been involved in militia activities.”
In Myanmar, ”children continue to be forcibly recruited by government armed forces and armed groups,” while Maoist rebels in Nepal still recruit or use children. In the Philippines, reports indicate that Muslim separatist groups, Communist rebels and the Muslim extremist Abu Sayyaf group still use children as fighters,
Annan said.
Although there has been ”an overall decrease in recruitment” by the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the UN Children’s Fund has received reports of new recruitment by the group despite its promise to end such practices, the report said.
In Northern Ireland, ”continuing competitive recruitment of young people by all paramilitary groups has been reported in the context of various feuds and the emergence of dissident groups.” In Chechnya, insurgency groups continue ”to enlist children and use them to plant land mines and explosives,” the report said. – Sapa-AP