Child soldiers are not always combatants, but may be engaged as porters, cooks and spies within the army or militia. Most child soldiers are abducted into the fighting forces, some are also volunteers or are volunteered by their parents.
"Up to 40% of child soldiers are girls who are used as sex-slaves for the male combatants".
Warchild is the charity which works with former child soldiers in Africa, especially Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). They help to reintegrate former child soldiers back into society and the community. They provide education and skills training to young people who have none as a result of war.
They provide these links to teaching resources ,their Facebook page, and a website in which people can get directly involved called "Angry Mob ".
"The International Rescue Committee" provides education, skills and leadership development for young people, care and reunification services for separated children, and protection and support for former child soldiers."
For women, the dangers of armed conflict go far beyond the violence of combat. They risk human rights violations, suffering and death that can and should be prevented."Worldwide, over 40% of reported sexual assaults are perpetrated against girls aged 15 or younger."
The International Rescue Committee works comprehensively to save women’s lives and promote their rights in war-shattered countries, refugee camps and communities that are rebuilding.
They estimate 20 million children are uprooted as a cause of war each day, that they lose their parents and friends and often have to take on the roles of protecting and caring for younger children, whilst missing out on the opportunity for education. IRC believes that education is a right of refugee and displaced children and work to provide education programmes, school revitalisation and teacher training to ensure that the vital opportunity to learn isn't lost.
Their first education programmes started in the 1980s to set up schools for 40,000 cambodian refugee children in Thailand. In 2007, more than 317,000 young people were learning in IRC supported schools and the IRC trained 10,000 teachers. They take mentoring of children very seriously in an attempt to help guide them into becoming more responsible members of society.
The IRC registers separated children and removes them from harm's way and traces their families. They first started doing this in Thailand in the 1980s for Cambodian refugees. In Sierra Leone and Liberia, they have reunited 4,500 children with their families.
The IRC provides immediate protection, heathcare and emotional support to children who have escaped from armed forces and promote community child protection committees and other local partners to provide sustainable and lastig support to vulnerable children.
You can sign up to recieve website updates from the IRC here.
In Northern Uganda, approximately 20,000 children have been abducted to fight in a local Uganda militia called: "The Lord's Resistance Army" (LRA).
One girl who was abducted and forced to fight for them said she was made to kill a boy who tried to escape, saw another boy being hacked to death for not raising the alarm when his friend escaped, was beaten when she dropped a water container and ran for cover whilst under fire.
She was trained for a total of 35 days by the LRA before being sent to fight the government army.
Over the last ten years hundreds of thousands of child soldiers have been killed in conflicts, and they're frequently killed whilst carrying out tasks other than fighting.
They are forced to engage in hazardous activities such as laying mines or explosives, as well as using weapons. Child soldiers are usually forced to live under harsh conditions with insufficient food and little or no access to healthcare. They are almost always treated brutally, subjected to beatings and humiliating treatment. Punishments for mistakes or desertion are often very severe. Girl soldiers are particularly at risk of rape, sexual harassment and abuse as well as being involved in combat and other tasks.
So where recruitment may lead to sex slavery, young girls abducted by rebel forces are commonly divided up and allocated to soldiers to serve as their 'wives'. A case-study from Honduras, prepared for the Machel report, illustrates one child's experience of joining armed groups:
"At the age of 13, I joined the student movement. I had a dream to contribute to make things change, so that children would not be hungry ... later I joined the armed struggle. I had all the inexperience and fears of a little girl. I found out that girls were obliged to have sexual relations 'to alleviate the sadness of the combatants. And who alleviated our sadness after going with someone we hardly knew? At my young age I experienced abortion ... In spite of my commitment, they abused me, they trampled my human dignity. And above all, they did not understand that I was a child and that I had rights."
It is difficult to reintegrate demobilized children after a peace settlement is reached. Many have been physically or sexually abused by the very forces for which they have been fighting, and have seen their parents killed, sometimes in the most brutal manner, in front of their eyes. Most have also been led into participating in murder, rape and other atrocities. These children have no skills for life in peacetime and they are accustomed to getting their way through violence.
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