11 The Use and Abuse of Children/ Youth in Terrorism and Suicide Bombing Edna Erez and Anat Berko In a recent Cable News Network (CNN) interview, Mia Bloom noted that “women and children are the new face of terrorism” (Bloom, 2012; see also Gray & Machin, 2008; Israeli, 2003). The use of children and youth (minors, persons under 18 years of age, hereafter children 1 ) in terrorism has been documented in numerous conflict zones around the world. In the recent past, children have participated in insurgencies and wars, in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Congo, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Myanmar, and in terrorist opera- tions in conflict zones such as Turkey, Iraq, Israel, and the Palestinian territories. They have served as camouflaged guerrillas, uniformed soldiers, warriors (Peters, 2005), and more recently as suicide bombers. According to Singer (2005a), there are about 300,000 children combatants (both boys and girls) under the age of 18, fighting in almost three quarters of the world’s conflicts (see also BBC, 2012). The overwhelming majority (80 percent) of these conflicts include fighters who are children under the age of 15. Despite the UN convention prohibition against the use of persons less than 18 years of age in armed conflicts (see UNICEF [2012], Convention of the Rights of the Child), many government forces, paramilitary organizations, rebel groups, and terrorist organiza- tions continue to recruit and employ children in military or terror- ist activities. This chapter reviews the ways in which children and youth are used and abused in military context and terrorism, with a focus on 1 A common distinction is to refer to persons under 14-year old as children and from 14 to 18 as youth. We use children to address all persons under 18. 213 SUCIDIE.indb 213 SUCIDIE.indb 213 14-08-2014 13:56:34 14-08-2014 13:56:34 Understanding Suicide Terrorism : Psychosocial Dynamics, edited by Updesh Kumar, and Manas K. Mandal, SAGE Publications India Pvt, Ltd., 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/du/detail.action?docID=1831042. Created from du on 2022-11-07 17:36:20. Copyright © 2019. SAGE Publications India Pvt, Ltd.. All rights reserved.