A new international report reveals that between 2001 and 2004 manychildren (male and female) under eighteen have participated in armed struggles in angola, burundi, Colombia, D. R. Of Congo, Ivory Cost, Guinea, india, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Indonesia, Liberia, Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Russia, Ruanda, Sri Lanka, somalia, Sudan and Uganda.
by Simon
From Australia
18-11-04
A new international report reveals that between 2001 and 2004 manychildren (male and female) under eighteen have participated in armed struggles in angola, burundi, Colombia, D. R. Of Congo, Ivory Cost, Guinea, india, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Indonesia, Liberia, Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Russia, Ruanda, Sri Lanka, somalia, Sudan and Uganda.
The report denounces as well at least ten countries that continue using children in their battlefronts.
USA is one of these ten countries. It recruits 10.000, who are under seventeen every year and sent to Afghanistan and Iraq at least 62 soldiers under eighteen.
The report has been published by a coalition of NGOs including «Amnesty International», «Save the Children» or «Human Right Watch».
This International Coalition was born six years ago to ban the use of child soldiers.
Compliling information from 196 different countries with the help of local NGOs the coalition made a study in 2001. According to it between 300.000 and 500.000 children (sometimes just ten years old) fight in some of the 70 armed conflicts in the world.
Coming back to the new report, the coalition denounces the situation that it says is «specially terrifying» in Asia, Africa and Colombia.
Usually these children are recruited against their will and even kidnapped from their families. For girls it es worse because as well as fighting in the battle they are forced to have sexual relations with military superiors, too.
Some testimony compiled by the coalition:
- A seventeen-year-old Colombian boy who joined the paramilitaries when he was seven years old:
«They give you a weapon and you have to kill your best friend. It is a test. They want to know if they can trust you. If you don´t kill your friend, they will give him the same order against you»
- A nineteen-year-old Zimbabwean woman recalling her experience as a soldier for the «Young National Service´s Formation Programme» when she was eighteen:
«Nobody was responsible for the bedrooms and avery night we were violated. Men and youths came into our bedrooms during darkness and they just violated us. Simply, you had a man aver you and you couldn´t see who he was. If we cried, they beat us. We were so scared that we didn´t denounce the violations.
The youngest girl among us was eleven years old and she was violated repeatedly»
«Today we may recognize this is a dangerous world with countries spending million of dollars in weapons for their beloved «National Security».
But the only real way to make safer this planet is ending the injustice of starvation and unemployment and their consequences like child slavery and war.
We have to work together towards accepting our responsability as free people to own our own actions or lack of action»
CHILD PROSTITUTION GROWS IN ASIA
High commissioners and representatives from 23 countries closed the three days conversation about child prostitution which took place in Bangkok in November.
The meeting includen delegates from Australia, Cambodia, China, south Korea, Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, New Zealand, Thailand and Vietnam among others and it led to evaluating the efforts fighting against the child prostitution in the area.
In recent years, with tourism growth, the problem has spread into the South Pacific.
Denise Ritchie, the New Zealand representative of ECPAT («End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes») sai¡d to the press:
«Tragically, the general opinion is that the situation is worse than before. There are every day more and more children who are becoming sexual slaves or forced to practice prostitution»
The meeting was supported by United Nations and those present decided to fight against the child sexual exploitation to change the governments attitudes, cultural pratices and behaviour.
The delegates said that we need the governmental participation in these plans and to adopt more laws protecting their childhood.
They called attention to the close relation between the child prostitution growth and Internet.
There are four million web sites dedicated to pornography and 500 new sites are every day opened.
In this context the paedophiles have found an easy way to work together and to make contacts about travelling to different countries.
Other sourdes report that one of every five teenagers who connect themselves to Internet receive sexual propositions. According to UNESCO, half million erotic pictures os children ran through Internet two years ago and the number could have been multiplied now.
«The new generation of mobile phones equipped with cameras are helping this traffic as well», said those present in Bangkok.»
Shay cullen: the Irish «Paedophiles-hunter» priest.
Shay Cullen is known around the world like the «Paedophiles-hunter». This Irish priest has spent a big part of his life persecuting the most sought-after paedophiles of the world. Armed just with a video camera, he has taken to jail a few of them and has exposed international child prostitution nets.
Death-threats and plots which try to connect him with child sexual abuses is the price that he has to pay for it. When Shay Cullen was asked about the power of the paedophiles nets, him answer way:
Internet is giving to paedophiles the opportunity to work together and to make the contacts that they need to travel in guest of sexual relations.
The governements and politicians don´t do enough to stop this traffic through Internet.
The paedophiles sometimes can buy protection because even politicians are connected with these nets.