PESHAWAR, March 23: Many children in the third world countries are being used in wars and people consider them heroes and, those who are killed, martyrs, lamented a Sri Lankan doctor here on Sunday at the concluding day of the 11th Paediatric Conference.

“In the course of such warfares through brainwashing, children are trained to shed their blood for a just and noble cause as their natural ability to coordinate senses with action makes them the most attractive and essentially unique choice for recruitment in wars,” said Dr De Silva while presenting his paper titled “Child soldiers perpetuate the vicious cycle of war and violence”.

He stated that it was easy to recruit children for warfares in an atmosphere where they was nothing but wars, killings, glorification of the people killed, trim uniforms, polished guns and poverty all around them.

Children were emotionally exploited to engage them in violent, destructive and anti-social activities, which made them unfit for normal social experience, the health professional said and added that exploiters assaulted verbally, bullied, blackmailed and even threatened the children with death.