The other fallacy is that the issue of child soldiers is isolated to armed militias in parts of Africa.
Mental health counselling may prove to be a sine qua non to successfully re-integrating child soldiers into civilian life.
Gen Ntaganda faces 10 counts of conscripting child soldiers, murder, terrorising communities and using rape as a weapon of war.
BBC: Bosco Ntaganda: US wants swift ICC transfer from Rwanda
In 2006, the ICC issued a warrant for Mr. Ntaganda's arrest on charges relating to the use of child soldiers.
The United Nations children's agency, Unicef, has repeatedly issued statements accusing Col Karuna and his faction of forcibly recruiting child soldiers.
James Elder, a spokesman for Unicef in Sri Lanka, calls the centre a genuine attempt to help child soldiers learn how to be civilians.
Four years ago, the rebels promised the UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Olara Otunnu, that they would not recruit child soldiers.
The study concluded that there were strong similarities between children involved in drug wars in Rio's slums and child soldiers elsewhere in the world.
Conflict affects education in a variety of ways, through attacks on schools and teachers to the recruitment of child soldiers, forced displacement and psychosocial distress.
Responsible for the coordination of thousands of peacekeepers in conflict zones throughout the world, and leading negotiations for the release of child soldiers in Uganda.
The state crumbled further under Kabila's rule, and rebellion followed rebellion until he was shot by one of his own former child soldiers in 2001.
Hope North, a boarding school for escaped child soldiers and more.
To its credit, the United States has laws (the Child Soldier Prevention Act) that prevent military aid to countries and groups that employ child soldiers.
Unicef is calling for countries to demobilise all child soldiers, to provide support for their reintegration into society and to provide them with psychological and social care.
Recently a recent report by Save the Children sounded the alarm over the increased use of child soldiers by a cultlike rebel group the Lord's Resistance Army.
Ali Mahdi Nouri (Sudan) founded in 2004 the Al-Bugaa Theatre, which travels around conflict zones in Sudan and stages plays performed by child soldiers and war orphans.
All of these individuals face charges before international criminal tribunals for horrific acts, including attacks on civilians, murder, the recruitment and use of child soldiers, and rape.
In Liberia, studies showed that 90% of child soldiers showed evidence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and 65% displayed symptoms of a major depressive disorder.
At age 11, Jal and a handful of other child soldiers broke from the main fighting force, escaping from the city of Juba to a town called Waat.
FORBES: Power of Music Part 3: Emmanuel Jal And The Business Of Peace Music
The media have worried most over whether German troops might catch diseases, or have to shoot at child soldiers (if attacked, they will, is Mr Viereck's obvious answer).
The report, which covered 53 African nations, said children were the biggest victims, describing how they had been forced into slavery, recruited as child soldiers or sold into prostitution.
Since 1992, alliances with over 379 ground-breaking projects in 97 countries have brightened the lives of street children, child soldiers, young refugees and children displaced by conflict and natural disasters.
Experts say that once conflicts end and many psychologically scarred former child soldiers (now young adults) are demobilized and returned to their communities, the peace is fragile and insecurity is amplified.
Many erroneously believe that child soldiers are mostly boys.
Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said there had been child soldiers in the rebel ranks and that the South Africans had fought them, as one could not blow kisses and hand out sweets to an armed child.
BBC: Central Africa Republic crisis: Refugee numbers 'swell'
They kick off on Saturday with a six-part English series called A World for Children which talks to child soldiers from Uganda, street children in Brazil, child prostitutes in the Philippines and children growing up in Germany.
According to the NEAP, the focus of literacy and non-formal education programmes is on out-of-school children, youths and adults but especially women and girls and those who have never been to school such as former child soldiers.
Estimates suggest that as many as 300, 000 child soldiers are active in conflicts around the world. 40% of armed forces (including national armies, militias, gangs, terrorist organizations and resistance forces) in the world use children.
Local organizations, from the reintegration center for child soldiers to the rehabilitation center for survivors of sexual violence, are working as hard as they can to provide solace and a hopeful future for those most physically and emotionally harmed by the conflict.
As part of the creeping implementation of the peace deal, the UN do have a presence here, and they were helping provide water and security at a school where 160 child soldiers, apparently abandoned by the RUF the previous week, were being "demobilised" and looked after.
应用推荐