200,000 Children Under Arms Involuntarily, U.N. Report Says

The world’s armies include an estimated 200,000 children, with governments conscripting some and parents urging others to join to help the family, a report to a U.N. human rights meeting states.

The youths are subjected to physical brutality and are trained in pillaging, spying and terrorism, said the report for a working group of the U.N. Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, which is meeting here this week.

The report was compiled by the London-based Friends World Committee for Consultation, a Quaker organization. The U.N. panel’s parent body is the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

Children Urged to Enlist

Parents sometimes urge children to enlist to get food, priority in employment or payments if the child dies in battle, the report said.

Media reports and private research were the main sources cited in the report dated January, 1988.

According to the survey, examples of the problem included:

-- Illegal street round-ups in Afghanistan to recruit youths under 15.

-- Abduction of boys under the legal draft age of 18 by army recruiters in El Salvador.

-- Forced participation by minors in the Guatemalan army’s civil defense patrols.

-- Lowering of Iran’s conscription age to 13, with voluntary enlistment by parental consent for younger children.

-- Use of boys as young as 12 by Nicaragua’s Contras and forced recruitment of at least 3,000 youngsters by government forces.

-- Use of volunteers under the age of 15 in Honduras and Morocco.

The report did not include details about payment, veterans’ benefits or education for soldiers under 15. That is the minimum age of recruitment set out in the 1977 Protocols on International Humanitarian Law, an annex to the Geneva Conventions.