300,000 Child Soldiers Serving World-Wide
http://www.aviva.org/newsinex.htm
It is estimated that there are a total of 300,000 child soldiers on the
front line of battle, in every continent. Children are involved in ongoing
conflicts in Afghanistan, Bhutan, Burma, Colombia, Congo, El Salvador,
Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Sudan and
Uganda. During Sierra Leone's brutal war of amputations, children have been
abducted to special camps to be trained, and drugged - so that they believed
they had magical powers to resist enemy bullets. In Uganda, children aged
between 13 to 16 make up to 90% of the Lord's Resistance Army, which is
fighting the government in the north of the country. As human rights groups
are pressing for adoption of an optional protocol on the Rights of the
Child, which would raise the minimum age of recruitment into the armed
forces from 15 to 18 - the US and Britain have said they would not block the
protocol - but continue themselves to recruit 16 year olds. The Convention
of the Rights of the Child, which marks its 10th anniversary in November,
has been ratified by 191 countries - the US and Somalia remain the only
countries who have not signed up. Source: BBC World Service, 18.10.99
