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Child Soldiers - A Global Problem
Updated by kidaw on Nov 20 2009 02:48:34 AM

There has been widespread and considerable child participation in armed conflicts across Asia and the Pacific, with tens of thousands of children recruited, sometimes forcibly, into governmental armed forces, paramilitary groups or militia and non-governmental armed groups. The worst affected countries have been Afghanistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and, in the recent past, Cambodia.

Myanmar has one of the highest numbers of child soldiers in the world, both within governmental armed forces and non-governmental armed groups. Some children, often under 15 years of age, are attracted by the prestige and power of the military, but many others have been forced to join. Orphans and street children are particularly vulnerable. Through economic circumstance and tribal ties, children have also joined ethnic minority armed groups pitted against the Burmese military.

Sri Lanka has seen many thousands of children used as soldiers by the armed opposition group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The LTTE has in the past mobilised special battalions of teenage girls and boys, some as young as ten years old. In October 1999, 49 children, including 32 girls aged between 11 and 15 years of age were among 140 LTTE cadres killed in a battle with the security forces at Ampakamam in the north. Despite international commitments to stop the use of child soldiers, there were reports throughout 2000 of renewed recruitment drives and military drilling in schools in LTTE-held areas.

In Afghanistan, a generation of children have grown up under arms first as members of the resistance to Soviet forces, later as members of Afghanistans many warring factions. The Taleban movement which today controls much of Afghanistans territory and machinery of government continues to recruit young men trained and indoctrinated in Islamic schools or madrasas in neighbouring Pakistan. In 2000 there were also reports of escalating child recruitment by anti-Taleban forces in the north of the country.

During Cambodias past civil war, there was widespread use of children, including girls, in combat by both the governmental armed forces and the Khmer Rouge. Cambodia today faces a major challenge with the demobilisation, rehabilitation and reintegration of former child soldiers.

Children have also participated with armed groups in the ongoing lower-intensity conflicts across India, Nepal, the Philippines, Indonesia and, in the recent past, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands. Children were mobilised as part of pro-Indonesian militias in the lead up to the popular consultation on East Timors independence in September 1999; while the pro-independence armed group FALINTIL once recruited children, East Timors new national council has set 18 as the minimum age for recruitment to the new nations military forces.

For their part, Australia and New Zealand follow the lower standard of their western alliance partners, recruiting at 17 (16 in exceptional cases in Australia). China appears to conscript and accept volunteers, including girls, at the age of 17. While Japan claims not to recruit below 18, it does accept youth cadets into its Self Defence Force for technical training from age 15.