Thousands Of Children In Combat Some As Young At 5 Years Old Involved In World’s 33 Wars

An estimated 250,000 soldiers under 18 - some as young as 5 years old - are serving in wars around the world, according to a report Thursday by Save the Children.

The report counted 33 armed conflicts, many of them civil wars, where children have been fighting this year.

Save the Children is promoting a U.N. pact that would raise the minimum recruitment age to 17. The 1979 Convention on the Rights of the Child sets the age at 15, but not all countries follow it.

“Even a generation ago, battlefield weapons were heavy and cumbersome,” the report said. “The development of lightweight automatic weapons - archetypically, but by no means exclusively, the Soviet AK47 - has transformed the capacity of children to serve as combatants.”

Some of the weapons weigh less than seven pounds.

Young soldiers include girls as well as boys.

“The girl soldiers were stationed at the front in all military actions, and so bore the brunt of any casualties,” said a case study on Cambodia, quoted in the report.

The use of girls as suicide bombers was cited in Sri Lanka and Lebanon.

Sexual abuse of both girls and boys was widely reported.

“Soon after recruitment the girls are divided up and allocated to rebel men to be their ‘wives,”’ said the report on Uganda.

A study of pro-communist forces in Afghanistan between 1978 and 1982 said:

“Child soldiers were encouraged/ forced to render sexual services, perform dance in public and do robbery. Performing dance in public according to the Afghan culture codes is regarded as a strong negative act.”

The report - “Children: The Invisible Soldiers” - quotes from 27 such studies on fighting in countries from Afghanistan to the former Yugoslavia. It was written by Rachel Brett and Margaret McCallin of the Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva and the International Catholic Child Bureau.

Save the Children describes itself as a nonprofit, nonpolitical, nonsectarian organization working in 41 countries.

“We must not close our eyes to the fact that child soldiers are both victims and perpetrators,” retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa wrote in an introduction.

“They sometimes carry out the most barbaric acts of violence. But no matter what the child is guilty of, the main responsibility lies with us, the adults.”

Most of the child soldiers are in Africa, but many are in Asia and Latin America.

At least one 5-year-old was reported in Khmer Rouge forces in Cambodia and another in Sierre Leone, while 7-year-olds were found in paramilitary groups in Sudan and among the Kurdish rebels in Turkey.

Children of 11 and 12 were said to have been found both in the army and guerrilla forces in Guatemala.

Usually, children are not deliberately sought as soldiers, the report said, but armies need soldiers and children are easier to recruit.