Nations and Groups Involved in Military Use of Children
P. 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. 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. | ” |
Under the terms of Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions, children over the age of fifteen who have volunteered can be used as spotters, observers, and message-carriers (see above International humanitarian law). The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) has stated that most children serving as soldiers are over fifteen, although many exist at far younger ages.
Read more about this topic: Military Use Of Children
Famous quotes containing the words nations, groups, involved, military and/or children:
“The war is dreadful. It is the business of the artist to follow it home to the heart of the individual fighters—not to talk in armies and nations and numbers—but to track it home.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“The awareness of the all-surpassing importance of social groups is now general property in America.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“The people of the United States have been fortunate in many things. One of the things in which we have been most fortunate has been that so far, due perhaps to certain basic virtues in our traditional ways of doing things, we have managed to keep the crisis of western civilization, which has devastated the rest of the world and in which we are as much involved as anybody, more or less at arm’s length.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“I’m not a military man, Captain. War holds no romance for me. The side effects are repulsive.”
—Richard Bluel, and Henry Hathaway. Major Hugh Tarkington (Clinton Greyn)
“Face your own ambivalence about letting go and you will be better able to help you children cope with their own feelings. The insight you gain through your own acceptance of change will bolster your confidence and make you a stronger college parent. The confidence you develop will be evident to your child, who will be able to move away from you without fear.”
—Norman Goddam (20th century)