Boys continue to be 'recruited' into 'military service'

Submitted by Matt on Fri, 2008-02-15 07:20

Story here. Excerpt:

'"In spite of the impressive progress, I regret to report that the overall situation of children affected by conflict remains grave and entirely unacceptable," Coomaraswamy said.

She urged the Security Council, charged with investigating the use of child soldiers, to expand its focus to other issues affecting youngsters, starting with systematic sexual violence.
...
The council expressed concern at "the widespread and systematic use of rape and other forms of sexual violence against children, in particular girls, in situations of armed conflict" and called on all parties to take special measures to protect girls and boys from sexual and gender-based violence.'

Why is the word "boys" mentioned just once in this article, and only in the cited paragraph above? Otherwise it's all "child" and "children".

And for 'recruit' read 'forced'; for 'military service' read 'slavery'.

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Comments

That's right. When you dig into these stories, you find the "child" soldiers are invariably boys. Not girls, boys. But you won't find the reporters using the dreaded B word. Until this abysmal sexist, dishonest reporting is exposed and stopped, the real problem - that boys are not valued but are regarded as mere expendable cannon-fodder because of their sex - will not be understood, let alone properly addressed.

Civilisation: man's greatest, and most unappreciated, gift to women

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Submitted by PaulP on Sat, 2008-02-16 08:34

(sarcasm)

God forbid we should help the *boys*...

(/sarcasm)

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Submitted by Vince on Sun, 2008-02-17 02:26