Unique Challenges for Adolescents

While young children have a higher incidence of mortality than adolescents,

there are many problems that youth experience at much higher rates than

younger children. Adolescents are more likely than young children to be

recruited into military service and to engage in armed conflict. There are more

than 300,000 child soldiers active in the world today (Singer, 2005). Children

who are separated from some or all of their family are more likely to be enlisted

into the army because of the support and protection it can provide. Faulkner

(2001) explains that this protection is often simply the lesser of two evils and the

resulting trauma is difficult to recover from.

However, given the exigencies of warfare, this role will be characterized by

violence, brutality, deprivation, death, sexual exploitation and callous

indifference to others. The end product is a person capable of gratuitous acts of

barbarity, often perpetrated with some enthusiasm, who is bereft of normal

character traits and who when peace or demobilization takes effect, is difficult to

rehabilitate to requirements of normal life. (p. 495)

Once children are removed from armed conflict, if given proper

treatment through psychosocial activities and educational development, they are

often able to reintegrate into the community and can contribute to the peacebuilding

process by utilizing their skills and knowledge and applying them to

civilian life (Kemper, 2005).

Because adolescents are out of school, and lack other educational

opportunities, they are often economically exploited and required to work in

dangerous conditions or forced into prostitution. Furthermore, adolescent girls

are more likely than younger children to be sexually abused or kidnapped for

sexual slavery, which in turn increases the likelihood of exposure to sexually

transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS. Potential contraction of the disease

is tragic, not only on an individual level, but also as an extremely destructive

force within the community as a whole (Lowicki, 2000).

Barriers to Access

Generally refugees are begrudgingly accepted into host countries where their

status is considered temporary until the situation stabilizes in their home

countries and they are able to return safely. For this reason host countries are

reluctant to provide services that are seen as non-essential. Because the CRC

defines basic education as a human right to which all children are entitled,

international agencies are able to exert pressure to provide these services,

specifically because nearly every country in the United Nations (UN) has ratified

the CRC. However, once a young person has progressed beyond basic primary

education, few opportunities exist for higher-level training. In 2000, only 3