We've all heard tales from or about war heroes, enlisting in a war after deceiving officials about their age. They wore their uniform proud, ready to fight for their country and for the betterment of mankind. We're talking about young adults, growing men reaching ages of sixteen and seventeen who could think of nothing that could make them more proud, than proving they could fight for independence.

Now go and have a look at your child, the one sitting beside you currently finishing their chocolate milk before bed, tomorrow they'll be heading off to school. Look at your 6th grader, looking forward to recess so they can have a kick of the footy, straight after that spelling bee Miss has for class tomorrow.

Now picture your child, being forced from the building, militant warlords with guns pointed at them, rounding up the youngsters so they can go and fight, rape and pillage. Forced to be scouts for these militants, forced to be sex slaves and spies. Maybe it cannot happen to your child, but it's happening in other parts of the world. Most of these kids do not join for pride and country allegiance, as other soldiers of bygone eras, they're manipulated and abused and forced to do heinous crimes that nobody, not even an adult should bear witness to.

Some are lured by promises and compared to their poor status within their home community due to illiteracy, famine and poor circumstances, joining the ranks as a soldier is more appealing than the latter. They're forced to kill and injure, rape and taunt, others are used as gophers and for the pleasure of the more senior' militants.

These are the horrors that some countries put their children through. You may be sitting back now, looking at your own child or thinking of your young niece and nephew being involved in armed conflict, imagining them being manipulated or fed drugs before they head in to battle.

This is not a modern phenomenon, children being involved in armed combat has dated back centuries, look at children used as drummer boys on battlefields in Europe, or the emergence of the Hitler Youth in World War 2. Now we're finding this atrocity occurring in civil wars in Colombia, the Congo, Liberia, and Uganda and to bring it closer to home, children are being used as combat soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. The first U.S soldier to be killed in the war against terrorism was killed by a 14-year-old child. In over 85 countries worldwide, more than 500,000 children under the age

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