Disarm Liberia's child soldiers

Community Action, Feb 16, 2004

NEW YORK -- Liberia's fragile peace will not hold unless it disarms and rehabilitates its 15,000 child soldiers, says Human Rights Watch.

How to Fight, How to Kill: Child Soldiers in Liberia documents how both government and rebel militias abducted children as young as 9, beat them, gave them little training and sent them to the front lines in units that were often made up entirely of children.

"Much of the Liberian civil war consisted of children shooting and killing other children," said Tony Tate, an Africa researcher in the Children's Rights Division at Human Rights Watch.