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:
“Nations have lost their old omnipotence; the patriotic tie does not hold. Nations are getting obsolete, we go and live where we will.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The awareness of the all-surpassing importance of social groups is now general property in America.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“The indications are that swearing preceded the development of cursing. That is, expletives, maledictions, exclamations, and imprecations of the immediately explosive or vituperative kind preceded the speechmaking and later rituals involved in the deliberate apportioning of the fate of an enemy. Swearing of the former variety is from the lips only, but the latter is from the heart. Damn it! is not that same as Damn you!”
—Ashley Montagu (b. 1905)
““My ancestors were all famous for military genius.”
My Lady smiled graciously. “It often runs in families,” she remarked: “just as a love for pastry does.””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Exodus 34:6,7.