The National Union of Eritrean Youth and Students noted with great concern the phenomena we witnessed on the last three days of the involvement of young children in the army of Ethiopia. This is exposing children to suffer immensely as casualties of war. They have been forced to abandon their schools and homes, involved in fighting which is exposing them to dangers of death, hunger, fatal disability and homelessness; this in turn will hamper their growth and development. As we have confirmed from a number of war prisoners—Ethiopian children underage and school students, they were picked-up, "cheated as being taken to sport" and were conscripted by force.

We learned direct from the underage children in the Ethiopian Army (who were captured in the last days’ bloody war) that, when they told the Tigrean authorities that they are students and want to continue their study, they were told "It is not time to study." Some of them, even, were shot and wounded by their unit leaders when they refused to shoot and use the gun. Their trauma and intensive psychological pressure is still vivid on their faces.

Ethiopia, even though a signatory of the child rights convention, is following the policy of forcing underage school students to war. By so doing, Ethiopia is increasing the number of already existing 300,000 children participating in army combat worldwide.

We also noted this tragedy with great concern that this brutal child recruitment imposed by the Ethiopian regime is an act of undermining the letter and spirit of a world convention on the rights of the child. While the world is celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Ethiopia is violating Article 38 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child by deliberately bombing civilian villages and cities inside Eritrea targeting women and children.

This being the reality, will the world once again silently watch? Have we not learned from the Rwandan genocide? The world should not and must not wait until the rivers are clogged by corpses.

We in the National Union of Eritrean Youth and Students strongly condemn Ethiopia’s continued flagrant violation of human rights, mainly children’s rights. We call upon the Ethiopian Government to put an immediate end to the dispatch of school children to the war zone!

Hereby, we call upon the international community to condemn and accompany their condemnation with serious action against the Ethiopian violation of human rights and child rights protected by international law.

Let our youngsters grow up knowing peace and not conflicts!

Executive Committee