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No Toys, Just Guns. No Lollies, Just Fighting.
Jacques was just 10 years old when he was recruited into an armed group (mayi-mayi) after they raided his village and left him with no other option. He thought they would protect him, but instead they often whipped him and left him starving. He witnessed his 11-year-old friend get whipped to death because he had not killed the enemy. He listened to girls cry as the soldiers raped them.
This story is not uncommon. Innocent children worldwide as young as 8 years old are being used by armed governments and opposition groups as if war was just a game of playground tag.
Approximately 250,000 child soldiers, mostly from Africa, Asia and South America are denied their childhood and manipulated by adults into fighting their wars every day. They are forced to hurt, to kill, to work for and provide services to armed groups and forces, things that no child should ever have to be exposed to.
You can make a donation today to help put an end to this.
In countries like Somalia, children born since 1991 have never known human rights, peace, and the rule of law. Plagued with two decades of armed conflict, combined with one of the worst droughts ever; people are dying, barely able to access food, water and other basic amenities. And it is the children who make up over half the Somali population which armed groups are recruiting and exploiting for their own use.
We have found in over 200 recent testimonies from Somali refugees that one the reasons they fled southern or central Somalia was to escape from the risk of their children being recruited by armed groups, particularly al-Shabab, an armed Islamist group opposed to the Somali transitional government.
Today, we need your support to stop the wide scale recruitment and use of child soldiers.
“There is a place where they keep children, where al-Shabab tried to make me go. They used to come to the blocks where we were living and they would take children so that they could keep them and make them fight. […] Al-Shabab told me that they would kill me if I didn’t come with them. They asked me three times to go with them but I refused to go. I stopped going to the playground because I was scared they would try and force me to go with them. They took my brother. He was recruited by al-Shabab when he was eight years old. He was taken while he was playing football. We went to the place where we know that they make them fight and we found his dead body there.”
Ahmed, 15 year-old boy who fled Mogadishu in January 2010
To make matters worse, it’s not only al-Shabab that recruits child soldiers. Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) is on the UN list of shame as a party recruiting, using, killing and maiming children in armed conflict. It has committed to respect children's rights but has yet to adopt any concrete measures to end the use of children by forces fighting on its side.
Amnesty International is determined to end the recruitment of child soldiers by continuing to make sure these stories are told and applying pressure on governments such as the TFG.
To do this, we urgently need your support.
"When they came to my village, they asked my older brother whether he was ready to join the militia. He was just 17 and he said no; they shot him in the head. Then they asked me if I was ready to sign, so what could I do - I didn't want to die."
-Abul, former child soldier taken when he was 13. (Source: BBC report, 2006)
You have the voice, the freedom and choice to give children like Jacques and Abul an alternative today.
