Children of War

  
In the last decade, armed conflicts around the world have left a toll of more than two million children dead, close to 15 million uprooted from their homes and 300,000 conscripted as soldiers or guerrillas, UNICEF reports.

According to reports by Save the Children, minors living as refugees are much more vulnerable to violence, hunger and other health problems. International aid programs often overlook children, the group says, leaving them at the mercy of those who drove them into exile in the first place.

Save the Children estimates that six years is the average period most internal refugees spend away from their homes, a long time in the life of a child. And today's refugee children are likely to become the marginalized and excluded adults of tomorrow.

In Latin America, the United Nations believes that more than 6,000 children have been absorbed into the ranks of the various armed groups in Colombia. The UN ranks Colombia among the countries with the highest child murder rates. Furthermore, it reports, most displaced children in Colombia have witnessed the murder or attempted murder of a member of their family.

According to Colombia's Public Ombudsman, the different groups of combatants use children as informants and to carry out high-risk missions, such as assembling and planting antipersonnel mines.

Manuel Marulanda, commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), has said in several interviews that the FARC will continue to recruit children aged 15 and older, insisting, "they will stay in our ranks." In February the FARC released 62 child fighters, but many more remain with the group. For its part, the Colombian army announced last year that it had released from service 980 soldiers under the age of 18, claiming they were the last of their age group in the armed services.

The effects of war on children are still being felt in Central America, as well. Although the armed conflicts in the region ended in the 1990s, millions of children have suffered lasting effects from the years of fighting. In September 2000, the Canadian government sponsored an international conference to address the issue. María Eugenia Morales, head of the Guatemalan children's aid office of World Vision, reminded participants that children were deliberately singled out as targets during the 36 years of civil war in her country. Church and human rights groups have reported that in 1980 and 1982 alone, close to 18% of all human rights violations in Guatemala were committed against children.

The UN has already passed several resolutions designed to protect children during times of war. These resolutions (no. 1261 in 1999 and no. 1314 in 2000) call for economic and political sanctions against those parties in an armed conflict that recruit or abuse children, and urge all member states to sign and ratify international norms setting 18 as the minimum age for military recruitment. But war has a way of subverting international norms and declarations.

The figures cited above are terrifying, shedding new light on the atrocities of war and the ways in which political, economic and religious conflicts prey on the most defenseless members of society. As Save the Children's director, Mike Aaronson, has noted, "offering protection to children is a global responsibility" that cannot wait.