Mar 9, 2012

Child Soldier

~ T. Zamlunmang Zou @ Pupu Zou

CHAPTER 01: INTRODUCTION
Over 20 million children of conflict are out of school. Education is often forgotten.”
~ Angelina Jolie, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador
A child soldier is anyone under the age of eighteen who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity. Child soldiers are boys and girls who fight in adult wars, missing out on the safe childhood that many of us take for granted, but to which every child is entitled according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.[1] 
According to the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers:  “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.” [2]

·       As of mid-2004, up to 100,000 children - some as young as nine - were actively involved in armed conflict in Africa.*
·       80 per cent of children aged 8 to 13 in Sierra Leone had suffered the death of a parent, sibling or close relative; 74 per cent had seen somebody being killed or injured with machetes; 68 per cent had seen somebody being burned to death or tortured; and nearly 10 per cent of girls had been gang-raped.***
·       66 per cent of children in Angola had seen people murdered, and 67 per cent had seen people beaten or tortured. **[3]
The recruitment of children under age 15 for military purposes is a war crime under a statute of the International Criminal Court. In 2007 the war crimes court for Sierra Leone was successful in convicting three warlords for the use of child soldiers.
Despite the ending of various civil wars and release of tens of thousands of child soldiers  in the period since 2004, the UN still names as many as 16 armies and groups where recruitment continues. An estimated total of up to 300,000 children are in military service, including a significant proportion of girls. [4]
Campaigners are putting pressure on over 60 countries which have so far failed to sign the “Optional Protocols” to the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. Drawn up in 2000, these Protocols prevent recruitment of children under 18 for hostilities.
The military use of children takes three distinct forms: children can take direct part in hostilities (child soldiers), or they can be used in support roles such as porters, spies, messengers, look outs, and sexual slaves; or they can be used for political advantage either as human shields or in propaganda.
Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution estimated in January 2003 that child soldiers participate in about three quarters of all the ongoing conflicts in the world.[5]
According to the website of Human Rights Watch as of July 2007: “In over twenty countries around the world, children are direct participants in war. Denied a childhood and often subjected to horrific violence, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 children are serving as soldiers for both rebel groups and government forces in current armed conflicts.”[6]
CHAPTER 02: SOME OF THE African Nations and Groups involved in Child Soldier
Africa: Up to half of the world's child soldiers are in Africa according to UNOCHA.[7] In 2004 one estimate put the number of children involved in armed conflict including combat roles at 100,000.[8] In the end titles of the film Blood Diamond, it is claimed that "there are still 200,000 child soldiers in Africa". Many of these children are "invisible children," orphaned by AIDS, violence and war. These children are as young as 7 years old and are forced into conflict due to poverty, sold by their parents, kidnapped, or tricked into joining.
Burundi: In 2004 hundreds of child soldiers served in the Forces Nationales pour la Libération (FNL), an armed rebel Hutu group. Children between the ages of 10 and 16 were also conscripted by the Burundese military.[9]
Central African Republic: Between 2001 and 2003 children serve in armed rebel groups, including the Union of Democratic Forces for Unity (Union des Forces Démocratiques pour le Rassemblement, UFDR).[10]
Chad: Child soldiers are fighting with the Chadian Military, integrated rebel forces - the United Front for Democratic Change (Front Uni pour le Changement, FUC), local self-defense forces known as Tora Boro militias, and two Sudanese rebel movements operating in Chad - the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the G-19 faction of the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA).[11][12]
Cote d'Ivoire: During the 2002 civil war, "children were recruited, often forcibly, by both sides."[13]. Children serve in armed militia groups linked to the government, including the Alliance patriotique de l’ethnie Wé (APWé) and the Union patriotique de résistance du Grand Ouest (UPRGO). The ex-rebel groups now allied into the New Forces (Forces Nouvelles de Côte d'Ivoire, FAFN) also had child soldiers.
Rwanda: In 2002 Child soldiers were used by Rwandan government forces and paramilitaries, operating within the Democratic Republic of Congo.[14]
Sierra Leone: In Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism anthropologist David M. Rosen discusses the murders, rapes, tortures, and the thousands of amputations committed by Small Boys Unit of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) during Sierra Leone's civil war (1991-2001.) [15] Another book describing the civil war is A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. It describes the civil war from the view of Ishmael when he was forced to be a soldier.
Somalia: A report published by Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers in 2004 estimated that since 1991 - 2,00,000 children carried arms or had been recruited in the country's militias.[15]
Sudan: "In March 2004, there were an estimated 17,000 children in government forces, allied militias and opposition armed groups in the north, east and south. Between 2,500 and 5,000 children served in the armed opposition group, the Sudan’s People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), in the south. Despite a widely publicized child demobilization program, in which it claimed to have demobilized over 16,000 children between 2001 and 2004, the SPLA continued to recruit and re-recruit child soldiers."[16] In 2003 it was reported that armed groups were active in government armed forces, Janjaweed militias, and opposition groups.[17] Former child soldiers were sentenced to death for crimes committed while they were soldiers.[18]
Uganda: Over the past twenty years, the rebel Lord's Resistance Army has abducted more than 30,000 boys and girls as soldiers. Attacks against Uganda's Acholi people have resulted in severe trauma to civilians from extreme violence and abduction. Girls are often forced to be sex slaves. The Uganda People's DE fence Force has recruited small numbers of children into its forces as young as 13, including Local Defense Units.
CHAPTER 03: INTERNATIONAL LAWS AGAINST CHILD SOLDIER
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 38, (1989) proclaimed: "State parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure that persons who have not attained the age of 15 years do not take a direct part in hostilities." However, people who are over the age of 15 but still remain under the age of 18 are still voluntarily able to take part in combat as soldiers. The Optional protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict to the Convention that came into force in 2002 stipulates that its State Parties "shall take all feasible measures to ensure that persons below the age of 18 do not take a direct part in hostilities and that they are not compulsorily recruited into their armed forces".[19]
The Optional Protocol further obligates states to "take all feasible measures to prevent such recruitment and use, including the adoption of legal measures necessary to prohibit and criminalize such practices." (Art 4, Optional Protocol.) Likewise, under the Optional Protocol states are required to demobilize children within their jurisdiction who have been recruited or used in hostilities, and to provide assistance for their physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration. (Art 6(3) Optional Protocol.)[20]
Under Article 8.2.26 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), adopted in July 1998 and entered into force 1 July 2002; "Conscripting or enlisting children under the age of fifteen years into the national armed forces or using them to participate actively in hostilities" is a war crime.[21]
The United Nations Security Council convenes regularly to debate, receive reports, and pass resolutions under the heading "Children in armed conflict". The most recent meeting was on 17 July 2008.[22] The first resolution on the issue, Resolution 1261, was passed in 1999 (it did not contain references to any earlier resolutions).[23]
According to Article 77.2 of the Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of , adopted in 1977: The Parties to the conflict shall take all feasible measures in order that children who have not attained the age of fifteen years do not take a direct part in hostilities and, in particular, they refrain from recruiting them into their armed forces.
As the ICRC commentary on Protocol I make clear, this is not a complete ban on the use of children in conflict. The ICRC had suggested that the Parties to the conflict should "take all necessary measures", which became in the final text, "take all feasible measures" which is not a total prohibition on their doing so because feasible should be understood as meaning "capable of being done, accomplished or carried out, possible or practicable".[24]
Article 4.3.c of Protocol II, additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts, adopted in 1977, states "children who have not attained the age of fifteen years shall neither be recruited in the armed forces or groups nor allowed to take part in hostilities".
Under the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, which was adopted and signed in 2002, National armed forces can accept volunteers into their armed forces below the age of 18, but "States Parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure that members of their armed forces who have not attained the age of 18 years do not take a direct part in hostilities".[25] Non-state actors and guerrilla forces are forbidden from recruiting anyone under the age of 18 for any purpose.
The latest, Cape Verde, Gabon, Georgia, Iceland, Latvia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, South Korea, Togo and Uruguay endorsed the Paris Commitments to combat child soldier on on 27 September 2010, raising the number of supporting countries from 84 to 95.[26]
CHAPTER 04: MOVEMENTS TO STOP CHILD SOLDIER – NGOs & HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS
The use of children as soldiers has been universally condemned as abhorrent and unacceptable. Yet over the last ten years hundreds of thousands of children have fought and died in conflicts around the world. There are several Non-governmental organisations that try to rescue children from the death traps.
Henri Ladyi: Congo based peace builder Henri Ladyi to liberate child soldiers. The documentary focuses on the release of several dozen youngsters, and follows Henri as he travels deep into the bush to meet with hardened rebel leaders. In the past year Henri has rescued 650 child soldiers – 400 have since been reunited with their families, the others are being cared for by foster families. 175 children under ten have returned to school, and those older have been trained in skills they can use to support themselves. [27]
Back from the dead: Freddie was just 6 when he joined the rebel group. He was a medicine boy responsible for mixing drugs to gain magical powers – believed to turn stones into bullets, and make the children fearless, regardless of the grim reality of battle. In Freddie’s unit there were 700 people – 12 who were younger than him, and at least 100 girls. Henri liberated Freddie in May, after many years in the bush, he was the most quiet and withdrawn of the children. With Henri’s help Freddie now has a job as an apprentice at a bakery. His job is to need the dough, stoke the fire and put the bread in the oven, he can earn $3 a day – a small amount, but enough to support himself so he can return to school. It costs just £21 to give a former child soldier the skills to change their future. (BBC News Documentary - 2004)[28]
Amaraho Youth Club, Burundi: Burundi is a small country that has suffered brutal war. Five per cent of the population were killed in the 15 years that war raged and a further ten per cent were forced to abandon their homes as armed militia rampaged through the countryside. It was only in 2009 that the last rebel group laid down their arms. 65 per cent of the population of Burundi are under the age of 20. These young people face many challenges – widespread extreme poverty, a lack of education and the mental scars of a childhood spent in the shadow of war. Local peace builder Landry Ninteretse was just nine years old when war broke out. [29]
"At 16, everyone I knew was talking about joining either the army or a rebel group, it was all we knew. I felt so helpless seeing this violence around me, picking up a weapon seemed the only answer. But when my cousin was killed I began to question, to think, and to hope for a violence-free society. I knew I was not the only one looking for an alternative but it took me seven years to find people who thought the same as me" - Landry Ninteretse[30]
The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers: The Coalition - founded in 1998 is an international human rights research and advocacy organization that seeks to end the military recruitment and use of children worldwide. It joins child rights NGOs in urging countries that have not ratified either the child soldiers or sale of children (or both) Optional Protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child - May 2010. It seeks to end all forms of military recruitment of children or the use in hostilities in any capacity of any person under the age of 18 by state armed forces or non-state armed groups, as well as other human rights abuses resulting from their recruitment or use. [31]
CHAPTER 05: INTERNATIONAL CONVENTIONS ON CHILD RIGHTS
Convention on the Rights of the Child: Legal text from the UN, concerning children`s rights, to be implemented nationally. It is proclaimed that “State parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure that persons who have not attained the age of 15 years do not take a direct part in hostilities." However minors who are over the age of 15 but still remain under the age of 18 are still voluntarily able to take part in combat as soldiers. - Entry into force 09/1990. OHCHR.[32]
Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child: This represents an optional protocol/ supplement to the convention mentioned above, concerning especially the involvement of children in armed conflict. States are required to demobilize children within their jurisdiction who have been recruited or used in hostilities, and to provide assistance for their physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration. - Entry into force 02/2002, OHCHR.[33]
Guide to the optional protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict: This is a detailed guide (74 p.) which describes the protocol, with focus on key provisions, ratification and accession, monitoring and reporting, implementation, taking action. - UNICEF 2003. [34]
UN resolution 1261: This resolution from the UN Security Council was the first to address the topic, the Council condemned the targeting of children in armed conflict including the recruitment and use of child soldier. – UN 08/1999. [35]
Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions from 1949 (art. 77.2): The additional protocol of the Geneva Convention from 1949 was adopted in 1977, relating to the protection of victims of international armed conflicts. “The Parties to the conflict shall take all feasible measures in order that children who have not attained the age of fifteen years do not take a direct part in hostilities and, in particular, they shall refrain from recruiting them into their armed forces. In recruiting among those persons who have attained the age of fifteen years but who have not attained the age of eighteen years, the Parties to the conflict shall endeavour to give priority to those who are oldest”. – UN, 1972.[36]
Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention: The Convention C 182 defines the worst forms of slavery, and the use of children in armed conflicts is equated with slavery in art.3/a: “all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery.....including forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict.” – Internat. Labour Organization, adopted 06/1999. [37]
UN Resolution 1612: This resolution implements a monitoring and reporting mechanism regarding the use of child soldiers. It is reaffirming several former UN-resolutions, all contributing to comprehensive framework for addressing the protection of children affected by armed conflict. - UN Security Council, 07/2005. [38]
Child and Young Adult Soldiers – International Guidelines for Policy Decisions – The Capetown Principles
Here we find a good collection and a quite complete overview about existing laws and conventions (with links), as well as the “Capetown Principles” and ARC project. – GINIE and UNESCO, 1999 [39]
Children and Armed Conflict: This compendium (60 p.) collects relevant treaties and instruments on the protection of children affected by armed conflict rendering easier dissemination as well as providing the reference point for a more systematic monitoring and reporting.- United Nations/UNICEF 2003. [40]
The Paris Commitments to protect children from unlawful recruitment or use by armed forces or armed groups
This is a declaration (partly recalling the Capetown Principles etc) made in Paris, were the participants agree on necessity to strengthen childrens rights. - UN/OSRSG CAC 2007. [41]
CHAPTER 06: SOME OF THE IMPACTS
Military recruitment is harmful not only for the children themselves, but also for society as a whole, notes Mr. Olara Otunnu, the UN secretary-general's special representative for children and armed conflict. Years of schooling are lost and the children grow up to become alienated adults, prone to violence, he told Africa Recovery. "Today's warfare in Africa, especially the exploitation, abuse and use of children, is nothing short of a process of self-destruction. Look at Angola, look at Sudan, look at Somalia, look at Sierra Leone. This isn't a small matter. This goes to the very heart of whether or not in large portions of Africa there is promise of a future for those societies." [42]
Children’s recruitment and use in battle not only violates acceptable practices of war, but also makes conflicts both more likely and bloodier. It can also lead to a proliferation of conflict groups and warring parties. Almost any group is able to fight better and longer, for a wider variety of causes, many of them personalized, unpopular, or downright incoherent. Finally, the use of children as soldiers steals their very childhood, laying the groundwork for further strife.
Probably the most prominent mental impact on child soldiers is Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. Traumatic events that may trigger PTSD include violent personal assaults, natural or human-caused disasters, accidents, or military combat.” In Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone, he confirms this impact by his recount of terrible nightmares and an inability to sleep. Those whom PTSD has affected may experience flashbacks to their traumatic moment(s) in addition to nightmares and sleep loss, among others. Beah chronicles his own PTSD bouts, saying, “I had a dream that . . . a gunman stood on top of me. He placed his gun on my forehead. I immediately woke up . . . and began shooting inside the tent, until the thirty rounds in the magazine were finished . . . I was sweating, and they . . . gave me a few more of the white capsules.[43]
Even after the conflict is over, they have a hard time being reintegrated into their home communities. The special needs of child soldiers, who usually represent the poorest of the poor, are a real burden to the families and communities to which they return. Girl soldiers — and there are a surprising high number of them — have an especially hard time adjusting to normal life, especially if they have children by the men who conscripted them.
But the issue of child soldiers is a global security concern as well, according to Peter Warren Singer, who has written a book about the topic. According to Singer, the use of child soldiers makes conflicts easier to start, harder to end and peace agreements more difficult to maintain.
Personality disorder occurs as a result of exposure to violence, impressed ideologies, and forced acceptance of a perverse code of morals. Child soldiers may lose the ability to empathize, chronically partake in violent, aggressive, or manipulative actions, and just act in an unnatural manner.[44] Adjustment disorder occurs in many child soldiers as a result of the sudden change from civilian life to that of a soldier. The process by which the child is removed from the army only serves to compound the problem, as the child must undergo yet another rapid lifestyle change. In the first phase, the children lose their identities to the war, and more importantly, they lose their childhood. Depression is another mental disorder that former child soldiers suffer from. The children who become depressed feel as if there is not life left for them to live, and come to regret their actions as soldiers, feeling ashamed. In a sense, depression is a good sign, since the children have come to see the error in their ways, although this introspection is also a consequence in itself. However, even if a child soldier overcomes any kind of mental disorder, that child will never be able to escape from his memories.
CHAPTER 07: A NATIONAL AND GLOBAL SECURITY ISSUE
The use of children as solders is not only child abuse but also a threat to national and global security, says Peter Warren Singer, senior fellow and director of the 21st Century Defence Initiative at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based policy research organization.
“You have to start to look at this issue as not merely one of human rights but also one that is critical to global and national security,” Singer told America.gov recently.
“It isn’t that human rights are not important,” Singer explained, “it’s that you’ve got to see them within a larger context.”[45]
Nations need to have a “hard interest” in stopping the use of child soldiers, he said, because doing so provides the mechanisms to shrink the pool of failed states and areas terrorists can exploit.
Singer condemns the tendency of policymakers to lump children’s issues into a separate and independent category. “This issue of child soldiers is not just about children,” Singer said. It is “an inherent part of this broader breakdown of global security that we’re seeing.” (Right Image: Peter Warren Singer, senior fellow and director of the 21st Century Defence Initiative at the Brookings Institution.)
Today’s wars regularly involve horrifying levels of violence and brutality and the impact of on children has been devastating as they are often abducted to fight and participate in the full horrors of war. They are also forced to carry out atrocities that adults shy away from including systematic rape, ethnic cleansing and outright genocide. Fatin Abbas in his article The New Face of Warfare described it as “possibly the world’s most unrecognized form of child abuse”.[46]
Children are sometimes preferred as they can be manipulated and terrorized and are often willing to accept the most dangerous assignments because they lack a full sense of their own mortality or as put by US Secretary of Labour Elaine L. Chao “Children make good fighters because they think it is all a game, so they are fearless”.[47]
The Copenhagen School has developed its approach to security in numerous writings, most notably in the book published by Buzan, Waever and Jaap de Wilde; Security: A New Framework for Analysis.
The issue of child soldiers becomes an existential threat to national security as child soldiers, as young as five years old, make up ten percent of the world’s combatants and remain potential recruits for terrorist organisations. With US forces so widely deployed since September 2001, the phenomenon of child soldiers is a daily challenge US troops have to face. Thirty percent of all children in Afghanistan have participated in military activity at some point in their lives. The very first soldier killed in the “war on terror” was a Green Beret. The incident which occurred in Afghanistan has been famously documented in several articles as he was killed by a 14 year old sniper. [48] US forces have also confronted similar problems in Iraq and the incidents range from child snipers to full blown combat with children.
CHAPTER 08: CONCLUSION
Some children are forcibly abducted into government or rebel armies, observes Mr. Otunnu, but others join for ideological reasons or because viable alternatives do not exist, given widespread socio-economic collapse, schools that do not function and the break-up of families. "The fighting groups look attractive relative to what there is," he says.
Mr. Jean-Claude Legrand, a senior adviser to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) on the protection of children in armed conflict, agrees that most children who join armies are not really "volunteers." They usually join under various economic, social and political pressures. "You find that some of them just volunteer to get a meal a day. It's a survival strategy," he told Africa Recovery. "And many of the children are being promised access to education."[49]
More than 5000 children are, on a daily basis, displaced due to armed conflicts somewhere in the world. Many of these are able to run away from the violence together with their families, but an increasing number may look track of their loved ones and find themselves alone in a threatening situation. Among these, some will be recruited into armed groups. Whereas some children have been abducted and forcedly separated from their families, others have been driven to volunteer as a result of social exclusion, and family breakdown, or after witnessing atrocities. Children, both girls and boys, even under the age of 15 are cynically included and used as cheap and expendable tools of war, and too many are also exposed to sexual abuse and exploitation in the context of armed groups. Over the past decade we have seen the number of child soldiers increasing. And as small arms and light weapons become more accessible the children are readily armed, forming part of the ongoing violent conflicts in the different and often forgotten corners of the world. Despite strong international focus on preventing and bringing to halt, the active participation of children in war, there is a long way to go. And at the same time, the work to help the children out of this, to provide them with safety, education, rehabilitation and social networks represent an extremely important and complex endeavour. In the following, practical work and experiences, along with international conventions and regulations are presented in order to inspire and strengthen this necessary work among children and young persons who have been exposed to loss, violence and lost childhoods.
The Copenhagen School while identifying the traditional threat to state security as a general category also broaden the scope of security and include economic and societal security. Society’s most vulnerable citizens are made to fight in wars and are turned into murderous aggressors who are denied a proper childhood. The most troubling aspect is, however, not only what happens during the fighting but the legacy it leaves for children after the fighting is done. The recovery from the traumas of war is hard in itself but the children emerge from war with little or no education; they are often stigmatized and shunned by communities and with no family or social support. They have the potential to relapse into violence, crime and drugs.[50]
The need to reintegrate and educate former child soldiers is therefore paramount to avoid recurring trouble and insecurity. A regimented process of rehabilitation and societal reconstruction is a prerequisite for a secure nation and UNICEF has been very vocal in securitizing the need for reintegration as a prerequisite for lasting security which includes family tracing and reunion, psychosocial support, vocational training and education.
 
Ms Graca Machel, an expert appointed by the Secretary General to study the plight of children in armed conflict, submitted her report to the General Assembly in 1996. Her ground breaking study The Impact of Armed Conflict on children highlighted the brutal realities faced by children[49] recruited by armed groups and the use of sex violence as a weapon of war. The UN subsequently took action through the Security Council, the General Assembly, UNICEF, other UN institutions, regional political networks, and the International Coalition to Stop the Use of Children as Soldiers to bring an end to the exploitation of children and prosecute those involved. One of the achievements was to make the recruitment of child soldiers a war crime thereby ending impunity for rebel commanders and others involved in their recruitment.

References

1. http://www.unicef.org/crc/
2. http://www.child-soldiers.org/home
3. *The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers; **UNICEF; ***Plan; Child Soldiers Global Report 2008
4.
http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/nepal_52791.html
5. Peter W. Singer (January 14, 2003). "Facing Saddam's Child Soldiers".
6.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Rights_Watch
7. http://www.irinnews.org/IndepthMain.aspx?IndepthId=24&ReportId=66280
8. http://www.child-soldiers.org/document/get?id=743
9. ibid
10.
http://www.child-soldiers.org/document/get?id=743
11. http://hrw.org/reports/2007/chad0107/
12. http://hrw.org/reports/2007/chad0707/
13. http://www.child-soldiers.org/document/get?id=743
14 – 18. ibid
19.
http://www.sx.ac.uk/armedcon/News%20Folder/Future/2000News/Breaking/protocol002.htm
20. http://www.unicef.org/crc/index_30203.html
21. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Rome_Statute_of_the_International_Criminal_Court#Article_8_-_War_crimes
22. http://www.undemocracy.com/securitycouncil/meeting_5936
23. http://www.undemocracy.com/S-RES-1261(1999)
24.
http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/COM/470-750099?OpenDocument
25. http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu2/6/protocolchild
26. http://www.unicef.org/media/media_56227.html
27. http://www.peacedirect.org/bring-the-children-back/?gclid=CKHwr4eE5aoCFQN76wodJF4L6g
28. ibid
29.
http://www.peacedirect.org/peacebuilders/burundi/
30. ibid
31.
http://www.child-soldiers.org/coalition/the-coalition
32. http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/crc.htm
33. http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/crc-conflict.htm
34. http://www.unicef.org/adolescence/files/option_protocol_conflict.pdf
35. http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N99/248/59/PDF/N9924859.pdf?OpenElement
36. http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/7c4d08d9b287a42141256739003e636b/f6c8b9fee14a77fdc125641e0052b079
37. http://www.ilo.org/ilolex/cgi-lex/convde.pl?C182
38. http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2005/sc8458.doc.htm
39. http://www.pitt.edu/~ginie/mounzer/conventions.html#Capetown%20Principles
40. http://www.unicef.org/emerg/files/HSNBook.pdf
41. http://www.un.org/children/conflict/_documents/pariscommitments/ParisCommitments_EN.pdf
42. http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol15no3/153chil2.htm
43. http://kidsrock4kids.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/impactschildsoldiers/
44. ibid
45.
http://archives.uruguay.usembassy.gov/usaweb/2008/08-208EN.shtml
46. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070528/abbas/3
47. http://www.dol.gov/ilab/programs/iclp/childsoldiers/chaospeech.htm
48. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2006/05/22/DI2006052200785.html
49. http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol15no3/153chil2.htm
50. http://www.petersinghatey.com/papers/Child%20Soldiers%20and%20Related%20Security%20Threats.pdf
51. http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N96/219/55/PDF/N9621955.pdf?OpenElement
(As a part of assignment while doing Master of Social Work 1st Semester at Martin Luther Christian university, Shillong | 2011)

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