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Children sit with their rifles at a ceremony taking place in South Sudan on the issue of the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of child soldiers. The process was overseen by UNICEF and partners in February 2015. Samir Bol /Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
An armed Yemeni youth sits amid the rubble in December 2014, guarding the damaged house of the Iranian ambassador in the capital Sanaa. MOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images
A youngster in military uniform in the South Sudan Democratic Movement/Army in Jonglei state in March 2014. Despite the dominant image of these soldiers as young boys, it is estimated that globally as many as 40% are girls. Samir Bor/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
A young rebel fighter holds a weapon at the entrance of a house in the Syrian city of Aleppo in March 2013. Guillaume Briquet/AFP/Getty Images
Child soldiers from the United Wa State Army (UWSA) in the so-called southern Wa State in Myanmar. Thierry Falise/LightRocket/Getty Images
A young fighter from the Al-Shabaab militia shows his wounded hand after battling Somali government forces in Mogadishu in July 2009. MOHAMED DAHIR/AFP/Getty Images
A young boy fighting for the Lord's Resistance Army stands guard in South Sudan as LRA leader Joseph Kony meets with the Southern Sudan vice president in July 2006. Adam Pletts/Getty Images
A Liberian militia child loyal to the government walks away from firing on rebel forces across a key bridge while another taunts them in Monrovia in 2003. Chris Hondros/Getty Images
A child soldier is helped by another militiaman as he puts on the traditional chief's hyena skins in an undisclosed location near Bunia in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2003. MARCO LONGARI/AFP/Getty Images
A Chadian child soldier stands in front of a machine gun at De Roux camp in Bangui, Central African Republic, in 2003. DESIREY MINKOH/AFP/Getty Images
Two children enrolled with Sierra Leone troops battling rebels of the Revolutionary United Front get ready to fight east of the capital of Freetown in May 2000. JEAN-PHILIPPE KSIAZEK/AFP/Getty Images
A 12-year-old soldier in Kamerplaw, southern Myanmar, at the headquarters of God's Army, in 2001. God's Army was a breakaway guerrilla faction of the Christian Karen National Union. Thierry Falise/LightRocket/Getty Images
Child soldiers of the resistance Mong Tai Army during training with their commander in Myanmar in 2001. Thierry Falise/LightRocket/Getty Images
A child with a gun sits in a car with Rwandan Patriotic Front partisans patrolling the streets of Kigali, Rwanda, in June 1994. ABDELHAK SENNA/AFP/Getty Images
Young recruits are addressed by the head of the so-called Mong Thai Army in Burma in 1990. Peter Charlesworth/LightRocke/Getty Images
