One in five countries has used girls as child soldiers, and 100,000 are currently fighting in conflicts around the world, a new report by Plan UK shows.
And in many conflicts girls can find themselves forced from their homes, caring for younger brothers or sisters or at risk from rape, beatings and abduction.
These shocking revelations are included in Plan UK’s annual Because I Am Girl report launched on Thursday May 15, which focuses this year on girls in war and other forms of conflict.
Plan is now calling on the United Nations to allow girls to bring complaints against their leaders if their lives have been damaged by war.
Human rights activist Cherie Booth QC said: "Plan’s new report highlights the suffering of young women and girls caught up in the world’s most brutal conflicts.
"The stories and statistics highlighted in the study make shocking reading, as do the personal testimonies from survivors of rape and other forms of abuse used as instruments of war.
"The report is a cry for help but also a call for action. These young women are looking to the international community for protection and justice - and we must not let them down.
We must work together to put the right legal frameworks in place to ensure their attackers can be brought to justice and to make sure that the rights of girls and women are high on the agenda when countries are rebuilt after conflict."
Figures in the report reveal:
38 countries have used girl soldiers in armed conflict in the last two decades
200 million girls live in countries that are at risk of, in the midst of or emerging from armed conflict
90 per cent of victims of modern warfare are civilian with more and more women and children
About 20 million girls are out of school in war zones
Girls also fare badly after the fighting stops as discrimination makes it far more difficult for them to get back into school or find jobs. The knock-on effect of this not only means a girl’s life chances are severely limited, but that the economic future of the country is also severely handicapped.
The report also stresses the need for the protection of girls’ rights, their involvement in decision-making and the post-conflict reconciliation in failed countries.
Girls like Christiana, from Makeni, northern Sierra Leone who was just 14 years old when captured by rebels in 1998.
"I was a virgin and one of the rebels raped me," she says. "I was then kept as a sex slave for three years."
A decade on, and Christiana now campaigns on behalf of rape victims. "I think that fighting for the rights of girls is very important.
"It has helped young women like me who have been badly treated to develop pride in themselves."
