Toy Soldiers

The Save the Children Foundation has revealed that 13 countries, from Afghanistan to Uganda, are still recruiting child soldiers, 10 years after international guidelines were agreed to eradicate their use.

“The situation is still dire. Hundreds of thousands of children are still living in misery due to association with armed groups and forces,” Save the Children said in a statement.

Child soldiers were often abducted in their villages and began their fighting careers as forced labourers, carrying out looting raids and transporting the booty to their seniors, before being forced to kill.

Representatives from nearly 60 countries met in France on Monday to update these principles in a document called the Paris Commitments, aimed at boosting efforts to halt the use of children in war and do more to help reintegrate child soldiers.

The UN children’s agency UNICEF said in a report around 8,000 child soldiers in Afghanistan had been informally demobilised but not fully reintegrated into society. Rights campaigners have warned repeatedly since then that children risk re-recruitment by non-state armed groups such as the Taliban.

“Some people are under the mistaken belief that children volunteer. Most of the time it is poverty that forces them to join up. Others are abducted by force,” said Pernille Ironside, a UNICEF child protection officer.

Although peace deals have nominally ended many of the African wars notorious for using child soldiers, such as Sierra Leone and Liberia, those released are often rejected by society and struggle to come to terms with their violent past.

“More than a revolting reality, more than a war crime, it is a time bomb that threatens stability and economic growth in Africa and beyond,” French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy told Le Figaro daily on Monday.

Once a soldier, always a soldier.

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