Children and War

The Impact of War on Children: Fact SheetUNICEF / Graca Michel

In recent decades, the proportion of civilian casualties in armed conflicts has increased dramatically and is now estimated to stand at more than 90 per cent. About half of the victims are children.

An estimated 20 million children have been forced to flee their homes because of conflict and human rights violations and are living as refugees in neighbouring countries or are internally displaced persons within their own national borders.

More than 2 million children have died as a direct result of armed conflict over the last decade. More than three times that number, at least 6 million children, have been permanently disabled or seriously injured.

Millions of children have died as a result of malnutrition and disease caused by warfare. Since 1990, the most commonly reported causes of death among refugees and internally displaced persons have been diarrhoeal diseases, acute respiratory infections, measles and other common, preventable infectious diseases.

An estimated 300,000 child soldiers – boys and girls under the age of 18 – are involved in more than 30 conflicts worldwide. Child soldiers are used as combatants, messengers, porters, cooks and to provide sexual services. Some are forcibly recruited or abducted, others are driven to join by poverty, abuse and discrimination, or to seek revenge for violence enacted against themselves and their families.

During armed conflict, girls and women are continually threatened by rape, domestic violence, sexual exploitation, trafficking, sexual humiliation and mutilation. Investigative reports following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda concluded that nearly every female over the age of 12 who survived the genocide was raped. During the conflict in the former Yugoslavia there were an estimated 20,000 victims of sexual assault.

Small arms and light weapons are now the most readily available and deadly killing instruments in war and post-conflict situations. Deaths linked to small firearms run into the hundreds of thousands every year, with injuries exceeding 1 million.

HIV/AIDS has killed nearly 4 million children and orphaned more than 13 million more worldwide. Of the 17 countries with over 100,000 children orphaned by AIDS, 13 are either in conflict or on the brink of emergency and 13 are heavily indebted poor countries.

Of the 10 countries with the highest rates of under-five deaths, seven are affected by armed conflict. Angola and Sierra Leone have the highest under-five mortality rates: nearly one in three children dies before the age of five.

The shortfalls and disparities in humanitarian relief for war-affected children are a reflection not of need but of the political and strategic interests of donor countries. In 1998, official development assistance for Bosnia and Herzegovina reached US $238 per person. Poor countries with ongoing conflicts received much less per person: Burundi received $12, Afghanistan $6, and the Democratic Republic of Congo $3.

The major conflicts of the 1990s cost the international community an estimated US $240 billion. The social and economic costs to the countries at war have, of course, been far greater.

The past decade

In the decade since the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, more than 2 million children have been killed and more than 6 million injured or disabled in armed conflicts. Tens of thousands were victims of landmines. In violation of their human rights, hundreds of thousands of children were forced into armed conflict as soldiers, sex slaves or porters.

A malnourished Rwandan refugee girl stands in front of a makeshift tent at an encampment.

Scores of millions have been scarred psychologically by the violence they endured or witnessed at intimate range, and countless others have died for lack of food or health services.

With the breakdown of many official nation-states and an unbridled international trade in weapons, the ‘internal wars’ of the late 20th century are arenas of chronic human insecurity and flagrant atrocities, with increasingly large populations governed and terrorized by rogue groups.

In Africa alone, over 30 wars have sullied that continent since 1970, mostly within States. These accounted for more than half of all war-related deaths worldwide in 1996 and caused more than 8 million people to become refugees, returnees or displaced persons.

Consider the conflicts of the past decade, among them those in Afghanistan, Angola, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Sudan. And the recent brutality that enveloped Kosovo and East Timor. These and other flash points challenge overstretched relief and development efforts, undermine the rights of children and women and pose grave risks on a daily basis to humanitarian workers.

Like the ravages of poverty, the festering conflicts of today, many masked as ‘political instability’, threaten many of the remarkable achievements in health and education that governments, the international community and local citizens have laboured long decades to attain. For more information see The State of the World’s Children 2000.

Children as victims

Childhood is especially perishable in war. In the past 10 years, in much of the developing world, children have endured losses far out of proportion to their years and strength, of family and community members, of time to grow and learn, of the sense of hope.

In one of the most horrific human cataclysms, an estimated quarter of a million children in Rwanda were slaughtered in 1994 in the genocide that took, by some accounts, a million lives over the course of weeks. Scores of thousands more children were tortured, some by their schoolteachers, some in their churches, others while they lay in hospital beds. Hundreds of thousands more watched in agony and fear as their parents and families and friends were stalked and massacred by people they had known and trusted for years.

Landmines, too many to count, waste lives and limbs. Girls and women are raped as a weapon of war; in Sierra Leone, amputations of arms and legs were a common horrendous alternative to outright massacre. Children have been coerced or lured into armed conflicts in more than 30 countries in recent years.

Children in Conflict and Emergencies

A Kosovar girl refugee looks out the window of a bus transporting refugees to UN and NATO assisted camps. Macedonia.

In recent decades, the proportion of civilian casualties in armed conflicts has increased dramatically and is now estimated at more than 90 per cent. About half of the victims are children.

An estimated 20 million children have been forced to flee their homes because of conflict and human rights violations and are living as refugees in neighbouring countries or are internally displaced within their own national borders.

More than 2 million children have died as a direct result of armed conflict over the last decade.

More than three times that number, at least 6 million children, have been permanently disabled or seriously injured.

More than 1 million have been orphaned or separated from their families.

Between 8,000 and 10,000 children are killed or maimed by landmines every year.

An estimated 300,000 child soldiers – boys and girls under the age of 18 – are involved in more than 30 conflicts worldwide. Child soldiers are used as combatants, messengers, porters, cooks and to provide sexual services. Some are forcibly recruited or abducted, others are driven to join by poverty, abuse and discrimination, or to seek revenge for violence enacted against themselves and their families.

In 2002 the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict entered into force. It outlaws the involvement of children under age 18 in hostilities. As well as requiring States to raise the age of compulsory recruitment and direct participation in conflict to 18, the Optional Protocol requires States parties to raise the minimum age for voluntary recruitment beyond the current minimum of 15.

During armed conflict, girls and women are threatened by rape, domestic violence, sexual exploitation, trafficking, sexual humiliation and mutilation. Use of rape and other forms of violence against women has become a strategy in wars for all sides. Investigative reports following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda concluded that nearly every female over the age of 12 who survived the genocide was raped. During the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, more than 20,000 were estimated to have been sexually assaulted. Conflict also breaks up families, placing additional economic and emotional burdens on women.

Of the 25 countries with the highest proportion of children orphaned by AIDS, about one-third have been affected by armed conflict in recent years. Of the 10 countries with the highest rates of under-five deaths, seven are affected by armed conflict.

Children in armed conflict also routinely experience emotionally and psychologically painful events such as the violent death of a parent or close relative; separation from family; witnessing loved ones being killed or tortured; displacement from home and community; exposure to combat, shelling and other life-threatening situations; acts of abuse such as being abducted, arrested, held in detention, raped, tortured; disruption of school routines and community life; destitution and an uncertain future. Some even participate in violent acts. Children of all ages are also strongly affected by the stress levels and situation of their adult caregivers.