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May 19, 2005
Côte d’Ivoire: Let the children live in peace
Since the beginning of the armed conflict in Côte d’Ivoire in September 2002, children are being recruited by both government armed forces and armed opposition groups. Forced to fight other people’s wars, these child soldiers, many of them refugees from Liberia, are brutalized and traumatized by their experiences.
Shortly after the conflict started an Amnesty International delegation met child soldiers in the north of the country. They were under the command of the Forces Nouvelles, an armed opposition group. As recently as February 2005, two boys (aged ten and eleven) apparently of Liberian origin, were rescued by the UN forces in Côte d’Ivoire. In April 2005, the UN mission in Liberia arrested a man who is accused of recruiting child soldiers in Liberia for the Ivorian government’s armed forces.
The government of Côte d’Ivoire and Forces Nouvelles have failed to genuinely engage with the disarmament, demobilization, rehabilitation and reintegration of child soldiers. It is time for them to act to give the children a chance for peace.
Take action!
Write to Guillaume Soro, Secretary General of the Forces Nouvelles, and Laurent Gbagbo, President of Côte d’Ivoire. For more information and to take action, visit:
http://web.amnesty.org/pages/civ-270405-action-eng
Posted by mwblog at May 19, 2005 08:43 AM
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