forced participation in combat, sexual violence as a weapon of war, displacement, orphaning/ widowhood, maiming, conflict refugees, post trauma, re-socialization, impact on education, disease, loss of land/ livelihood

“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. [President] Déby has trouble finding soldiers who are willing to fight for him, but children will do what they’re told.” - commander in the Chadian Army.¹

Children are the defenseless among us, and vulnerable to intimidation. For children in war-torn regions where communities and families have been destroyed, being in an armed group is a means of mere survival, a way to ensure food and protection.  Because of this, children hold great appeal for military and paramilitary units, who use children to swing AK-47’s, detect land mines, carry supplies to dangerous front lines, and serve as spies, cooks, and sex slaves.

According to Human Rights Watch, in over twenty countries around the world, children are direct participants in war.  Denied a childhood and often subjected to horrific violence, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 children are serving as soldiers.²

The use of anyone under age 18 in combat is illegal under international law.³

Some claim that children join voluntarily; however, the definition of ‘voluntary’ is highly debatable, and in some countries, mass forced abductions of children are commonplace.

“My parents refused to give me to the LTTE so about fifteen of them came to my house — it was both men and women, in uniforms, with rifles, and guns in holsters…. I was fast asleep when they came to get me at one in the morning . . . These people dragged me out of the house...” - girl recruited by the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka at age sixteen.⁴

A 2007 report by the University of California, Berkeley, shows that in the past 11 years, some 38,000 children have been abducted by one army alone, the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda.⁵

Female children and young women face unique difficulties. Demobilization, disarmament and reintegration (DDR) programs pull child soldiers and reestablish them in civilian life. However, girls are typically overlooked in DDR programs, as they often serve non-combatant roles, thus having no weapons to turn in, a prerequisite for help. 

Female soldiers also face heavy social discrimination upon returning to civilian life, as the prevalent rapes and pregnancies experienced in army life are highly stigmatized.  Social stigma issues are used deliberately against children as a way of commanding loyalty.

“Children are sometimes forced to commit atrocities against their own family or neighbors. Such practices help ensure that the child is ‘stigmatized’ and unable to return to his or her home community, thereby ensuring that they remain loyal to the group.” ⁶

The Small Boys Unit of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), in Sierra Leone’s civil war (1991-2001) is just one armed group rife with murders, rape, and extreme torture performed by young boys as their training to become numb to violence. RUF officers “rubbed cocaine into open cuts on their troops to make them maniacal and fearless.”⁷

The psychological and physical damage to children in armed conflict is unfathomable.  The basis for action against forcing children to serve in an army is the belief that it is wrong to manipulate and oppress vulnerable members of society for the benefit of the stronger party.

In response to those who devalued children, Jesus Christ taught, “And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”⁸

Clearly, coming to the rescue of child soldiers and campaigning to stop the practice is away of responding to the Biblical injunction to "Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked."⁹

To learn more, and to join in this work for justice:

Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers - www.child-soldiers.org  

Human Rights Watch: Child Soldiers - www.hrw.org/campaigns/crp/index.htm

UNICEF: Children Associated With Armed Groups - www.unicef.org/protection/files/Armed_Groups.pdf

United Nations: Children and Armed Conflict - www.un.org/children/conflict

1 Human Rights Watch interview with ANT officer, Abéché, Chad, April 1, 2007 <www.essex.ac.uk/armedcon/story_id/000612.pdf 

2 Human Rights Watch http://hrw.org/campaigns/crp/index.htm

3 United Nations General Assembly document Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, 12 February 2002

4 "Personal accounts from “Living in Fear: Child Soldiers and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka:” ." Human Rights Watch 09112004 25 Mar 2009 www.hrw.org/en/news/2004/11/09/personal-accounts-living-fear-child-soldiers-and-tamil-tigers-sri-lanka

5 The Lord’s Resistance Army and Forced Conscription in Northern Uganda, Berkeley-Tulane Initiative on Vulnerable Populations, June 2007

6 "Facts About Child Soldiers." Human Rights Watch 03122008 25 Mar 2009 www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/12/03/facts-about-child-soldiers.

7 Amnesty International, document Sierra Leone: Childhood- A Casualty of Conflict, 2000

8 The Bible, New International Version, Matthew 18:5-6

9 The Bible, New International Version, Psalm 82:3-4