The use of child soldiers in conflicts and wars around the world remains an enormous problem. A recent report released by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers quantified a significant decrease between 2004 and 2007 in the number of conflicts involving children worldwide. But where conflict occurs the practice continues unabated.

In Darfur, for example, children are being recruited from refugee camps in Eastern Chad and sold to militias. A report from the British organization Waging Peace states that recruitment is taking place with full knowledge of the Chadian government agency in charge of refugees (CNAR), and Chadian armed forces, and despite the presence of European Union troops.  Children are being recruited and sold to the Justice and Equity rebel movement, a rebel group fighting the Khartoum-supported Janjaweed, as well as to government-backed groups. The United Nations estimates that between 7,000 and 10,000 children have been recruited, from a population of approximately 250,000 refugees displaced from Darfur and residing in camps in Eastern Chad.

The rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Northern Ugandan, headed by Joseph Kony, has also been long known for its use of child soldiers. Michael Gerson argues in the Washington Post that recent peace talks between the LRA and the government of Uganda were pursued by Kony as a stalling tactic, and that Kony has issued orders to abduct “1,000 new recruits” from the Congo, the Central African Republic, and Southern Sudan. Gerson also states that since late February Kony’s forces have trained between 200 and 300 children abducted from camps in Northeast Congo. 

African armed conflicts have been particularly associated in the popular imagination with the recruitment of child soldiers, and the recent success of such books as Beasts of No Nation, by Uzodinma Iweala, have reinforced that impression. The phenomena is in no way limited to Africa, however. The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers report confirms that children continue to be used as combatants in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Furthermore, it is not only “irregular” forces, such as the LRA or Justice and Equity rebel movement that recruit minors with impunity; a handful of governments continue to use child soldiers, including Myanmar (Burma), Chad, Congo, Somalia, and Uganda. 

Official donor initiatives seeking to reduce the number of active child combatants have been largely ineffective. Donor-sponsored programs aimed at demobilizing child soldiers from conflicts that have been resolved likewise have a poor track record.  The Coalition report cited one case in the Central African Republic in which 7,500 fighters were demobilized and given cash and training to start new lives; of them only 26 were children. Gender disparity plays a role as well. Girls, who are often abducted and forced to work as cooks or as sex slaves, are less likely to receive assistance because they are either ashamed to come forward, or because they do not have weapons to redeem for cash. 

Collectively, the evidence from ongoing conflict and the information from reports suggest that any reduction in the use of child soldiers over the last four years is attributed to conflict resolution. As a result, donors should support the work of high-level advocacy groups such as ENOUGH and International Crisis Group, who have the field staff and access to policy-makers necessary to formulate conflict-resolution policy recommendations specific to crisis areas, and which are actively advocating for intervention from governments in the resolution of the war in Uganda. Donors should also seek to improve programming targeting demobilized child soldiers.  Extending demobilization incentives to child combatants, both boys and girls, will not only help children recover from the emotionally, psychologically, and often physically disfiguring experience of war, but will also reduce the chances of such children taking up arms again.