We want to find peaceful solutions but we have to prepare ourselves to fight. The ills of the government remain the very basic reasons. In Mindanao, it may be because of the all-out war which has caused so many hundreds of thousands to suffer. After the MILF offensive some 726,397 people have been displaced with many sick and hungry. Another 87,000 residents are experiencing the same in Sulu.
Child soldiers are by no means restricted to the conflict in Mindanao.
They are being butchered in the battlefields and ordered to kill mercilessly their relatives and neighbors by equally merciless adults. In April's international conference on child soldiers in Kathmandu, Nepal, Rory Mungoven, director of the Coalition on the Prevention of Child Soldiers bared that there are more than 300,000 children fighting men's wars in 40 countries worldwide. But almost every month, as armed conflicts spark in almost all corners of the globe, especially in Africa, the number is increasing. The Coalition's estimates did not take into account the Mindanao conflict. The number of child soldiers in Asia, excluding the Mindanao conflict, is believed to be 80,000.