Girl soldiers
girls associated with armed forces or groups
Girl soldiers, also referred to as female child soldiers, girls in fighting forces or girls associated with an armed force or armed group (GAAFAG), have been recruited by armed forces and groups in the majority of conflicts in which child soldiers are used. A wide range of rough estimates of their percentage among child soldiers is reported in literature, but scarcity of high-quality data poses problems for establishing their numbers.
Many girl soldiers are abduction victims or forcibly recruited by armed groups and forces, while others join armed groups and forces for a variety of reasons ranging from survival and escape from poverty or domestic violence to ideological. They face high rates of sexual violence, sexual slavery and forced marriage. Although commonly depicted as exclusively used in combat service support and sexual roles, many are trained for and take direct part in hostilities, including in some cases as suicide bombers. While more frequently found in non-governmental groups, they have also been recruited by governmental forces.
In comparison to male child soldiers, female child soldiers are less studied, receive less media attention, receive less support during reintegration, have low rates of participation in disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programs, and face a number of additional health, psychosocial and socio-economic effects.
Definition
Article 2.1 of the 2007 Paris Principles defines children associated with an armed force or armed group as:
any person below 18 years of age who is or who has been recruited or used by an armed force or armed group in any capacity, including but not limited to children, boys and girls, used as fighters, cooks, porters, messengers, spies or for sexual purposes. It does not only refer to a child who is taking or has taken a direct part in hostilities.
Research
Female child soldiers are paid less attention in scholarship and policy than male child soldiers, receive very limited media attention, are at risk of invisibility, and are marginalized both during conflict and in post-conflict rehabilitation and reintegration strategies.
The public source identifies “Girl soldiers” as girls associated with armed forces or groups. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Girl, soldiers and girls.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Girl soldiers”, the useful work is to connect “girls associated with armed forces or groups” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q124571858. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2007.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Girl soldiers” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.