About 50% of the continent’s children have experienced violence – emotional, sexual, physical and the added dangers of war
A child-rights-based approach to education in disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration programmes gives children the tools for healing, belonging and participation in peacebuilding
Many of the former child combatants are overwhelmed by the horrors they have witnessed in a part of the country that has been ravaged by violence for more than 25 years
South Africa risks becoming complicit in South Sudanese abuses
What happened to all the girls who fought in Liberia’s brutal civil war and are now grown-ups? How do they get on with their lives?
About 82 children have been rescued from an armed group in the southeastern DRC and are being reunited with their families.
Desperate to save children from being used as soldiers in the DRC, residents of the ‘Triangle of Death’ have launched a campaign to end the practice.
Sporadic armed clashes, looting of orphanages, recruitment into armies, and widespread school closures have made life perilous for CAR’s children.
Amnesty International has called for states to adopt an Arms Trade Treaty to mark the international day against the use of child soldiers.
Rebel groups have recruited young boys to fight the messy war in northern Mali, a conflict that now includes 2 500 well-armed French soldiers.
Draconian military conscription rules in Eritrea mean children as young as 12 can be forced into duty. Dan Connell reports.
The ICC will hand down judgment in the trial of Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga who is accused of enlisting child soldiers under 15 to fight.
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/ 10 February 2012
If you do not understand the politics, you do not understand the basics of the concept.
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/ 11 November 2010
Millions of children lost in war around the world miss the right to feel a parent’s love more than anything else.
The ICC said on Tuesday it was looking closely at charges child soldiers have been used by militias in Sudan’s Darfur region.
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/ 2 February 2009
As the trial of Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga starts in The Hague, Stephanie Wolters wonders why his former deputy, Bosco Ntaganda, is still free.
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/ 29 January 2009
The first witness at the ICC’s inaugural war-crimes trial retracted his testimony on Wednesday after saying he was a former child soldier.
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/ 27 January 2009
DRC warlord Thomas Lubanga was accused on Monday of press-ganging children and using them to kill and rape, as the ICC’s first trial opened.
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/ 15 January 2009
About 50 teenagers amble hollow-eyed on the lawn of Liberia’s sole psychiatric hospital, drug-laced casualties of a civil war fought using children.
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/ 31 December 2008
The ongoing violence in the DRC has put children at particular risk of recruitment into armed groups, Unicef said on Wednesday.
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/ 23 December 2008
There are about 6 000 child soldiers in Sudan’s war-torn region of Darfur where about two million children have been affected by conflict.
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/ 26 November 2008
Southern Sudan women played a significant role in the war, but today their contribution is often overlooked.
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/ 13 November 2008
Michel became a child soldier after he left his house in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to get some milk and never returned.
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/ 29 September 2008
Freed child soldiers in the DRC are being re-recruited for their valuable fighting experience, Amnesty International said on Monday.
Judges at the International Criminal Court have called an indefinite halt to the case against a Congolese militia leader and will decide next week.
The two-year peace process in Uganda aimed at ending a rebellion by the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army lies in tatters as the rebels rearm.
Thousands of child refugees from Darfur, some as young as nine, are being abducted and sold to warring militias as child soldiers, a British human rights group reports.