Hello again sandra_dee-ga,
The story of the child soldiers of Africa is heartbreaking. I?ve
collected a wide variety of resources to help you get an overview of
the problem. As you requested, I?m also including resources on the
child soldiers of Sierra Leone and Liberia. This was a very
interesting research project and each article led me to wanting to
find out more. I hope that you will find this material helpful for
your explorations.
Wishing you well.
~ czh ~
======================================
CHILD SOLDIERS IN AFRICA AND WORLDWIDE
======================================
http://www.worldrevolution.org/guidepage/childsoldiers/literature
Child Soldiers
Overviews and Factsheets
***** This site offers a very extensive collection of articles and
resources on the problem of child soldiers. Follow the links to
explore the topics that interest you.
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.worldrevolution.org/Projects/Webguide/GuideArticle.asp?ID=9
Child Soldiers - A Global Problem
Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers
As this report shows, the use of children as soldiers is a global
issue requiring a global response. While the problem has been most
critical in Africa and Asia, children are used as soldiers by
governments and armed groups in many countries in the Americas, Europe
and Middle East. The following section provides a brief overview of
each region, details of which can be found in the individual country
entries contained in this report.
***** The section on Sub-Saharan Africa will be of special interest to
you. It gives you the information you?re looking for about how and why
children are recruited/forced to be soldiers.
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.worldrevolution.org/Projects/Webguide/GuideArticle.asp?ID=8
Child Soldiers - An Overview
Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers
At any one time, more than 300,000 children under 18 girls and boys -
are fighting as soldiers with government armed forces and armed
opposition groups in more than 30 countries worldwide. In more than 85
countries, hundreds of thousands more under-18s have been recruited
into government armed forces, paramilitaries, civil militia and a wide
variety of non-state armed groups. Millions of children worldwide
receive military training and indoctrination in youth movements and
schools. While most child soldiers are aged between 15 and 18, the
youngest age recorded in this report is seven.
While many children fight in the frontline, others are used as spies,
messengers, sentries, porters, servants and sexual slaves; children
are often used to lay and clear landmines or conditioned to commit
atrocities even against their own families and communities. Most child
soldiers suffer physical abuse and other privations within the armed
forces; in extreme cases, child soldiers are driven to suicide or
murder when they cannot bear the mistreatment any longer. When
children are used as soldiers, all children in a conflict zone are
often suspected and targeted by the warring parties.
While some children are recruited forcibly, others are driven into
armed forces by poverty, alienation and discrimination. Many children
join armed groups after having experienced or witnessed abuse at the
hands of state authorities. The widespread availability of modern
lightweight weapons has also contributed to the child soldiers
problem, enabling even the smallest children to become an efficient
killers in combat. International political and military support for
armed forces and armed groups using children, sometimes linked to the
exploitation of natural resources like diamonds or oil, has in many
cases deepened conflicts and the involvement of children.
Many governments and armed groups claim to use children because of a
shortage of adult recruits. But often children are recruited because
of their very qualities as children they can be cheap, expendable and
easier to condition into fearless killing and unthinking obedience.
Sometimes, children are supplied with drugs and alcohol to achieve
these aims.
***** This is a long article that will help you understand the
underlying reasons for the emergence of the use of child soldiers.
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.amnestyusa.org/children/soldiers/index.html
Child Soldiers Home
The Story in Pictures:
Drawings by former child soldiers in Sierra Leone
***** This site offers some useful articles but the most striking item
here is a series of a dozen drawings by children who were child
soldiers.
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.iss.co.za/Pubs/Monographs/No37/Contents.html
CHILD SOLDIERS IN SOUTHERN AFRICA
Monograph No 36 -- April 1999
Part 1: The Social Reintegration of the Child Invoved in the Armed
Conflict in Mozambique
***** This is a report that addresses the issues involved with the
reintegration of child soldiers into society. It will give you a
better understanding of the trauma suffered by the children and the
difficulties involved in building a normal life for them.
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.worldbank.org/afr/wps/wp23.htm
Child Soldiers: Preventing, Demobilizing and Reintegrating
November 2001
http://www.worldbank.org/afr/wps/wp23.pdf (Full text -- 37 pages)
http://www.worldbank.org/afr/findings/english/find207.pdf (Summary -- 4 pages)
Abstract
Among the most egregious child rights violations, an estimated 300,000
child soldiers are involved in armed conflicts. Although a number of
countries have undertaken demobilization and reintegration programs
for child soldiers, there remains a dearth of documentation and
dissemination of program experience and best practice to guide the
countries.
This working paper draws from in-depth case studies on Angola and El
Salvador, as well as other country program experiences. The study
follows the themes of prevention, demobilization, and reintegration,
detailing concrete examples and offering checklists on each of the
main themes for use in future programs. Although demobilization and
reintegration of child soldiers is often seen as hopeless, this study
shows that children and youths involved in armed conflict can
re-engage positive social relations and productive civilian lives. It
is not easy, however, and depends crucially on the political will and
resources to include child soldiers in peace agreements and
demobilization programs and to support their reintegration into family
and community.
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.eldis.org/static/DOC10732.htm
http://www.unicef.org/emerg/AdultWarsChildSoldiers.pdf (Full text -- 84 pages)
Adult wars, child soldiers
Voices of children involved in armed conflict in the East Asia and Pacific Region
Emmons, K. / United Nations (UN) Children's Fund (UNICEF) , 2002
This report is an effort to draw attention to the reality of child
soldiers in the East Asia and Pacific region, to demonstrate the need
for an urgent response. The report is based on in-depth interviews
with 69 current and former child soldiers in six countries.
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/cida_ind.nsf/0/DCAFBC469E67DA1985256C3D0048A2B8?OpenDocument
CIDA Awards Six Child Protection Research Fund Grants in 2002
1. Child Soldiers in Sierra Leone, Experiences, Implications and
Strategies for Reintegration
***** This is a research project just getting under way that will
evaluate the situation of child soldiers in Sierra Leone.
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.geneva.quno.info/pdf/Girl_Soldiers.doc.pdf
November 2002
Girl Soldiers: Challenging the Assumptions
***** This is a 6-page paper that addresses the situation of girl
soldiers. The findings provide some very interesting insights that
contradict widely held assumptions as well and delineate the specific
problems of girls who serve as soldiers.
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.ohiou.edu/afrchild/PAPERS/TEACHIN/BETHVERHEY.HTML
"Impact of Armed Conflict on Children"
Report of the expert of the Secretary General, Graca Machel
UN Doc# A/51/306 August 1996
***** This report includes a section on the Lessons Learned from
Angola in Child Soldier Demobilization and Reintegration.
==============================
CHILD SOLDIERS OF SIERRA LEONE
==============================
http://www.hrw.org/press/2000/05/sl0531.htm
Sierra Leone Rebels Forcefully Recruit Child Soldiers
RUF Targets Children for Fighting, Forced Labor, and Sexual Exploitation
(Freetown, Sierra Leone, May 31, 2000)?The rebel Revolutionary United
Front (RUF) of Sierra Leone is forcing children, including demobilized
child soldiers, to join its ranks and engage in combat, Human Rights
Watch said today. The rights group has documented abductions of
children as recently as early May.
http://hrw.org/doc/?t=africa&c=sierra
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/sleone/
Sierra Leone
***** These sites offer a large collection of articles about Sierra
Leone that will give you the context for the situation of child
soldiers in that country.
-------------------------------------------------
http://hrw.org/reports/2004/childsoldiers0104/15.htm
SIERRA LEONE
Demobilization and child protection programs
During a trip to West Africa in February 2003, the Special
Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed
Conflict applauded disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR)
efforts by child protection agencies.235 However, Carol Bellamy,
Executive Director of UNICEF, said in a statement made in July 2003
that UNICEF?s program to reintegrate more than 7,000 children who
fought in the civil war was threatened by a shortfall in international
funding. The UN agency estimated that 1.4 million dollars were needed
immediately and another 2.5 million dollars in the near future to
complete the program.236
Some organizations, such as the Women?s Commission on Refugee Women
and Children (WCRWC), expressed concerns about children?s DDR programs
in Sierra Leone, highlighting gaps in the process, particularly
regarding the needs of girls and former child soldiers from the
RUF.237 It was estimated that hundreds of girl children associated
with the fighting forces in the Sierra Leone conflict remained with
their former commanders.
The use of between 2,000 and 3,000 former child soldiers of ages
ranging between 10 and 15 as diamond miners in northern and eastern
parts of Sierra Leone represented another area of concern. These
children were rarely paid more than 50 cents a day and working
conditions were extremely harsh.238
Some former child soldiers displaced to refugee camps in Guinea were
reluctant to repatriate to Sierra Leone, fearing revenge attacks
because they were known to communities and had not gone through DDR
processes.239
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.childsoldiers.org/
Giving Voice to Children Affected by War
This Web site would be a place where the youth of Sierra Leone could
bear witness to the issue of the Child Soldier as they saw it
impacting their lives and that of their families, communities and
country. Childsoldiers.org is the ongoing product of this
collaboration which is made possible through the incredible global
learning community that is iEARN.
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.rnw.nl/humanrights/html/kamajors.html
Child Soldiers of Sierra Leone: The Kamajors
***** Stories of individual child soldiers.
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.irinnews.org/webspecials/childsoldiers/SierraLeone031203.asp
SIERRA LEONE: Liberian child soldiers still make trouble without guns
JEMBE REFUGEE CAMP, When relief workers set up Jembe refugee camp in
Sierra Leone to house people fleeing from civil war in neighbouring
Liberia, it never occurred to them that children would become the
biggest headache.
***** This story covers some of the problems involved in
rehabilitating child soldiers.
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.essex.ac.uk/armedcon/story_id/000012.html
Sierra Leone's Former Child Soldiers Struggle To Adjust
15 July 2002
Some 7,000 children left the battlefields when combatants in Sierra
Leone's savage civil war started turning in their guns last year --
the youngest just 6 years old.
Released into the care of aid agencies, most spent months at centres
designed to ease their way back into civilian life and are now
reunited with relatives.
=========================
CHILD SOLDIERS IN LIBERIA
=========================
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/liberia0204/
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/liberia0204/liberia0204.pdf (Full text -- 46 pages)
How to Fight, How to Kill: Child Soldiers in Liberia
February 2004 Vol. 16, No. 2 (A)
***** This is a detailed report about the child soldiers of Liberia.
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.msnbc.com/news/945577.asp?cp1=1
Child soldiers add to Liberia tragedy
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.liberia-leaf.org/reports/trials/childsoldiers/
Child Soldiers of Liberia
It's estimated that 20% of the combatants in Liberia's civil war were
children. They were among the most brutal fighters: many of them
killed, raped, tortured and even practiced cannibalism.
Many children joined one of the rebel factions because their family
and ethnic people had been persecuted by the former government. Others
were hoping to finally escape the grinding poverty of rural Liberia.
Some were seduced by promises of some money and clothes. And yet
others were simply too young to know any better. But the majority
joined simply to protect their lives.
-------------------------------------------------
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/africa/08/31/liberia.child.soldiers.reut/
August 31, 2003 -- Liberia's child soldiers struggle to rebuild lives
Aid workers estimate up to 20,000 child soldiers, some as young as
seven or eight, were recruited by both government and rebel forces
during Liberia's latest war.
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec03/liberia_8-27.html
Disarming Liberian Child Soldiers -- Posted: 08.27.03
The groups of Liberian child soldiers, known as Small Boy Units, fight
for all major factions in the 14-year-long civil war. They fight for
the rebel groups Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy
(LURD) and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) as well as
for the government forces.
Once a part of the units, the boys are often given cocaine and other
drugs for courage. They believe that if they wear bullets in their
hair and special clothing, including wigs and women's clothing, they
will not be harmed during battle. They are given new names -- battle
names -- and told that if they resist, they will be killed.
-------------------------------------------------
http://www.theperspective.org/2004/mar/childsoldiers.html
Program Structured Exclusively to Serve "Child Soldiers" in Liberia
(Press Release - Issued March 14, 2004, by The Liberia Coalition Project)
The Perspective
Atlanta, Georgia -- March 15, 2004
The Liberia Coalition Project (LCP) is a program structured
exclusively to serve "child soldiers" of Liberia. The Program is a
subsidiary of the Fort Pierce Multilateral Center, in Fort Pierce,
Florida. (United Way, Children?s Services Council, the City of Fort
Pierce, St. Lucie County, and the School Board of St. Lucie County
Board are funding the program).
Mr. Jerome Zohndyuwaye Gayman, a native of Liberia, established the
Liberia Coalition Project as a way of helping the children that were
exploited by the various warlords in the Liberian civil conflict. The
project is the result of a research conducted by Mr. Gayman at the
legendary Eckerd Youth Development Center in Florida - 1996-2004. It
is based on the theory called ?Reality Therapy?, which was developed
by Dr. William Glasser of the University of California at Berkely in
1967.
===============
SEARCH STRATEGY
===============
child soldiers africa
child soldiers sierra leone
child soldiers sierra Liberia
child soldiers reintegration |
