New Beginnings after Child Recruitment

Prioritizing Recovery and Reintegration.

For decades, conflict has been on the rise; more than 473 million children currently live in environments impacted by crisis. Conflict situations expose children to violence, either as witnesses or through direct experience. The year 2023 saw a 21% increase in grave violations against children.  The immediate impacts are easily imagined, long-term physical and mental health consequences. Additionally, each armed conflict exposes children to the risk of recruitment by armed groups. At the end of 2024, 8,655 children were reported as recruited by armed forces or groups globally.

Despite their association with armed forces, and groups, new data from the International Rescue Committee (IRC) country programs show that parents and community members believe that reintegration and recovery are possible. 95% of parents believe that children can recover if reintegrated back home and supported. IRC agrees, which is why IRC child protection programs provide prevention and response services to children and their caregivers, including those formerly associated with armed forces and groups.

The necessary financial and policy support for this work is limited, though. To date, 173 countries have signed the optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict (OPAC) to stop child recruitment and use, leaving 23 CRC signatories not signing on to OPAC. However, ratification does not mean implementation, and States need to fulfil their obligations to prevent the recruitment and use of children. Conditions, including economic hardship and violence in the home drive children to recruitment and must be addressed.

At the same time as we prevent recruitment, children who have been victims of recruitment must be supported to recover and reintegrate in their communities and to thrive. Child reintegration support  takes between 3 – 5 years, depending on each child’s individual needs, yet funding cycles are increasingly shorter and budgets increasingly reduced and forced to stretch. Child protection support, which includes reintegration efforts, is as low as between 2 - 40USD per child, showing just how stretched child protection budgets are, even for critical and impactful services.

These limited resources make it particularly challenging to provide specialized services that meet the needs of diverse children. For instance, an estimated 30% of recruited children are girls. While there has been increasing acknowledgment that it is not only boys recruited into armed groups – with 96% of parents in IRC’s data recognizing that child recruitment affects both boys and girls - children living with disabilities are consistently left out. Only 38% of parents recognize that children living with disabilities can be recruited. IRC works to raise awareness and knowledge, so that parents work with us to prevent recruitment and know where to go to receive reintegration services for all children.

Recruitment should never happen, full stop. On this day when we say “NO” to the recruitment of children, we must also ensure everyone understands that the release and reintegration of children from armed forces or groups is not only the end of a violation, but can be a new start, where healing, healthy growth, and nurturing care and relationships are possible.

On Red Hand Day and every day, the IRC reiterates our call to end the recruitment and use of children by armed forces and groups. We also request that children previously associated with armed groups and forces get the support they need to reintegrate into their families and communities so that recovery is possible over the long term.

Children – and their future selves – depend on it.

 About the IRC’s Child Protection Work

IRC’s Child Protection programs provide services that respond to child abuse cases and violence experienced by children at home and in their communities, providing care, support, and safe spaces to minimize the effects of violence and harm. We work to reunite children separated from their parents or to provide them with interim care while tracing parents. IRC Child Protection programs are implemented in 33 countries, helping to organize services, support and access to resources directly to children and supporting parents, caregivers, and government and community actors critical to support families in crises. In FY23 alone:

• 259,013 children directly received child protection services (such as case management, psychosocial support, support to adolescents etc.).
• 284,426 caregivers were supported to reduce violence via caregiver support programs or cash.
• 500,034 people were reached through child protection community-based programming and practitioner training.

The IRC works with children and their caregivers to prevent child recruitment and support caregivers in crisis to fulfill their parental responsibility. We advocate with States to sign on to Principles (such as the Vancouver Principles and Paris Principles) and conventions that promote the rights of children in all settings. For more IRC recommendations to combat the recruitment of children into armed groups and forces, please the "Combating the Recruitment and use of Children by Armed Groups and Child Detention" section of our Recommendations to the First ever Global Ministerial on Ending Violence against Children.