Children As Victims Of War

War is an everyday reality for millions of children. They are killed, disabled or orphaned by civil war, guerrilla insurgency, or ethnic cleansing. They become refugees or displaced persons, often separated from their families. Many die or suffer from starvation, malnutrition, or lack of medical care. Many children are traumatized by witnessing brutal deaths and by being surrounded by violence, fear and hardship.

The following are examples of campaigns against children becoming victims of war around the world:

AFRICA

The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers

“I would like you to give a message. Please do your best to tell the world what is happening to us, the children.”
Read some facts about child soldiers.

WITNESS

“Some children aged 14-18 at the time of the genocide have been tried for their crimes. For most, the years they had already spent in prison exceeded their sentences.”

Read about the plight of youth in the Democratic Republic of Congo and watch “A Duty to Protect”.

Learn about Operation Fine Girl: Rape Used as a Weapon of War in Sierra Leone.

ASIA

Human Rights Watch

“When we arrived [at the recruit holding center] the soldiers asked us, ‘Would you like to join the army or would you like to go home?’ Many of us said we’d like to go home. Then they took the thirty or forty of us who’d said that, stripped us naked, put us in the lockup and gave us just a tiny bit of rice. . .”– Than Aung, recruited into the Burma army in 1997 at age fourteen.

Read more about the Brave Sprouts and the recruitment of child soldiers in Burma in My Gun was as Tall as Me: Child Soldiers in Burma (Human Rights Watch Report, October 2002).

UNITED STATES and WORLDWIDE

Human Rights Watch

Take action. What you can do to support children’s rights worldwide.

Speak Truth to Power

Meet Speak Truth to Power’s Human Rights Defenders fighting to ensure children’s rights:

Abubacar Sultan, Mozambique spent years flying to remote hamlets in war-torn Mozambique to rescue child soldiers and children of war, and rehabilitate and reunite them with relatives.

Kek Galabru, Cambodia is one of the foremost human rights defenders in Cambodia. She works on due process, democratization and children’s rights.

UNICEF – United Nations Children’s Fund

“I saw 10 to 20 people shot, mostly old people who couldn’t walk fast. They shot my uncle in the head and killed him.” –nine-year-old Liberian girl

Read Children at Both Ends of the Gun, a report that reveals the full extent of children’s involvement in the 30 or so armed conflicts raging around the world.