Tahaan – A Boy with a Grenade (Santosh Sivan’s tale of a boy growing up in a war-torn country), which recently opened at the London BFI Film Festival is a soft-hearted story of a poor boy who looses his pet donkey, and in trying to get him back stumbles upon some militants who get him to carry a grenade, thus stumbling into child-soldiery. Feeling that the film painted a bit of a rosey image, we decided to get together and find five of the worst countries in the world for child soldiery. Here’s what we found:

Sierra Leone:

Sierra Leone is one country where this problem has been particularly serious. Thousands of children have been recruited for armed labour and sexual exploitation in armed groups.

One group renowned for their use of child soldiery were the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) – a rebel army who fought a failed insurrection in Sierra Leone. At one point this group were said to have up to 23,000 child soldiers under their command.

Uganda:

The Lord's Resistance Army is a rebel group that have been engaged in war with the Ugandan government for the last two decades. They seek to install their own rule in accordance with the Ten Commandments. The UN have estimated that they have engaged over 25,000 underage troops, and other sources suggest that this is very conservative. One 15-year-old girl interviewed by Amnesty International was forced to kill a boy who tried to escape the LRA.

Burma:

Human Rights Watch believe that there may be more than 70,000 children in the Burmese army (Tatmadaw Kyi), some as young as eleven. After training, children were employed as checkpoint guards, cleaners, spies and frontline soldiers. Any attempts to leave the military have been met with beatings, imprisonment and even execution.

Yemen:

While battling the Faithful Youth resistance movement last year, the Yemeni military were reported to have armed children as young as 15 and sent them to battle with no training. The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers reports that "parents sometimes agreed to the recruitment...because of their poor economic situation".

Democratic Republic of Congo:

Though child recruitment was officially ceased in 2003, the Congolese armed forces, and other military groups continue to actively recruit underage combatants. Between 2003 and 2006, 30,000 children were identified and removed from military service.

Visit the The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers here and donate.