Children in war zones are being maimed, murdered, or forced to fight - UN

Children in war zones have sometimes been murdered or disfigured and many thousands have been recruited into government and rebel fighting forces, according to a new report from United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to the UN General Assembly and Security Council.

"Children in war zones have been deliberately killed or maimed by parties to conflicts, often in extremely brutal ways," the report says.

It notes such murders and maiming of children in Rwanda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador and Uganda. Some of the children targeted had fled rural areas and gone into towns to avoid recruitment by government or rebel armies, it says.

In the zones of conflict, too, girls and women "are raped, abducted for sexual exploitation and forced into marriages or prostitution," at a time when the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) "estimates that rates of HIV among combatants are three to four times higher than those among local populations."

Lists appended to the report indicate that children are serving with nearly four dozen armed groups in 15 countries.

"After his visit to the Republic of Chechnya of the Russian Federation in 2002, my Special Representative (Olara Otunnu) reported that insurgency groups continued to enlist children and use them to plant landmines and explosives," the report says. "This situation remains unchanged."

In the Sudan, children have been discharged in the south and re-recruited, with the result that "thousands of children remain within the ranks of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A)" and "several thousand children are also serving with the South Sudan Unity Movement," it says.

The SPLM/A has pledged to release 2,000 children by the end of the year, the report says, and the Sudanese Government has created a task force on demobilizing youngsters.

Recruitment, release and re-recruitment were also taking place in northern Uganda, where the Lord's Resistance Army had abducted more than 8,000 children in the past year, the highest number in the 17 years of civil strife. The Government's Uganda People's Defence Forces and its allied Local Defence Units also recruit children, it says.

In Colombia, the paramilitary Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) released about 1,000 children through a programme of the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare. During a unilateral ceasefire this year, AUC demobilized 81 children younger than 18, including six girls, through the Roman Catholic Church, the report says.

"Despite these developments, approximately 7,000 children remain within the ranks of (Colombian) armed groups and an additional 7,000 children are involved in urban militias, many of which are associated with these armed groups," it says.

Both AUC and the Fuerza Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) have persisted in recruiting, it says, and "fear of recruitment has led many families to flee their homes in rural areas."

In Myanmar, children have been recruited both by the Government and by armed groups, but some children have fled over the border into Thailand.

The Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist "continues to recruit or use children," the report says, while in Northern Ireland "continuing competitive recruitment of young people by all paramilitary groups has been reported in the context of various feuds and the emergence of dissident groups."

In Sri Lanka, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) made commitments to stop enlisting children, but the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) "has received reports of new recruitment."

Reports from the Philippines indicate that the Moro National Liberation Front, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the New People's Army and the Abu Sayyaf enlist children, the report says.