Among the millions of child soldiers across Africa kidnapped, drugged and manipulated into fighting, girls represent an estimated 30 percent. Girls face an even harder challenge following the release from soldiery. Many girls, like boys are abducted from their homes, drugged, beaten, and in many cases forced to kill their family members. But unlike boys, the girls are raped and/or forced to “marry” rebel leaders. Their children are then ostracized as “Kony children”, referring to Joseph Kony, the self-proclaimed prophet of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

The LRA, based in northern Uganda, kidnapped an estimated 25,000 children during the 20-year war against the government. According to Human Rights Watch, children were used in the frontlines, as spies, minesweepers and concubines.

Although several children, either abandoned or orphaned, joined the rebels out of desperation, the majority was kidnapped from the family.

On June 20th of this year, the UN-backed courts convicted junta leaders of using child soldiers during the Sierra Leone civil war. This marks the first time the use of child soldiers was treated as a war crime.

For more information please see:

“Another side of child-soldiering: girls” Yahoo News: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070825/ap_on_re_af/africa_s_child_war;_ylt=AqSK.u0PgSvdETjY_rF9F7.96Q8F 25, Aug. 2007.