Government Armed Forces

Despite near-universal condemnation, hundreds of thousands of children have fought and died in almost every major conflict in the world, many in government armed forces. According to the Child Soldiers Global Report 2004, governments which used child soldiers in armed conflict between 2001 and 2004 were Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Chad, Côte D'Ivoire , Guinea, Liberia, Myanmar, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda and the United States of America.

Some governments which do not directly recruit children nevertheless back paramilitary groups, militias and local defence groups which use children to fight and to kill, to commit human rights abuses against civilians, or to loot and destroy property. Those using these unofficial forces include Colombia and Zimbabwe. In 2005, at least six governments claiming to have ended child recruitment, continued to deploy children to gather intelligence or to act as messengers or scouts, directly exposing them to the hazards of war or to violent reprisals if identified by opposing forces. Governments have ruthlessly targeted children suspected of membership of armed political groups. Such children have been detained and reportedly tortured often to extract information, such as in Israel. Some have been sentenced to death in unfair trials, including in military courts, such as in the DRC. Others have been killed during military "clean up" operations in Burundi, Indonesia and Nepal, or "disappeared", such as in Chechnya in the Russian Federation.

As of 2005, as many as 60 countries continued to recruit children at the ages of 16 and 17 into peacetime armies. They included Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Canada, Cuba, India, Iran, Jordan, Democratic People's Republic of North Korea and the Netherlands. In Turkmenistan, minimum ages for both voluntary recruitment and conscription were lowered from 18 to 17 in 2002, and China was also reported to have reduced the recruitment age to 17 in Beijing in 2003.

The Coalition is opposed to the military recruitment or use of any girl or boy under the age of 18. A large number of states have pledged to abide by a range of international human rights treaties, but much remains to be done for their full and effective implementation. (See international standards page.)

In March 2004 the Coalition made a submission to the UN study on Violence against Children, with specific reference to children in military schools and to children in peacetime government forces.