It is estimated that 43 percent (157 of 366) of all armed organizations in the world use child soldiers, 90 percent of whom see battle. In the last decade, more than 2 million children have been killed in combat, a rate of some 500 per day.

International law prohibits the recruitment of children under the age of 18 by non-state armed groups, and all participation of children in active hostilities. The recruitment of children under the age of 15 is now considered a war crime.

▪In 1998 it was estimated that up to 300,000 children were actively involved in armed conflict.

▪The problem is most critical in Africa, where an estimated 100,000 children, some as young as nine, were involved in armed conflict in 2004.

▪Most child soldiers are ages 14-18. Many are forcibly recruited, while many others "voluntarily" enlist as a means of survival in war-torn regions where family, social and economic structures have collapsed, or after seeing family members tortured or killed by government forces or armed groups. Others join up because of poverty and lack of work or educational opportunities.

▪Child soldiers are trained to use explosives and weapons, and are frequently subjected to rape, violence and hard labor.

▪Many girls have reported enlisting to escape domestic servitude, violence and sexual abuse. Girl soldiers are frequently subjected to rape and other forms of sexual violence as well as being involved in combat roles.

▪Child soldiers perform a range of tasks including participation in combat, laying mines and explosives; scouting, spying, acting as decoys, couriers or guards; training, drill or other preparations; logistics and support functions, portering, cooking and domestic labor; and sexual slavery or other recruitment for sexual purposes.

▪Children involved in armed conflict are usually forced to live under harsh conditions with insufficient food and little or no access to healthcare. They are almost always treated brutally, subjected to beatings and humiliating treatment.

In many areas children are sent to fight on the front lines.

In Colombia the number of children used by armed groups has increased to around 11,000 in recent years, with children as young as 12 being trained and deployed to use explosives and weapons. In Colombia, children were subjected to "war councils" for disciplinary offences, and in some cases other children were forced to execute them. One 17-year-old boy, who joined a paramilitary group at age 7, described:

They give you a gun and you have to kill the best friend you have. They do it to see if they can trust you. If you don't kill him, your friend will be ordered to kill you. I had to do it because otherwise I would have been killed. That's why I got out. I couldn't stand it any longer." when a street child.

In eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, armed groups sexually abused and raped girls and forced children to kill their own relatives. Says one former child soldier interviewed in 2002:

Being new, I couldn't perform the very difficult exercises properly and so I was beaten every morning. Two of my friends in the camp died because of the beatings. The soldiers buried them in the latrines. I am still thinking of them.

Indonesia and Nepal used children as informants, spies or messengers.

Palestinian children have been trained and sent as suicide bombers.

In Iraq, the militant resistance groups have frequently employed children. Reported a 12 year-old boy in Najaf, 2004:

I joined the Mahdi army to fight the Americans. Last night I fired a rocket-propelled grenade against a tank.

Abductions of children in northern Uganda by the Lord's Resistance Army are at the highest point of the conflict's 17-year history. Thousands of children in northern Uganda continued to flee their homes at night to avoid being abducted into brutal combat and servitude. A former child soldier, age 13, said:

Early on when my brothers and I were captured, the LRA [Lord's Resistance Army] explained to us that all five brothers couldn't serve in the LRA because we would not perform well. So they tied up my two younger brothers and invited us to watch. Then they beat them with sticks until two of them died. They told us it would give us strength to fight. My youngest brother was nine years old.

Also in Uganda, a 15-year-old girl was forcibly abducted at night from her home by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). She was made to kill a boy who tried to escape. She saw another boy being hacked to death for not raising the alarm when a friend ran away. She was beaten when she dropped a water container and ran for cover under gunfire. She received 35 days of military training and was sent to fight the government army. She told Amnesty International:

I would like you to give a message. Please do your best to tell the world what is happening to us, the children. So that other children don't have to pass through this violence.

In Myanmar/Burma there is an estimated 70,000 children in the government's armed forces. Children report being abducted by government forces while on the way to school, and taken to military camps where they were subjected to beatings, forced labor and combat.

A boy abducted at age 13 by government forces, said in a 2003 interview:

...other trainees, if they were caught trying to run away their hands and feet were beaten with a bamboo stick and then put in shackles and beaten and poked again and again and then they were taken to the lock-up.

In Sri Lanka, the abduction and forced conscription of children by the armed opposition Tamil Tigers has claimed hundreds of lives.

In Zimbabwe, one girl described her experience in the National Youth Service Training Program:

There was no one in charge of the dormitories and on a nightly basis we were raped. The men and youths would come into our dormitory in the dark, and they would just rape us -- you would just have a man on top of you, and you could not even see who it was. If we cried afterwards, we were beaten with hosepipes. We were so scared that we did not report the rapes. The youngest girl in our group was age 11 and she was raped repeatedly in the base.

In northeast India, a 16-year-old boy reported in 2004:

He had to run away to a forest with his friend to join the underground. He was 14 when he first held a gun in his hands. He said he loves to go to school but for the poverty of his family he has to lift a gun. Now he is earning enough money with the help of the gun for himself and send money for his family also.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child sets the age of majority at 18 years. The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict came into force in February 2002. It bans the direct use of all children under the age of 18 in hostilities and prohibits all military use of under-18s by non-governmental armed groups. While government armed forces are permitted to recruit volunteers from the age of 16, they must take steps to ensure that the recruitment is genuinely voluntary.

Countries where children have served as combatants (since 1998):
Source: Children at War by P.W. Singer

Albania
Algeria
Angola
Bosnia
Burma
Burundi
Chad
Colombia
Congo
East Timor
Ecuador
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Guinea
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Ivory Coast
Lebanon
Liberia
Macedonia
Mexico (Chiapas)
Nepal
Pakistan
Papua New Guinea
Peru
Philippines
Russia (Chechnya)
Rwanda
Sierra Leone
Solomon Islands
Somalia
Sri Lanka
Sudan
Tajikistan
Turkey
Uganda
United Kingdom (Northern Ireland)
Uzbekistan
West Bank and Gaza
Yugoslavia