The National Council of Resistance of Iran claims the Iranian government is encouraging Iranian children to join the war effort and to fight to save Bashir Assad's regime in Syria.
Ottawa -
The Harper government is trying to stop the release of Omar Khadr on bail after a judge decided to grant bail to the 28-year-old who has been incarcerated since he was 15.
This week 152 child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo were reunited with their families. While a happy start, the violence these children have lived is a hard trial to get over.
Jinja -
War, poverty, and HIV create hundreds of thousands of orphaned children in the small African nation. Digital Journal talks to Mutebe Moses, a native Ugandan, about efforts to cope with the mounting crisis.
This month the Obama administration agreed to provide military aid to three nations listed by the U.S. State Department as employing child soldiers after granting waivers to avoid a law prohibiting the aid.
Washington -
While US law prohibits the US from providing military aid to countries that use child soldiers, the law contains provisions that allows the US president to waive the application of the law where it is in the US national interest to do so.
Bangui -
Alleged use of child soldiers by rebel coalition Seleka in Central African Republic is making the headlines as South African soldiers are reporting what they witnessed in Bangui.
Stories of children being forced into military service is nothing new. There are many stories about Sudan’s “Lost Boys”, and numerous reports of boys being kidnapped in countries like Somalia, Liberia, and the Congo and being forced into service.
The Hague -
Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for using child soldiers in battle. Taking into account time already served, Lubanga will serve just 8 more years behind bars.
Ethnic cleansing in Sudan has many faces --- the "Arab-African conflict," "the Darfur problem," and the "North-South conflict." The longest running conflict in Africa, its tribal differences and oil related conflicts have compounded Sudan's problems.
Mogadishu -
Several human rights groups and United Nations officials say that child soldiers are being used by the government of Somalia to fight against Islamist militants. The report finds that the average United States taxpayer is helping fund this strategy.
Nearly 400 former child soldiers were on Thursday released from a detention camp in Nepal, the first of some 3,000 former child soldiers with the communist People’s Liberation Army (PLA) who will eventually return to civilian life.
Around the world children are suffering from direct consequences of war. They find themselves alone and vulnerable without their families or being directly recruited as a child soldier.
According to the new Secretary General’s annual report on Children and Armed Conflict, the number of armed groups and forces identified as using children has climbed from 40 in 2006 to 57 in 2007.
Children in the North America play war related video games. Elsewhere in the world children know those games all too well. They are forced onto the battlefield. Children as young as six have been recruited into wars in the modern world.
