Children Of War

Small Wars Journal offers a round-up of articles on child soldiers. An excerpt from Peter Singer's article:

The nature of armed conflict...has changed greatly in the past few years. Now the presence of children is the new rule of standard behavior in war, rather than the rarity that it used to be...

The practice of using children, defined under international law as under the age of 18, as soldiers is far more widespread and more important than most realize. There are as many as 300,000 children under the age of 18 presently serving as combatants around the globe (making them almost 10 percent of all global combatants). They serve in 40 percent of the world’s armed forces, rebel groups, and terrorist organizations and fight in almost 75 percent of the world’s conflicts; indeed, in the last five years, children have served as soldiers on every continent but Antarctica. Moreover, an additional half-million children serve in armed forces not presently at war.