(capetimes.co.za) DAKAR: Child soldiers are still being recruited in at least 13 countries from Afghanistan to Uganda, 10 years after international guidelines were agreed to eradicate their use, a British-based charity said yesterday.

Save the Children said hundreds of thousands of under-age soldiers were being forced to fight despite guidelines laid down in the Cape Town Principles agreed in 1997.

“The situation is still dire. Hundreds of thousands of children are still living in misery,” Save the Children said.

“Child soldiers are subjected to brutal intimidation, often forced to commit atrocities as military training, and then used on the frontline,” it said.

Many of those forced to fight were in Africa, held by rebel groups such as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda – infamous for abducting thousands of children – or by militia groups including those wreaking havoc in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. (more…)