CHILDREN: Youngsters Targeted in a World at War

By Lahai J. Samboma Reprint | | Print |

LONDON, Nov 19 1994 (IPS) - When fighting started between the Angolan government and rebel troops in Huambo last year, 12-year-old Maria, orphaned by the two-decade long civil war, was brutally raped by the rebels and became pregnant.

She subsequently escaped from Huambo, undertaking the 200-mile walk to Benguela where a place was found for her in an orphanage. Being of such a tender age, she went into early and difficult labour. The baby survived only a fortnight and Maria herself died a week later — exhausted, sick and undernourished.

The case of Maria is just one of the many documented in ‘Children at War’ — a hard hitting report about the effects of war on children launched this month by the ‘Save the Children Fund’ organisation.

The report documents the distressing and horrific consequences of war on children caught up in the the increasing number of conflict zones around the world from Angola, Cambodia to Mozambique and the former Yugoslavia.

In the last decade, according to the charity, one and a half million children around the world met with violent deaths, while four million sustained agonising and permanently-damaging injuries as a result of bombs, bullets, landmines, chemical weapons and even machete attacks.

Hundred of thousands have been forced to become child soldiers, often kidnapped and trained to kill, while 10,000,000 more carry the emotional scars of wartime experiences.

Although it is impossible to say exactly how many children are currently under arms — it is estimated that during the last decade more than 200,000 children have been forced to become soldiers.

What is beyond doubt is during that period 35 countries have been accused of using child soldiers and that there has been an alarming increase in the phenomenon.

Child soldiers served in conflicts world wide, including El Salvador, Ethiopia, Iran, Kuwait, Namibia, Nicaragua and Uganda. In Mozambique it has been estimated that over 10,000 children, some as young as six, where conscripted by the Renamo rebels in their 16-year war against the government.

The Sierra Leone army presently fighting a war against rebels in the south and east of the country, has conscripted an estimated 400 children — some as young as eight and including girls.