Liberia: Supporting the demobilisation of child soldiers

This report, by Human Rights Watch, explores the human rights situation of child soldiers in Liberia through a series of interviews with former and current child soldiers undertaken in the country in late 2003. The report argues that approximately 15,000 boys and girls under the age of eighteen, some as young as nine and ten years old, were involved in the fighting in Liberia. Since the enforced ceasefire of August 2003, an extensive demobilisation program which includes specific provisions for child soldiers, has been put in place. The rehabilitation of child soldiers, however, remains an enormous challenge: whole communities have been destroyed; populations have been displaced; and many children have lost one or more family members.