Sierra Leone's child soldier project at risk

[dArKeR]

Flagging support from international donors is threatening efforts to return thousands of West African child soldiers to civilian life, UNICEF said on Tuesday.

The United Nations children's agency said that unless it receives $1,4-million immediately it will be forced to halt an education programme that is helping 7 000 former fighters in Sierra Leone.

UNICEF chief Carol Bellamy said that ending the program would mean "breaking the promise of peace for these children".

Sierra Leone's child soldiers - the youngest of whom is only six years old - left the battlefields when combatants in the country's savage civil war started turning in their guns in 2001 after almost a decade of conflict.

Released into the care of aid agencies, most spent months at centres designed to ease their way back into civilian life and are now reunited with relatives.

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