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Journalist Jeffrey Gettleman suggests that the concentration of child soldiers in Africa is due to the shift among armed groups from being ideal-oriented to economically-driven. [20] Additionally, countries like Sudan have shifted towards the use of child soldiers after the decolonization and independence from Europe in 1956.
According to Child Soldiers International, boys and girls as young as eight are trained to fight and use light weapons such as AK47s, knives and machetes, and are often used in frontline positions. Children are also widely used as guards, porters, messengers, spies, cooks, and for sexual purposes.
Africa has the highest growth rate in the use of children in conflict, and on average, the age of those enlisted is also receding. [6] In 2003 it was estimated that up to 30,000 children were used as soldiers in the DRC, with children making up to forty percent of some militias. [7]
Girl soldiers, also referred to as female child soldiers, [1] girls in fighting forces [2] [3] or girls associated with an armed force or armed group (GAAFAG), [4] have been recruited by armed forces and groups in the majority of conflicts in which child soldiers are used. A wide range of rough estimates of their percentage among child soldiers ...
The National Resistance Army also made use of child soldiers. [58] Between 2003 and 2007, non-state armed groups fighting the LRA also used children. [59] In 2007 the Ugandan government agreed an action plan with the UN to end the use of child soldiers and in 2008 the country no longer appeared on the UN list of countries that recruit and use ...
LURD child fighter -A child soldier of the Liberian rebel group LURD at the Po River (2004). The First Liberian Civil War began in 1989, when Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) forces invaded the country in rebellion against the regime of Samuel Doe, who came to power through the 1980 Liberian coup d'état.
Pages in category "Child soldiers in Africa" The following 20 pages are in this category, out of 20 total. This list may not reflect recent changes. ...
Children are abducted from their homes and schools with entire classes at times being abducted. [4] in 2012 Michelle Kagari, Amnesty International's deputy director for Africa, stated that “Somalia is not only a humanitarian crisis: it is a human rights crisis and a children's rights crisis. Children in Somalia risk death constantly; they can ...