page_title: Children in the military
section_title: Europe
hierarchical_section_title: Children in the military / Children in the military today—by region and country / Europe
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Replica in bronzo del marmo L'audace Righetto di Giovanni Strazza (1818-1875) [1851].
context_page_description: Children in the military are children who are associated with military organisations, such as state armed forces and non-state armed groups. Throughout history and in many cultures, children have been involved in military campaigns. For example, thousands of children participated on all sides of the First World War and the Second World War. Children may be trained and used for combat, assigned to support roles such as porters or messengers, or used for tactical advantage as human shields or for political advantage in propaganda.
  Children are easy targets for military recruitment due to their greater susceptibility to influence compared to adults. Some are recruited by force while others choose to join up, often to escape poverty or because they expect military life to offer a rite of passage to maturity.
  Child recruits who survive armed conflict frequently suffer psychiatric illness, poor literacy and numeracy, and behavioral problems such as heightened aggression, leading to a high risk of poverty and unemployment in adulthood.
context_section_description: According to Child Soldiers International the trend in Europe has been towards recruiting only adults from age 18; most states only allow adult recruitment, and as of 2016 no armed groups were known to be using children. As of 2018 one country, the United Kingdom, was enlisting children from age 16, and five were enlisting from age 17 (Austria, Cyprus, France, Germany, and Netherlands). Of these, the UK recruits children in the greatest numbers; in 2016, approximately a quarter of new recruits to the British army were aged under 18.
  All European states have ratified the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, and so child recruits are not typically used in hostilities until they reach adulthood. Children were used as combatants in the First Chechen War during the 1990s.
caption: The brave Righetto (1851). Replica of the Giovanni Strazza statue in the lobby of the grand staircase in Palazzo Litta. It portrays a 12-year-old child who died with his dog in 1849 while trying to stop a bomb during the defence of the Roman Republic in 1849.
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