A new report estimates that there are hundreds of thousands of children in organised armed violence worldwide.

Neither War nor Peace is the first international study on children in armed groups in countries that are not involved in conflict. It reveals that:

• armed groups recruiting children have become more violent since the 1980s, due to growing involvement in the illicit drug trade, increased access to guns and due to persistent and often violent state repression
• children joining are getting younger - most of the children interviewed in this report were armed and full group members by the age of 14
• children are openly armed in parts of Brazil, Colombia, Nigeria and the Philippines, patrolling group territories
• members of the state security forces are directly involved with armed groups employing children in 8 of the 10 countries studied, and in Jamaica, Nigeria and the Philippines, local government is directly involved with those groups

Produced by the Children in Organised Armed Violence (COAV) programme, (an IANSA member) the report interviewed 120 armed children and youths in 10 countries worldwide: Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Jamaica, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, the Philippines, South Africa and the USA. The groups included ethnic militia, drug factions, youth street gangs and vigilante groups.

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