NEW YORK, May 21 (UPI) -- Recruitment of child soldiers hasn't stopped and the military-controlled Myanmar is the worst offender, the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers says.
The group in its 2008 Child Soldiers Global Report said, despite some progress, "efforts to end the recruitment and use of child soldiers are too little and too late for many children."
The report said the number of armed conflicts in which children are involved was down from 27 in 2004 to 17 in 2007. However, tens of thousands of children remain in the ranks of non-state armed groups in 24 countries.
Myanmar's armed forces, engaged in long-running counterinsurgency operations, has thousands of children, some as young as 11 years old, the report said. Children were also used by government forces in Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, and Yemen, the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers said.
In Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and the Palestinian territories, teenagers have been used in suicide attacks, the coalition's report said.
The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers claimed Palestinian children have been used as human shields by the Israeli army, while a few British under-18s were deployed in Iraq up to mid-2005.