"Girls are hardest to find. They are hidden. They become the wives or sex
slaves of fighters," Ironside (UNICEF) told Reuters, adding 4,000 children
still needed to be demobilised in the region.
By Nick Tattersall
DAKAR, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Child soldiers are still being recruited in at
least 13 countries from Afghanistan to Uganda, 10 years after international
guidelines were agreed to eradicate their use, a British-based charity said on
Monday.
Save the Children said hundreds of thousands of under-age soldiers were
being forced to fight around the world despite guidelines laid down in the Cape
Town Principles agreed in 1997, which established 18 as the minimum age for
recruitment.
"The situation is still dire. Hundreds of thousands of children are still
living in misery due to association with armed groups and forces," Save the
Children said in a statement.
"Child soldiers are subjected to brutal intimidation, often forced to
commit atrocities as military 'training', and then used on the frontline," it
said.
Many of those forced to fight were in Africa, held by rebel groups such
as the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda -- infamous for abducting
thousands of children -- or by militia groups including those wreaking havoc in
eastern Congo.
Child soldiers were often abducted in their villages and began their
fighting careers as forced labourers, carrying out looting raids and
transporting the booty to their seniors, before being forced to kill.
"If you did not do it they would kill you. That was the first killing I
saw. That made me silent and made me obey orders," said one former child
soldier, Abubakar, who was forced to fight by rebels in Sierra Leone's 1991-2002
civil war.
"Then they taught us to fight. That was my first time to cock an AK47 and
fire it. It was just some hours of training ... but we did not do it with a
willing heart," Abubakar, who said he killed for the first time aged 13, told
Reuters. He declined to have his surname published.
HARD TO FORGET
Save the Children said fighting forces were recruiting child soldiers in
Afghanistan, Burundi, Chad, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast,
Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda.
The Cape Town Principles were agreed at a symposium in South Africa
organised with U.N. children's agency UNICEF to recommend governments take
action.
Representatives from nearly 60 countries met in France on Monday to
update these principles in a document called the Paris Commitments, aimed at
boosting efforts to halt the use of children in war and do more to help
reintegrate child soldiers.
"More than a revolting reality, more than a war crime, it is a time bomb
that threatens stability and economic growth in Africa and beyond," French
Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy told Le Figaro daily on Monday.
Save the Children said 10,000 children associated with the LRA were still
unaccounted for in Uganda while in Sri Lanka at least 5,000 had been recruited
since 2001 and parents were afraid to let their children out for fear of
abduction.
Children as young as eight had been recruited by government forces in
southern Sudan, while over 8,000 were still being used in rebel and militia
groups in West Africa.
"Some people are under the mistaken belief that children volunteer. Most
of the time it is poverty that forces them to join up. Others are abducted by
force," said Pernille Ironside, a UNICEF child protection officer based in Goma,
eastern Congo.
"Girls are hardest to find. They are hidden. They become the wives or sex
slaves of fighters," Ironside told Reuters, adding 4,000 children still needed
to be demobilised in the region.
Although peace deals have nominally ended many of the African wars
notorious for using child soldiers -- such as Sierra Leone and Liberia -- those
released are often rejected by society and struggle to come to terms with their
violent past.
"I want to join civilian life because I am getting old ... But I'm used
to this soldier life. There's nothing else to do," said Abubakar, now in his
late 20s, who joined Sierra Leone's army and was trained by the British when the
war ended.
"They say once a soldier, always a
soldier."