(The Washington Post) – My colleague Kevin Sieff wrote an important dispatch from Juba, the capital of South Sudan, on the country’s difficulties in demobilizing the many thousands of child soldiers drafted into the ranks of a number of feuding factions. The fledgling state is not alone, though. According to a State Department monitoring office, these are the countries identified as states where child soldiers are still used by fighting forces. In recent years, Burma, also known as Myanmar, has undergone important political reforms and staged elections this week that appeared to show the victory of the country’s main opposition, pro-democracy party. But its many years of repressive military rule have left a toxic legacy: the presence of child soldiers in the ranks of both the national army as well as a constellation of ethnic militias in various parts of the country. Hundreds have been freed in the past decade in the wake of international pressure.
