Publication details
Child soldiers in the world - Actual situation.
| Title in English | Child soldiers in the word - Actual situation. |
|---|---|
| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Objective To explore and present the actual situation of child soldiers in the world and in this way create a framework for understanding the issue in more general terms, including its dimension as a health and public health problem. The main objective is to describe who is a „child soldier“, in which countries are they used directly or indirectly in armed conflicts, why and how they participate in armed violence. This overview should help to lay basis for the subsequent presentation of the possible health impacts on these children. Introduction Nowadays, several armed conflicts are taking place in different continents of the world having inmeasurables political, economic and social impacts on the whole civil population, and mainly on its most vulnerable groups. In those predominantly internal conflicts, children are particularly affected. Among others, they can be recruited by the governmental or non-state armed groups as active members of the war and so become child soldiers with all the consequences on their physical, psychosocial and emotional development. Methods and Materials In order to introduce the topic of child soldiers, the descriptive method was used. The investigation was based on studying the primary and secondary resources, especially reports published by international organizations and institutions, namely the United Nation´s annual reports, Global Report on Child Soldier by the Coalition to stop the use of children, reports and information published by the Human Rights Watch and the UNICEF. Discussion According to the internationally agreed definition, a child a soldier is practically any person below 18 years recruited or used by an armed force or group in any capacity, not only as a fighter who takes a direct part in hostilities. The issue of child soldiers have been gaing its importance in the international agenda especially from the 1996 Graça Machel´s report on the Impacts of war on children. However, the real progress in prevention of child recruitment and in rehabilitation of its victims has been to slow and insufficient. Although the number of conflicts and so child soldiers have been descreasing recently (about 30 armed conflicts in 1996, about 24 in 2004, at least 19 in 2008) and the majority of states have adopted the international human rights and humanitarian laws, there are still many armed groups in almost all actualy existing conflicts (and not only in Africa) that recruit children, both boys and girls, under the age of 18. The rough estimate is around 300 thousand child soldiers operating in the world, the exact number of the recruited children, however, is impossible to establish. The main problem resists in the fact that governments and international organizations have not been addressing the root causes and therefore, for many children the gun and the uniform are the best option how to escape from the poverty, hunger, intrafamiliar abuse or lack of protection, among other reasons. According to the investigations from different parts of the world, many demobilized child soldiers declare that they joined the armed group voluntarily (e.g. in Colombia around 70 or more per cent). Experiences from different countries has shown that demobilization and reintegration programmes should have the community-based, integral human rights focus with special gender, ethnic and cultural sensitivity and with long-term orientation. Nevertheless, in practice the lack of resources, political will, conditions of peace and a lack of a prepared society have impeded the real improvement in the situation worldwide. |