CIDA Photo: Peter Bennett

- 12-year-old boy from Sierra Leone abducted into the rebel forces

At any one time, there are 300,000 child soldiers fighting in wars around the world. Most of these child soldiers are adolescents, although many are 10 years old or younger.

A child soldier is any girl or boy under the age of 18, who is compulsorily, forcibly or voluntarily recruited or used in hostilities by armed forces, paramilitaries, civil defense units or other armed groups. Child soldiers are used for sexual services, as combatants, forced "wives", messengers, porters or cooks. Many children have no other choice for survival.

Over the past decade more and more children under 18 have been abducted, recruited or have sometimes volunteered to serve in armies, rebel forces and paramilitaries. Smaller children are now able to use weapons such as guns because they have become cheaper and lighter. Armed forces have taken advantage of children because they are impressionable and can be desensitized to violence - making them more effective and violent perpetrators of horrific crimes.

Even when they "volunteer" many child soldiers do not have a choice. Most of the child soldiers come from families too poor to feed themselves. Commanders promise to pay the families for the services provided by the child. Often children join armies in an effort to escape the violence they experience in their own communities. Sadly, the very violence they hope to escape becomes a reality of their own making - they become the perpetrators of violence.

• Children are forced to join armed groups.
• Children are abducted by armed groups.
• Children join armed groups for protection in war.
• Children are threatened with destruction of their families and communities if they do not join.
• Children have cultural and social pressures forcing them to fight.
• Children have economic or political pressures forcing them to fight.

• The availability of light-weight small arms (guns and other similar weapons) has allowed children of a younger age to become fighters.
• The lives of children are considered expendable. As they are killed, wounded or simply grow older, they are replaced by new "recruits".
• Nearly all girls abducted into armed groups are subjected to sexual abuse and often infected with sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDS.
• As conflicts drag on, there are few alternatives to violence for children. Education becomes a luxury rather than a right and without an education there is little hope for improved economic status.
• Some governments legitimize recruiting children by recruiting those whose births have not been registered. If there is no birth certificate it is easy to fabricate the age of the recruit - often "18" to comply with international guidelines.
• Forcible recruitment may occur anywhere that children are gathered, often including schools and orphanages.

1. Ratifying and implementing the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This would make it illegal to send anyone under 18 into armed conflict.
2. Prioritizing programs to disarm and demobilize child soldiers and to reintegrate them into their communities.
3. Promoting birth registration to help prevent the recruitment of child soldiers and ensure their demobilisation and reintegration.
4. Protecting child soldiers from punishment and retribution in accordance with international juvenile justice standards.

Disarmament = collection of weapons and safe storage or destruction of small arms.
Demobilization = formal registration and release of child soldiers from duty, providing assistance to meet their immediate needs and transportation to home communities.
Reintegration = helping former child soldiers readjust both socially and economically.