About 800,000 children are being forced to serve as soldiers worldwide, reports the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. This is shameful. The use of child soldiers must stop. All governments should end the recruitment of children into their armed forces. Then their demands for opposition forces to do the same will have some influence.
The coalition report, released earlier this month, paints a grim picture. About 300,000 child soldiers -- some as young as 7 -- are fighting around the world. As many as 500,000 others have been recruited into paramilitary organizations, militias and rebel groups. Some join the army for the prestige, power or pay; others are kidnapped or press-ganged into service. They serve as soldiers, spies, lookouts, camp attendants and other forms of laborers. Worse still, the number of countries using children in war has risen from 31 to 41 in the two years since the last such survey was conducted -- in other words, since the world was first alerted to this horrific practice.
It is estimated that over 300 children died on battlefields in 1999 and 2000 but the figure is probably higher because the statistics are sketchy at best. But the damage and loss is far greater than a mere body count or the number of wounded. Girls are sometimes used as camp and sex slaves. The report's authors note that once some children are recruited, all those in a community come under suspicion. It details incidents in which innocent children were killed because other kids had been forced to serve.