"I've seen people get their hands cut off, a ten-year old girl raped and then die, and so many men and women burned alive…. So many times I just cried inside my heart because I didn't dare cry out loud," said a 14 year-old girl, abducted in January 2000 by the Revolutionary United Front, an armed group in Sierra Leone.

Life on the front lines often brings children face to face with the horrors of war. Too many children have personally experienced or witnessed extremes of physical violence, including summary executions, death squad killings, disappearances, torture, arrest or detention, sexual abuse, bombings, forced displacement, destruction of home or property and massacres. They have been robbed of their childhood.

Some have even chosen that road: "I'm not afraid. We are prepared to fight. We don't do the cooking here, we fight with our friends." Said Koshe, nom de guerre of a 14-year- old daughter, fighting with her dad in the Kosovo Liberation Army in 1998-9.

When the fighting stopped in Rwanda, Jean-Paul was luckier than most. He can now enjoy his newfound freedom as a civilian. Having traded his military clothes for the hand-me-downs worn by most fellow refugees, he jokes, cooks meals and plays soccer with his friends. Often though, his face turns blank, desolate or anxious. Jean-Paul, 15, is one of 4,500 Rwandan children, aged 10 to 18, who was in the military during the country's brutal civil war. Now he lives in a refugee camp near Goma, Zaire, where he joined 630 demobilized child soldiers in a reintegration project sponsored by UNICEF, and now for the first time in his life he has the chance for schooling, job skill training and recreational activities aimed at promoting self-esteem.

"I joined the army to get food for my mother, my brothers and sisters," says Jean-Paul, who left his family and their tiny patch of tilled land for a Rwandan Government Army unit based near Kigali. Though few engage in combat, most child soldiers suffer terrible hardship. More servants than soldiers, they carry guns and ammunition, gather firewood, cook, do laundry and run errands for their master. (Jean-Paul had 10 masters over the years). Deprived of other adult role models and kept out of school, they become profoundly dependent on the military for material and psychological support.

Child soldiers are among the saddest victims of conflict: they rarely emerge from military service with a sense of their own worth and identity. Worse, they often experience violence that leaves them physically or psychologically scarred. Facing a difficult adolescence, many turn to drugs, alcohol and anti-social behaviour.

A child soldier has been defined as a person under the age of 18 who directly or indirectly participates in an armed conflict as part of an armed force or group. While some children wield assault rifles, machetes, or rocket propelled grenades on the front lines, others are used in "combat support" roles as messengers, spies, cooks, mine clearers, porters and sexual slaves. It is not uncommon for them to participate in killing and raping. Today in most of the armed conflicts raging in the world, an estimated 300,000 children are active participants in combat.

In addition some children are recruited into a country's armed forces, even if the country in question is in a state of peace. For example, the United States Pentagon sponsors programs for approximately 400,000 high school boys and girls where children are taught to march, shoot, act and think like soldiers. More than half of all European States accept under-18-year-olds in their armed forces. The United Kingdom routinely sends 17-year-olds into combat. According to their official statistics from January 1999, there was a total of 6,676 male and female 16- and 17-year-olds, and over 128,000 cadets from the ages of 10 to 16 in training schools around the country. Similarly, military schools are a common feature across Latin America, Asia and Africa. No area is immune to this issue.

In 1996, in a special report on the impact of armed conflict on children, Mrs. Graça Machel explained how children become soldiers:

"Hunger and poverty may drive parents to offer children for service or attract children to volunteer as a way to guarantee regular meals, clothing or medical attention. Some children become soldiers to protect themselves or their families in the face of violence and chaos around them, while others, particularly adolescents, are lured by ideology. Children also identify with social causes, religious expression, self-determination, national liberation or the pursuit of political freedom, as in South Africa or the occupied territories."

There are other reasons, too. Children are impressionable and can be manipulated easily into becoming ruthless and unquestioning tools of war. Child soldiers committed some of the worst atrocities in Sierra Leone. And the proliferation of lightweight weapons -- requiring no physical prowess or technical expertise to manipulate -- has made it possible for very young children to bear and use arms.

Recruiting children by force is not uncommon. Armed groups take children as they pass through villages. Some groups have specifically recruited orphans and nurtured their loyalty.

Even girls are not spared. In case studies from El Salvador, Ethiopia and Uganda, it was found that reportedly a third of child soldiers were girls. Girls have fought in Kosovo for the Kosovo Liberation Army and in Turkey for the Kurdistan Workers Party.

• The 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child spells out the rights of children in times of armed conflict and in peace-time. Articles of the Convention that are especially important in wartime include all those related to survival and to family support, as well as those concerned with education, health care and adequate nutrition.

• An Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted by the General Assembly on 25 May 2000. It strengthens the Convention in a number of ways:

1. It sets the minimum age for compulsory recruitment or direct participation in hostilities at 18;
2. It calls upon States parties to raise the minimum age for voluntary recruitment to at least 16 and to provide special protection and safeguards for those under 18;
3. It categorically prohibits armed groups from recruiting or using in hostilities anyone under 18; and
4. It calls upon States parties to provide technical cooperation and financial assistance to help prevent child recruitment and deployment, and to improve the rehabilitation and social reintegration of former child soldiers.

The Optional Protocol will enter into force after it is ratified by 10 States.

• The 1999 ILO Convention on the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour prohibits the forced or compulsory recruitment of children under 18 for use in armed conflict.

• The 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines the conscription, enlistment or use in hostilities of children under 15 by national armed forces or armed groups, intentional attacks on civilian populations, humanitarian assistance personnel and vehicles, hospitals and educational buildings as war crimes.

• The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, which prohibits the recruitment or direct participation in hostilities or internal strife of anyone under the age of 18; entered into force in November 1999.

• Regional organizations like the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, (OSCE), the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the European Commission, the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, the G-8 meeting in Miyazaki, the Heades of Government of Commonwealth, the Organization of American States (OAS), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and others have adopted a child protection agenda including the non-use of child soldiers.

In 1994, the UN Secretary-General appointed Mrs. Graça Machel, former Minister of Education of Mozambique, to study the impact of armed conflict on children. In 1996, after two years of extensive research, consultations and field visits, Mrs. Machel submitted her report, entitled "Impact of Armed Conflict on Children" to the UN General Assembly at its 51st session.

In response to the Machel report, the General Assembly recommended the appointment of a Special Representative on the impact of armed conflict on children. In September 1997, well known peace activist and diplomat Olara Otunnu became the Secretary-General’s first Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict.

Over the last two years, Mr. Otunnu, has worked with UN country teams, particularly Resident Coordinators and UNICEF representatives, to systematically elicit commitments from all leaders of parties in conflict in several countries, including Burundi, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka and the Sudan. They have agreed to some of the following measures:

· not to recruit or use children as soldiers;

· not to target civilian populations, nor to block access to populations in distress within their zones of control;

· not to interfere with the distribution of relief supplies;

· to observe humanitarian cease-fires for purposes of vaccination or relief supply;

· not to attack schools or hospitals;

· not to use landmines.

In August 2000, the UN Security Council in a resolution reaffirmed that it was the responsibility of Governments, rebel groups and the private sector to ensure that the fundamental rights of children are protected in times of war, as well as in peacetime.

In another important step, the Security Council has asked for the deployment of Child Protection Advisers with UN peacekeeping operations. These civilian personnel will help ensure that the rights and protection of all children are a priority throughout the peacekeeping process. Such Child Protection Advisers are already working in peacekeeping operations in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo.