The number of conflicts in which children are used as soldiers has dropped sharply in the past four years, to 17 from 27, a research report released this week by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers said.
The report in some ways reflects the now nearly universal consensus that children should not be used in combat. The concept has seeped into the consciousness of even the most hardened militias as international justice has singled out notorious figures who have abused children, like Charles Taylor of Liberia and Joseph Kony of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda.
But it also reflects the reality that when conflict breaks out, particularly in fragile states, children are quickly swept up.
As countries like Liberia and Sierra Leone, in which thousands of children were forced to fight, have ended their brutal wars in the last five years, newer conflicts in the Darfur region of Sudan and the Central African Republic have ensnared yet more children.
STILL AT RISK
In Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, children continue to be used as combatants, the report said.
“This downward trend is more the result of conflicts ending than the impact of initiatives to end child soldier recruitment and use,” the report concludes. “Indeed, where armed conflict does exist, child soldiers will almost certainly be involved.”
The report also found that a handful of stubborn governments continued to use children in their armed forces and paramilitaries — countries including Myanmar, Chad, Congo and Somalia.
The report estimates that in Chad alone, 7,000 to 10,000 children were press-ganged into fighting in 2006 and last year, with much of the recruitment taking place on the volatile eastern border with Sudan. Chad has been fighting rebels based in Darfur, a region whose five-year-old conflict has metastasized into Chad and the Central African Republic.
‘IDEAL’ FIGHTERS
As one Chadian army commander put it in an interview with Human Rights Watch, “child soldiers are ideal because they don’t complain, they don’t expect to be paid, and if you tell them to kill, they kill.”
The report also found major shortcomings in programs to reintegrate child combatants after conflicts end. Donors have spent millions to ease fighters back into civilian life, but children are often left out.
In the Central African Republic, some 7,500 fighters were demobilized and given cash and training to start new lives. Only 26 children participated despite the fact that children were believed to make up a large portion of the fighters.
In Congo, where a regional war killed more people than any other conflict since World War II, some 30,000 children are believed to have fought, but 11,000 of them received no help as money for the demobilization program ran dry, the report said.
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person