Armed & underage: across the globe, thousands of children are being forced to serve as soldiers.

• Author: Gettleman, Jeffrey
• Position: Cover story

CRITICAL THINKING

In 1989, the U.N. passed the Convention on the Rights of the Child--the first legally binding international instrument that focuses on the human rights of children.

* What rights do you think children should be guaranteed?

Thousands of children worldwide have become involved in armed conflicts in countries where there is no infrastructure in place to protect them.

* Why are children so often forced to serve as soldiers?

* What might be some of the consequences for these children, and for their countries as a whole?

WRITING PROMPT

Script a public service announcement for TV about the use of children in conflicts around the world. Encourage your audience to take action and to learn more about this issue. Create a storyboard with visual elements to accompany your script.

DEBATE

Support or refute: Developed nations like the U.S. have a responsibility to ensure that children are not used as soldiers in any part of the world.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Why has soldiering become a way of life for children in many countries?

Why are the children who are being recruited not protected by adults and by their governments?

How might international organizations help child soldiers return home? Why is this so difficult?

Had you heard of this problem before reading this article? Why do you think it gets so little attention in the media?

How did reading this article affect your views about wars in distant countries?

FAST FACT

Thousands of children have come out of combat in the last five years as conflicts ended or eased in countries such as Angola, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, but thousands more have been drawn into conflicts in places like Sudan and Chad.

WEB WATCH

www.child-soldiers.org

The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers explores where and why children are used in combat, and what is being done to end it.

Tanzi Bakonzi, 15 and about four feet tall, was on patrol. He stood in front of a burned-out vegetable market in Faradje, a town in northeastern Congo, wielding a rusty machete.

No matter that his enemy was the Lord's Resistance

Army, the brutal rebel group whose members have been hiding out in northeastern Congo ever since they were driven out of Uganda five years ago.

No matter that the Lord's Resistance Army has machine guns, mortar bombs, and a penchant for crushing skulls, including those of several hundred people they recently massacred. It is less an army than a drugged-out street gang with military-grade weapons and 13-year-old brides. Its ranks are filled with boys brainwashed to burn down huts and pound newborn babies to death.

"I will cut them," Tanzi vowed.

Here in Congo (also known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and formerly Zaire), a civil war that started a decade ago to oust the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko is now a flee-for-all among rebel groups and the government. Those groups are fighting among themselves for a share of the country's timber, copper, gold, diamonds, and other resources. All sides...