Too soon for twilight, too late for dawn: the story of children caught in conflict.

In the last decade more than 2 million children have been killed, more than 4 million have survived physical mutilation and more than 1 million have been orphaned or separated from their families. All as a result of war.

Joy unblemished as they play outside school, tumbling through the grass with friends, running under a gushing stream of water on a hot evening or down hills stung by snow. Laughter and love.

These are the memories of the more innocent times evoked in the minds of many of us as we reminisce about our own childhoods. Where we had time to grow up and only slowly learn the darker ways of the world.

But such memories are unimaginably distant from the reality that millions of children, caught up in the deadly games of adults, must confront. Instead, for the increasing numbers of children living in war-torn nations, childhood has become a living nightmare.

A just-released United Nations study on the impact of armed conflict on children paints a truly devastating picture of untold suffering and cruelty, of a world increasingly "being sucked into a desolate moral vacuum. This is a space devoid of the most basic human values; a space in which children are slaughtered, raped and maimed; a space in which children are exploited as soldiers; a space in which children are starved and exposed to extreme brutality."

The report was the outcome of a two-year investigation that included field visits to battle-scarred areas, dramatic case studies, input from eminent personalities and experts, and consultations with Governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), armed opposition movements and children themselves.

Some of those children were present at the ceremony on 8 November United Nations Headquarters in New York when the study was officially presented to the General Assembly. It is they whom Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali had in mind when he told delegations: "Between the lines of this detailed and serious document, we can hear the cries of the 2 million children killed and the 15 million disabled or traumatized in conflicts over the past decade, calling out to us for urgent redress."

The report was a warning to anyone grown accustomed to the business of patching resolutions and planning programmes, said General Assembly President Razali Ismall. "Instead, it is vital that the United Nations move beyond the prescription of solutions, and seize the ground to force political will to implement actions that will halt such brutal treatment of children. It is my belief that action to protect children's rights in armed conflict will only be successful if it is accompanied by universal and sustained outpouring of moral outrage."

Normally fodder for by-the-book statements, the United Nations expert study which prompted such an emotional response from the most seasoned diplomats was prepared by Graca Machel, former Minister of Education of Mozambique and the expert appointed by Mr. Boutros-Ghali in 1994 to study the situation of children in conflicts, with support from the United Nations Centre for Human Rights and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

It exposes in detail the sweeping extent of the mistreatment of children in the nearly 30 armed conflicts now raging around the world. "Millions of children are caught up in conflicts in which they are not merely bystanders, but targets. Some fall victim to a general onslaught against civilians; others die as part of a calculated genocide. Still other children suffer the effects of sexual violence or the multiple deprivations of armed conflict that expose them to hunger or disease. Just as shocking, thousands of young people are cynically exploited as combatants."

Mrs. Machel told the press on 8 November: "We normally hear from adults, from politicians, but rarely from children." It was important that her study looked at the situation through the eyes of the smallest victims. In its preparation, she had spoken with a nine-year-old girl from Sierra Leone who had been raped by soldiers and then forced to watch her family slaughtered. She had heard also from a Cambodian mother who had seen her children destroyed by a land-mine in the family fields just after they had made it safely home after years as refugees. And she had listened to a 15-year-old "soldier", racked with remorse and mourning his lost childhood, who had told her how he feared going back to his family and community because he did not know how or if he would be accepted.

Deliberate targets

Why are children so brutally exposed during modern warfare, not just accidentally, but as deliberate targets? The report points to the changing character of modern warfare, where wars are being fought not between States, but within them, and are marked by increasing brutality. And in many cases, religious and ethnic affiliations are manipulated to heighten feelings of hatred or aggression - against children, as well as adults. Battles are fought from village to village and street to street. As a result, the proportion of war victims who are civilians has leapt in recent decades from 5 per cent to over 90 per cent, and at least half of these are children. Increasingly, children have become both targets and perpetrators of violence.

"Involving children as soldiers", Mrs. Machel explains, "has been made easier by the proliferation of inexpensive light weapons." The international arms trade has made assault rifles so cheap and widely available that even the poorest communities have access to the most deadly of weapons - weapons which can transform local, low-intensity conflicts into bloody slaughters.

In the view of Assembly President Razali, the arms trade should be singled out for its role in catalyzing aggression, and perpetuating and profiting from violence and suffering. It was "distressing that, despite moral outrage, Governments were more concerned with supporting the rights of arms manufacturers than with protecting the rights of people and children".

A series of 24 case studies prepared for the Machel report indicate that government or rebel armies around the world have recruited tens of thousands of children. Most are adolescent boys, but many are girls, and some are younger than 10.

Many are forcibly recruited, seized from the streets or even from schools or orphanages. Others are driven to join armed groups by fear or poverty, believing that this is the only way to achieve some protection from the violence around them or to be sure of regular meals, clothing or medical attention. Asked why increasing numbers of children were becoming soldiers, Mrs. Machel said that when children lost their parents and communities, they often joined armed forces for food and safety. Revenge for atrocities committed against their families was often a factor. Another reason had to do with the particular vulnerability of children: commanders had told her that children were impressionable and easy to dominate. They were good soldiers because they never challenged orders.

Child soldiers often start out in support functions. Boys serve as porters or messengers. Girls may prepare food or attend to the wounded, though they may also be forced to provide sexual services or be "married off" to other soldiers. However, both boys and girls are soon forced onto the battlefield where their youth and inexperience leave them particularly vulnerable. Often, they are unaware of the real dangers they face; they may even forget to take cover. In a number of cases, children have been deliberately exposed to horrific scenes to harden them to violence. Some have even been forced to commit atrocities against their own families as a way of severing all ties with their communities.

One of the many cases - this one from Honduras - examined during the preparation of Mrs. Machel's report illustrates in heart-rending terms the meaning behind her words. "At the age of 13, I joined the student movement. I had a dream to contribute to make things change, so that children would not be hungry ... later I joined the armed struggle. I had all the inexperience and the fears of a little girl. I found out that girls were obliged to have sexual relations 'to alleviate the sadness of the combatants'. And who alleviated our sadness after going with someone we hardly knew? At my young age I experienced abortion. It was not my decision. There is a great pain in my being when I recall all these things. ... In spite of my commitment, they abused me, they trampled my human dignity. And above all, they did not understand that I was a child and that I had rights."

The use of child soldiers is nothing new, and children under the age of 15 - some not yet 10 - are known to be serving in government or opposition forces in various conflict zones. According to Mrs. Machel, their use is a problem created by adults, to be eradicated by adults. In the report, she calls for a global campaign to stop the recruitment into the armed forces of anyone under 18 and to encourage Governments and opposition groups to demobilize immediately all such children. It recommends that all peace agreements specifically address the need to demobilize and reintegrate child soldiers back into society, and calls for the adoption of a draft Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child that would establish the minimum age of recruitment and participation as 18 years.

Children in flight

The numbers stagger the imagination. At least half the estimated 57.4 million people around the world who are displaced by war are children, and millions of these have been separated from their families, according to the Machel report, which says that unaccompanied children are the most likely to be killed, tortured, raped, robbed or recruited as child soldiers.

In Rwanda alone, by the end of 1994, more than 100,000 children had been separated from their families - the highest number registered by UNICEF since the agency was founded in 1946 to provide relief to children suffering in the aftermath of the Second World War. In Angola in 1995, a UNICEF study found that 20 per cent of the country's children had been separated from their parents and relatives. In Cambodia, in which half the population is under the age of 15, the huge loss of life under the Khmer Rouge rule has left fewer adults to care for children. The disintegration of the Cambodian family has led to vastly increased rates of delinquency, crime, drug abuse and child prostitution.

Physical suffering may not even be the worst trial a child caught up in armed conflict has to endure. Temporary or permanent separation from their parents or other adult care givers deprives children of those relationships that are the major source of a child's emotional and physical security. The report warns that "separation can have a devastating social and psychological impact".

Without such relationships, children remain vulnerable to continued exploitation. It was reported to a UNICEF delegation in Cambodia that some refugee families had temporarily adopted unaccompanied children, in order to obtain additional food and relief supplies, only to abandon them once they had returned to Cambodia. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ms. Machel learned, some evacuations of children had been organized by groups intent on profiting from adoption markets.

As many unaccompanied displaced children are not orphans, Mrs. Machel urges that tracing family members be made a top priority, with adoption as a last resort. Greater attention must also be given to children who have been displaced within their own countries, as they often lack access to relief programmes. She also argues for tighter procedures to ensure that each child has a continuous care giver, preferably from his or her own family, and failing that, neighbours, friends or other substitutes.

Gender-based violence

Modern warfare increasingly wreaks havoc on the lives of women and girls, and on the health and educational services that are key to family and community survival and development.

"Nothing was spared, held sacred or protected", says the report. The targeting of women and girls by armed forces exacerbates an already intolerable situation. One of the most severe problems faced by women and girls during armed conflicts is a heightened risk of rape, sexual humiliation, prostitution and other forms of gender-based violence. Women of all ages are targets, but adolescent girls are often especially vulnerable since they may be thought less likely to have sexually transmitted diseases, such as HIV/AIDS. While most victims have been girls, young boys are also raped or forced into prostitution.

Rape and other forms of gender-based violence are also being used systematically as weapons of war. Since war broke out in the former Yugoslavia in 1992, it is estimated that more than 20,000 women and girls have been raped. In Rwanda, between April 1994 and April 1995, more than 15,700 girls and women were raped. Yet such violence is rarely taken as seriously as it should be. To help prevent these abuses, the report makes a case for rigorous punishment, saying that all cases of wartime rape and sexual torture should be prosecuted as war crimes. It also recommends that all military and peace-keeping troops have special training on their responsibilities to women and children.

Other examples of gender-based targeting and inequity that lead to higher mortality and morbidity (illness) among females during armed conflict include: hunger and exploitation in camps for refugees and internally displaced persons, when men take control of food distribution; malnutrition, when food aid neglects women's and children's special nutritional requirements; and culturally inappropriate and/or inadequate access to health services, including mental and reproductive health services, or unequal access to education.

The legacy of land-mines

Globally, there are some 110 million land-mines lying in wait for their victims - in times of conflict, as well as for years afterwards. Added to these are millions of pieces of unexploded ordnance - bombs, shells and grenades that failed to detonate on impact.

Children are particularly vulnerable to land-mines. Naturally curious, they are more likely to pick up strange objects, such as the "butterfly" mines that former Soviet forces spread by the thousands in Afghanistan and which can look like toys. If the children are illiterate or just too young to read, signs posted to warn of the presence of mines are useless.

Also, children are far more likely than adults to die from their mine injuries: a mine meant to take off an adult's leg at the knee may explode at face level with a three- or five-year-old child. In Cambodia, around 20 per cent of children injured by mines die from their injuries. Of the maimed ones who somehow survive, few will receive prostheses that keep up with the continued growth of their stunted limbs.

The human and economic devastation caused by land-mines has led to an international campaign for a complete ban on their production, use, trade and stockpiling. The report supports this campaign, while emphasizing the importance of mine clearance, mine-awareness programmes designed for children, and the need to rehabilitate child victims of mine explosions. It proposes that such activities be largely financed by companies and countries which have profited from the sale of these deadly devices.

Child health under attack

Tens of thousands of children die each year as a direct result of armed violence - from knives, bullets, bombs and land-mines. But, as the report points out, millions more die from the indirect consequences of warfare - as a result, for example, of the disruption in food supplies or the destruction of health services, water systems and sanitation. In poorer countries, where children are already vulnerable to disease, the onset of armed conflict may increase death rates by 24-fold, with those under five years of age placed at particular risk.

In Mozambique, between 1981 and 1988, war caused an estimated 454,000 excess childhood deaths, above what would have normally been expected. During the conflict in Somalia, more than half the deaths in some places were caused by measles - a normally curable or preventable disease.

But beyond the physical dangers, children may also suffer lasting psychosocial damage - as a result, for example, of the loss of their families, or of exposure to violence. On the basis of interviews conducted, the study concluded in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 55 per cent of children had been shot at, 66 per cent had been in a situation where they expected to die, and 29 per cent felt "unbearable sorrow". In Angola, 66 per cent of children had seen people being murdered, and 67 per cent had seen people being tortured, beaten or hurt. In Rwanda, 56 per cent had seen children kill people, nearly 80 per cent had lost immediate family members, and 16 per cent had been forced to hide under dead bodies. One UNICEF survey found that more than 60 per cent of the Rwandan children interviewed said they did not care whether they ever grew up. Nearly 80 per cent had lost immediate family members, and more than one third of these had actually witnessed the murders.

A nine-year-old Liberian girl recounted this story to one of Ms. Machel's advisers during a field visit to Sierra Leone: "I saw 10 to 20 people shot, mostly old people who couldn't walk fast. They shot my uncle in the head and killed him. Then they made my father take his brains out and throw them into some water nearby. Then they made my father undress and have an affair with a decaying body. Then they raped my cousin who was a little girl of nine years old."

Such experiences leave emotional, psychological and spiritual scars that may last a lifetime. Even after the conflict is over or they have reached safety, many children remain filled with rage, aggression and guilt. Many Filipino children in the area of Marag, for instance, were convinced that they must have done something bad to make the military drop bombs on their homes. A 13-year-old former Khmer Rouge soldier saw recurrent visions in which the intestines of one of his victims turned into snakes that then began to strangle him.

Children are also affected by other distressing experiences. Armed conflict splinters communities and breaks down trust among people - undermining the very foundation of children's lives.

Despite the daunting level of damage done to children, much can be accomplished even with limited resources. In Rwanda, 70,000 people have participated in singing, dancing, drama and writing projects organized by international NGOs to express and ease the pain of their memories. And in the Philippines, some traumatized young people have been trained to help care for younger children as "junior facilitators" who are able to establish rapport more quickly than adults, and who can also therapeutically share their own experiences of war.

Even the re-establishment of daily routines, such as food preparation, laundry, gardening and going to school, foster a sense of purpose, self-esteem and identity, the report says.

It is essential to re-establish familiar routines of home and community life and a sense of normalcy, says Graga Machel, who also urges the creation of programmes that reflect the cultural values and traditions of the people they are intended to serve, and calls for more participation by local people in the design, implementation and monitoring of aid programmes.

She argues that all emergency assistance should specifically address the health needs of children. Emergency health teams should always include paediatric care and ensure access to reproductive health care for adolescents. When it comes to psychosocial care, the report emphasizes the importance of building on community resources - helping close family members, as well as schoolteachers and other community workers, to provide children with long-term support.

Education also can afford children a sense of security and continuity, and Mrs. Machel argues that schools should be kept open as long as feasible and that informal classes should be established as soon as possible in camps for refugees and internally displaced persons. Schooling should be flexible, with lessons held in the safest place at the safest time. Lessons can be held in caves or under trees, for example. Humanitarian assistance should include such flexible approaches to education.

Keeping children in class is particularly important for adolescents who are at risk of being recruited into armed forces, prostitution or drug abuse. The report indicates that one of the best ways to protect older children is to involve them actively in community activities, including their own personal development programmes.

A call to action

In the long term, Graca Machel reports, the international community must do all it can to prevent the outbreak of fighting by addressing the socio-economic roots of conflict and banning arms shipments to conflict zones. She also insists that all actions to resolve conflicts and implement peace agreements, including such actions mandated by the United Nations Security Council and the General Assembly, should focus strongly on the needs of children and women.

In the meantime, however, everything must be done to protect children caught up in armed struggles. Everyone has a responsibility to report abuses of the rights of children and must take urgent measures to protect them, Mrs. Machel says. "Above all else, the present report is a call to action. It is unconscionable that we so clearly and consistently see children's rights attacked, and that we fail to defend them. It is unforgivable that children are assaulted, violated, murdered and yet our conscience is not revolted nor our sense of dignity challenged."

The report calls for the appointment of a Special Representative of the Secretary-General to assess the implementation of the report's recommendations and to keep children's concerns high on the international agenda. "Let us take this opportunity to recapture our instinct to nourish and protect children. Let us transform our moral outrage into concrete action. ... Peace is every child's right."

General Assembly Acts Swiftly

On the basis of the Graca Machel report, the General Assembly on 12 December recommended that the Secretary-General appoint a Special Representative on the impact of armed conflict on children, and ensure necessary resources for the mandate.

The broad-ranging seven-part text, adopted without a vote, includes a call for parties to armed conflicts to recognize the particular vulnerability of refugee and internally displaced children to recruitment into armed forces, sexual violence, exploitation and abuse, and to enhance protection and assistance mechanisms. It would also call on both States and United Nations bodies to: protect both their safety and their developmental needs, including health, education and psycho-social rehabilitation; ensure the early identification and registration of unaccompanied refugee and internally displaced children; and give priority to programmes for family tracing and reunification.

On other child-related issues, the resolution urges action to deal with the sexual exploitation of children and the persistence of child labour.

Child soldiers - like thousands of children put to work for government and rebel armies - have lived through unspeakable horrors of the civil war that tore Angola apart for 20 years. S. was only 11 when he joined the rebel army in 1987. He says he was thrown directly into combat, quickly equipped with a uniform, boots and an AK-47 gun. He took part in many battles. "Both my brothers were killed in the war - they were shot", S. related. While he refuses to say whether he killed anyone during the war, a friend, N., is more willing to discuss the subject: "I killed five people", he says. "They were all soldiers. It was self-defence."

The name of one 18-year-old former soldier is M. He was only 12 when he found himself abducted into the rebel army in the midst of a brutal civil war in Mozambique - just one of an estimated 10,000 boys conscripted or kidnapped by combatants during the 16-year conflict that ended in 1992. Even now, the teenager looks more like a boy scout than the former soldier who carried an AK-47 weapon for five years.

He was abducted on Christmas eve. At about 6:00 p.m., as his father and several of his brothers and sisters were visiting family members in a neighbouring village, soldiers from the rebel army attacked and forced M., his mother and his brother J., then only four, on a gruelling march. His mother and brother managed to escape, but M. made it to the base where he was handed his rifle. "The soldier just told me, 'You shoot like this'", M. said, giving a demonstration of his first encounter with a gun. "The rest you learn as you go along." He added: "I didn't want to kill anyone, but if I didn't shoot, I would have been shot."

Two years later, M. was in fact shot - in the leg. Left unable to walk for several years, he still limps. Today, safe at home, he remains haunted by memories. "I kept dreaming that soldiers were coming to my house and shooting. They were coming to kidnap me again." For comfort, he will sleep near one of his brothers. Confused about what he was supposed to fight for, and devastated by separation from his parents, M. represents a tragic example of one of the most shocking trends today in armed conflict - the participation of children as soldiers.

RELATED ARTICLE: Ten Recommendations

The Machel report sets out 10 recommendations for the protection of children during armed conflict. While it has concentrated on what Is practical and what is possible, It notes that this cannot be enough. "In considering the future of children, we must be daring. We must look beyond what seems immediately possible and find new ways and new solutions to shield children from the consequences of war and to directly address the conflicts themselves."

1 The needs of children and women must be at the heart of all actions to resolve conflicts and implement peace agreements.

2 Children in armed-conflict situations must be treated as a priority concern in all monitoring and reporting activities by United Nations field personnel and those of other responsible organizations.

3 Health, psychosocial well-being and education should be the pillars of all humanitarian assistance for children in emergencies.

4 Educational, training and health-care needs of adolescents should be given priority attention to assist their well-being and to discourage their participation in armed conflict, trafficking, prostitution and drug abuse.

5 All incidents of wartime rape and other sexual torture must be prosecuted as war crimes.

6 In each emergency, a lead organization should be assigned overall responsibility for the protection and assistance of internally displaced persons, with UNICEF providing leadership for the protection and assistance of internally displaced and unaccompanied children.

7 A global campaign should be launched to stop the recruitment of children under age 18 into armed forces, and the draft Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child raising the age of recruitment and participation in armed forces to 18 years should be speedily concluded.

8 A complete ban on the use, production, trade and stockpiling of land-mines should be supported, as should child-centred rehabilitation programmes and educational programmes about the dangers of mines.

9 The international community should closely monitor arms transfers and impose a total ban on arms shipments to conflict zones.

10 A Special Representative of the Secretary-General should be named to ensure that issues of children and war are kept high on international human rights, peace, security and development agendas.