http://www.un.org/webcast/ga/60/statements/iran050917eng.pdf Terrorism intentionally creates insecurity and fear.

It deliberately ruins the social fabric of a society by ignoring the common laws of humanitythen many of those with education or financial means flee, and those who remain try to live amid the violence and downward economic spiral. Families are destroyed and children are robbed of their innocence. The losses they experience are material, social, and emotional. Having grown up amid violence, the young boys I came to know in the camp were more familiar with Kalishnikovs and APC guns than they were with their alphabet. They spoke about the fear they feltat night when they could not sleep because of bomb blasts and gunfire, about being injured when outside of their home in the daytime, and about being forcibly recruited into or confronted by a local militia. When a generation grows up under this kind of violence and fear, it is deprived of an education and knowledge of its true culture. Young children are forced to fend for themselves on the streetsoften sent out to scavenge for food or to work at dangerous jobs for money. They are treated as adults and not as children. This is one of the successes of the perpetrators of random violence: They create an environment where children cannot behave as children but, instead, are forced to take on adult responsibilities. Most of the young boys I spoke with had never spent much time with their fathers or older brothers because they, the adult males, had either been killed or were away from home for a long time. These young boys were essentially, then, the men about the house, handed the responsibility of providing for and protecting the women of the family. They had to learn how to use a gun at the age of six or seven and, by the time they were 14 or 15, were ready to go off to fight themselves. This is how terrorists ensure having a steady supply of recruitscreating an unworkable society, then offering an alternative oneone which they, of course, control with violence, intimidation, and manipulation. They make use of disasters, both natural ones and those they created, by offering aid to those in need, but with very tangled strings attached. Children are the perfect recruits for terrorists because they do not have the ability to question adult motives, are easily swayed by appeals to their emotions, and can be readily convinced to undertake whatever job is asked of them. Contrary to what the West may think, terrorists are becoming more successful in their recruitment of young Muslim men and, even more troubling, young women to their cause. One of the biggest reasons for this victory is their success in keeping much of the Islamic world poorly educated and closed to new ideas.]\ It is estimated that more than 50 percent of the worlds Muslim population is under the age of 18, which is a terrifying demographic, especially since most of

these young people have little or no access to education and employment. They are frustrated by the corrupt governments that rule them. They see double standards played out by the West, which insists on democracy in Iraq, but not elsewhere in the region. They are aware that Islam was once the foundation of a great culture, and they wonder what has happened because their generation has experienced only poverty, war and destruction, corruption, and nepotism. Somehow, this problem must be turned to an advantage: These young people, if properly educated and given opportunity, could instead be the engine of change and economic progress. True Islam encourages Muslims to adapt to changing times, but extreme fundamentalists have always opposed anything new, from the telegraph to television. They oppose modern education because they say that it teaches topics that are not in harmony with Islam. Educated Muslims know that this is a ploy to prevent young, active minds from challenging them. It becomes a vicious cycle: By deliberately depriving young Muslims from receiving a good education, the fundamentalists ensure that the future of their potential recruits is bleak and the resulting frustrations make them easily susceptible to terrorist ideology. That ideology requires them to violently reject any ideas that challenge fundamentalist precepts and prevents their learning the importance of freedom of thought and speech that separate logical ideas from emotional biases, the very thing on which the vibrant societies that most people want for their children can be built.

During the decades of war in Iraq, the images of suffering children have become commonplace. Experts estimate the under-5 mortality rate to be 130 deaths per every 1,000 live births. Moreover, the effects of years of sanctions are well known as an estimated 22 percent of Iraqi children under 5 years old suffer from moderate and severe forms of malnutrition. But the 11 million children under 18 (nearly fifty percent of the Iraqi population) are not only suffering the effects of war from sanctions and landmine injuries. Many children are also directly involved in the ongoing fighting in Iraq. Existing Iraqi law perpetuates the use of children as soldiers, as it has for many years. Children are believed to have been used during the 1991 Gulf War and the Iran-Iraq War. Current Iraqi law allows voluntary recruits at age 15, and during war allows conscription of those younger than age 18. Currently, approximately 1,000 children are believed to be in the official Iraqi government armed forces. However, Iraq doesnt just rely on traditional recruits or conscripts to fill its military ranks. For decades Iraq has developed several military training programs to prepare youths for war and militarize Iraqi society and culture. Both boys and girls participate in these military programs, some as young as 10. Some of the best known of these programs include: Raad and Al Anfal, which have trained

over 23,000 children, and Saddam Cubs, military training camps for 8,000 Iraqi children. In these three-week programs for children aged 10 to 15, children are trained to rappel from helicopters, take part in hand-to-hand combat, infantry tactics, and small arms use. Some of these programs are known to last up to 14 hours a day, and according to the State Departments Human Rights Report on Iraq, families that refused to enroll their children in these programs were threatened with the loss of their food ration cards. In other cases, the State Department reported that children were denied school examination results if they hadnt registered in one particular program, the Fedyayeen Saddam (Saddams Martyrs). This particular unit is reported to be made up entirely of children and contains between 18,000 and 40,000 troops. These children report to the Presidential Palace (not the government army) and undertake patrolling and anti-smuggling responsibilities. The one international treaty protecting children under the age of 18 from use as soldiers, the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, has not been signed by Iraq. Indeed, Iraq has taken no steps towards preventing the use of children in its military, or cutting back on military training programs for young children. Armed opposition groups within Iraq are also known to use child soldiers. In 1998, the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) was believed to have 3,000 child soldiers in its forces, more than 10 percent of which were girls. Reports indicate that the PKK has used children since 1994 and even developed a childrens battalion named Tabura Zaroken Sehit Agit. A child as young as seven was reported in the PKKs ranks. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), another Iraqi opposition group is also believed to use children as soldiers. Reports have indicated children as young as 10 serving within the PUKs ranks. As the United States sends more troops to the region and plans for a possible ground invasion, occupation, or other kind of operation, the fact that Iraq has thousands of military trained children should not be taken lightly or ignored completely. U.S. military forces may come into contact with child soldiers in the course of military operations in Iraq, as the number of children in the Iraqi military and opposition groups will increase during times of active fighting. The U.S. military needs to provide training to its soldiers before deploying to Iraq to help troops prepare for the reality of facing children in combat. The first U.S. casualty in Afghanistan was reportedly due to the gunfire of a 14-year-old child. The U.S. military would be well served to address the likelihood of direct

combat with children before troops are deployed to avoid the shock and horror of seeing armed children renders U.S. troops defenseless.
The exploitation of children by terrorist groups has been paid little attention on the global front. A modern legacy of the child-spy networks created throughout the World Wars and the Cold War, organizations from Al-Qaeda to the Tamil Tigers are actively recruiting children to carry out terrorist attacks. Often enlisted against their own will, these little angels of death are not only brainwashed to take pride in their cause, but are also trained in espionage, gunmanship, kidnappings, arson, bombings, and in some cases, suicide missions. Such insurgent tactics have become more prevalent in the last five years, with devastating consequences for the children that are exploited. Typically aged between 12 and 18 years old, these children are paid if not coerced into violent terrorist activity. Unsuspecting, undemanding, observant and easily replaceable, children are the perfect agents for operations which require ruthless efficiency and minimal risks. Furthermore, the exploited children are hard to track and therefore hard to help. Often no longer in school and lacking access to the most basic services and resources, these children also lack any form of refuge, especially if encouraged by their parents to participate for the sake of income or family status. Aside from the physical risks, the psychological manifestations are severe, and the children are often left traumatized and brainwashed if not killed as a result of their assigned operations. The recruitment of children by terrorist organizations is an intolerable form of child exploitation and an insidious social disease. This practice exploits the poverty of the children and their families while destroying the very children who have the potential to improve the impoverished state of their society. Thus, this crisis can only be fully solved if the respective societies are no longer fertile ground for terrorist organizations to flourish. How then can local governments and international authorities intervene? Particularly in developing regions where families can benefit from selling their young children without consequence (ex: China, South Asia and the Middle East), how can parents be monitored or disincentivized from sourcing this abusive trade? How do orphanages play a role in sourcing this practice, and how can they be alerted of the false identity of foster parents? Finally, what system can UNICEF offer for the children, who have no one but death to turn to if they refuse to become a terrorist?

WHAT is needed
1. a good education system- most of these problems because of the illiteracy of the parents and of the children. The children should be provided with discrimination and stereotype free education to become ideal citizens If we stick to something close to
that ratio of targeted killings to targeted kindergartens, we have a chance to prevent Yemen from becoming an al-Qaeda breeding ground. Because right now there are some 300,000 college-educated Yemenis out of work partly because of poor training and partly because there are no jobs 15,000 schoolchildren not attending any classes, 65 per cent of teachers with only high school degrees and thousands of children learning little more than religious doctrines.

2. providing job security so that ppl are not attracted towards offers from terrorist org.what has been done in my country is

ppl have been employed in the dvlpmntl projects and r paid acc to their work. 3. terrorism must be fought and terrorist org should be bannedthis can only be achieved if countries affected come together and united stand against it. Terrorists must not be given solace in any country and must be hunted down. 4. use of technology-Urban terror cannot be fought without cutting edge technology like dedicated satellites, CCTV, real time total connectivity between intelligence and responders, metal detectors, snooping devices, listening posts, network of informers and command and control rooms. Fast dispersal and deployment of Bomb squads need heli-support which must be positioned in all metros without delay. 5. orphanages in such areas should be nationalized. the example of Malawi where living in orphanages is better than living outside shows us hw to give kids hu have lost their parents a chance to face the world rather than simply handing them over to foster parents who sell them to the

WHAT UN CAN DO

i. PROVIDE FINANCIAL aid to countries handicapped by terrorism ii. Provide technological and dvlpmntl help to countries s that they can have means to fight terrorism. iii. Encourage global communities to contribute something to educate children in iraq and my neighbouring countries. If we stick to something close to that ratio of targeted killings to targeted kindergartens, we have a chance to prevent Iraq from becoming an al-Qaeda breeding ground. Because right now there are some 300,000 college-educated Iraqis out of work partly because of poor training and partly because there are no jobs 15,000 schoolchildren not attending any classes, 65 per cent of teachers with only high school degrees and thousands of children learning little more than religious doctrines.