Involving Children in Military Conflicts, Models and Methods of Recruitment (Ukrainian Experience)

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to study the involving children in military conflicts, models and methods of recruitment in conditions of armed conflict in Ukraine. The article opens the problem of recruitment childhood into illegal armed groups in conditions of armed conflict, the peculiarities of this process in the Ukrainian realities and international practice examples address the issue of prevention of involvement of children in hostilities. The methodological base of the article includes the results of sociological researches «Improvement of psychosocial support for children and families in the eastern and central regions of Ukraine» and «Sons of the Regiments», reports on the humanitarian situation UNICEF «Humanitarian Assistance in Donbass» and «Named the Number of Children Killed in Donbass». The problem of the protection of minors in conditions of armed conflict is of international importance and requires joint efforts of the inter-national community to find ways to solve it. Implementation of the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine provoked the emergence of complex social problems, which significantly increased the risks for children and their families who are in crisis by conducting military operations and occupation of their places of permanent residence. Their list includes: the emergence of child combatants and child soldiers, a sharp increase of children with disabilities and disadvantaged children fall in the birth rate.