Deprived of love, play and hope, the 250,000 children still fighting

[Batgirl]

By Mike Pflanz, Africa Correspondent

The sad-eyed father sat with his wife in the shade of a mango tree in northern Uganda and prayed for his nine children.

Each had been abducted by rebels who, during two decades of civil war, forced 20,000 children to be fighters, porters and sex slaves.


A child soldier wearing a teddy in Liberia

"We know some are dead, but some we believe have been fighting — they are the ones I pray for the most," said Okot Wilson, 68, from Kitgum, 200 miles north of Kampala.

Using children in war was supposed to have been banned 10 years ago. But 250,000 children as young as six are still involved in more than a dozen conflicts worldwide, seven of them in Africa, and others are still being recruited.

The claim, from child rights campaigners, came as delegates from 50 nations gathered in Paris yesterday to accelerate efforts to stamp out the practice.

Mr Wilson and his wife, Ayaa Alicen, have seen their nine children and four nephews and nieces kidnapped or killed by Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which still holds 1,500 child fighters despite current faltering peace talks.

"This is the age when we should be sitting and watching our grandchildren growing, but we are alone," said Mr Wilson.

"We hear such bad things about what the rebels do to the children. If they came home we would help them, but I am afraid they are lost to us now."

Other locals told of being abducted themselves by the rebels. "There was a lot of killing," said one 26-year-old woman too afraid to give her name. "We had to carry guns. I was made to sleep with the commanders from when I was 12."

The recruitment of children is repeated across the continent. In Sierra Leone, The Daily Telegraph interviewed former child soldiers who remembered being "willing" to fight.

"They gave us food and blankets, and sometimes money. That is more than we had before, so we were willing, even though sometimes the fighting was hard," said Abdul Kargbo, 25.

Such accounts are common wherever children are forced to fight. Save the Children yesterday named the 13 countries of most concern as Afghanistan, Burundi, Chad, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Burma, Nepal, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda.

"They are immersed in violence, are subject to terrible abuse and are forced to forfeit love, play, education and hope," said Johanna MacVeigh, a protection adviser for the charity.

Guidelines to eradicate the use of child soldiers and protect those released were established in 1997 by the international community. "It is inconceivable that 10 years later so many children are still being horrifically exploited," said Mrs MacVeigh.

The International Criminal Court made using child soldiers a war crime in 2002. Its trial against the Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga will see that law being applied for the first time.

Some 95,000 children have been freed from fighting in the past five years. But more must be done, say child rights organisations. This week's conference in Paris will seek to convince countries to sign up to a new framework of action known as the Paris Principles, which focus on increasing efforts to free children from conflict.

But even after they have been released, former child soldiers — sometimes brainwashed and dependent on drugs and alcohol —are frequently rejected by society.

Mono Masumbuko, 20, in Bunia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, said: "We were told we would be given a blanket, cooking pots and money to start a business. But nothing has come.

"Here life is hard. Many people will go back to the bush and start fighting again."

Telegraph