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UN names countries, groups using child soldiers

UNITED NATIONS, Tuesday (Reuters) Despite global treaties, children are being recruited as soldiers by governments in the Congo, Burundi and Liberia and are prevalent among rebel groups in Colombia, the Philippines, Uganda and Sri Lanka, a new United Nations report said on Monday.

Olara Otunnu, the U.N. special representative for children and armed conflict, said the report for the first time named governments and groups recruiting youths younger than 18 for military combat. "This shows the international community is serious and also that the community is watching," he told a news conference.

According to UNICEF, the U.N. Children's Fund, an estimated 300,000 child soldiers were carrying arms in over 40 countries worldwide, most of them in Africa and East Asia.

The report listed 23 groups including governments and rebel factions in five countries where child soldiering is common - Afghanistan, Burundi, Liberia, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While the governments of Congo, Burundi and Liberia were named as recruiters of child soldiers, Otunnu also listed myriad rebel groups in those nations that use children as soldiers, porters and sex slaves.

Armed groups were also using children as soldiers including factions in Colombia, Myanmar, Nepal, the Philippines, Sudan, Uganda, Sri Lanka, among others, the report said.

Regional warlords and the remnants of the Taliban in Afghanistan recruit or conscript children. However, the Afghan National Army, which was designed to replace all armed groups in the country, will not do so, Otunnu said.

Otunnu said the report represented the "beginning of a systematic effort in a new era of monitoring and reporting on the conduct of parties and how they treat children during conflict."

The standards being violated include a number of human rights pacts as well as an amendment to the 1990 Convention on the Rights of the Child that prohibits the use of children younger than 18 in combat. These standards apply to insurgent groups as well as governments, making both accountable for such actions, the report said.

Otunnu also said some countries where civil wars recently ended, such as Angola and Sierra Leone, had implemented demobilization and re-integration programs for child veterans.

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