Over the last decade, two million children have been killed in conflict situations and over one million made orphans. Over six million have been seriously injured or permanently disabled, and more than ten million have been left with grave psychological trauma. A large number of children, especially young females, have been made the targets of rape and other forms of sexual violence . At present there are more than 20 million children who have been displaced by war within and outside their countries. Some 300,000 young persons under the age of 18 are currently being exploited as child soldiers around the world. Approximately 800 hundred children are killed or maimed by land mines every month. The horrific situation attests to a new phenomenon. Almost all the major armed conflicts in the world today are civil wars and are protracted, losing years if not decades; they are characterized by widespread social breakdown and lawlessness, the proliferation of small arms and light weapons and the indiscriminate use of antipersonnel land mines. Most cynically, children have been compelled to become themselves the instruments of war, recruited or kidnapped to become child soldiers. In the intense and intimate setting of today's internecine wars, the village has become the battlefield and civilian populations the primary target.Today up to 90 percent of casualties in ongoing conflicts around the world are civilians, the vast majority of whom are children and women.
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