When we think of child soldiers, we often imagine ragtag children strapped with AK-47 somewhere in the jungles of Africa or the deserts of the Middle East. Those images defined my own childhood. I was once a boy soldier, coerced, manipulated and disposed by warlords. I know what it means to have your childhood stolen and to feel the weight of violence before understanding its moral cost.
Today a new generation of children is being drawn into warfare in a different way. Not through the barrel of a gun, but through the glow of a screen.
The Russian war on Ukraine has introduced unprecedented levels of technological innovation in modern warfare, and at its heart are minors that are being prepared for future combat roles under the guise of education, patriotism or fascination with technology. Across both countries, children as young as 10 years old are being trained in drone operations, mapping, reconnaissance, hacking and battlefield surveillance.
In Ukraine, wartime necessity has spurred programs encouraging children to contribute their skills to the defence effort, sometimes by operating surveillance drones, coding or assisting in cyber defence. In some cases, they are directly guided by adult soldiers in operating small drones to drop explosives on the enemy.
In Russia, Youth Army programs now integrate tactical discipline with drone technology training, combining patriotic education with practical military training. Most of these children may never step onto the battlefield, yet their actions can be lethal and because of that distance, the fact that they cannot see the sufferings of those they harm, other than the mission’s success, empathy disappears and violence becomes mechanical, even entertaining.
This shift represents the birth of digital child soldiers, a new form of teen militarisation that existing child protection frameworks are ill equipped to handle.
Non-state armed groups from Al Shabaab, to Boko Haram, ISIS and beyond are watching. These groups have long recognised the tactical advantage of children. They are easily influenced, inexpensive to train and psychologically malleable.
But what the Russia-Ukraine war teaches these groups is far more potent: that child soldiers no longer need to be physically present to fight. Armed groups can now exploit the same digital infrastructures to radicalize, train and deploy children remotely. The threshold of recruitment has never been lower and the tools, smartphones, gaming apps, encrypted platforms are already in children’s hands.
A teenager in the Unites States, Europe, Africa, or the Middle East could be recruited to fly drones, hack systems, or disseminate propaganda from a bedroom, making indoctrination easier, faster, and harder to detect. This exposes children to new forms of exploitation and states to new security threats as militant and extremist groups can now cause cyberattacks or domestic destabilisation using digitally radicalised youth from thousands of miles away.
Whether in Nigeria, Yemen or Europe, a child can now be coached online to operate drones, breach communications or amplify extremist ideology without ever entering a battlefield
The implications of this emerging pattern are not just dangerous; they are far reaching. For instance, in contrast to the Syrian war model of mobilisation, where armed groups urged radicalised youths to abandon their lives and travel overseas to fight, these groups can now train, direct, and weaponise them exactly where they are.
This mean that, rather than merely encouraging Western adolescents to tear up their passports, extremist organisations can now instruct them to deploy their technological skills against their home and host countries by flying reconnaissance drones, or striking high value targets without ever crossing a border.
Isolated or bullied adolescents in technologically advanced societies are prime targets for online grooming and manipulation.
Similarly, armed groups in poorer or conflict affected countries, can now expand their pool of vulnerable children. In particular, school children who can read, navigate games and smart phone settings, or handle basic software may be abducted not for physical combat, but for their digital competence and coerced into operating drones or surveillance devices against their own governments.
Children can still be gathered physically by armed groups and used in traditional ways, abducted into training camps, forced into frontline roles, or manipulated into suicide attacks. This means that digital recruitment will often compliment rather than replaces on the ground exploitation. The combined effect is that children can now be used as both suicide attackers and as remote robotic killers controlled via technology, increasing the lethality and reach of armed groups.
In all of this, the problem is not children’s willingness, but their vulnerability, and the Russia-Ukraine war is demonstrating in real time how easily young people can be recast as remote operators in a borderless, digitally mediated battlefield.
Our global child protection frameworks, including the Paris Principles of 2007 and the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict were designed for an analogue era of physical child soldiering. They focus on recruitment, abduction and demobilisation, but do not account for digital militarisation where children can be recruited through algorithms or called upon by their governments to contribute their technical skills to a war effort.
This gap does not only leave children unprotected; it desensitises them to violence. Even so, international humanitarian law remains largely silent on whether such digitally involved children qualify as combatants. Additionally, the current disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) systems were built for traditional combatants and are ill equipped to rehabilitate children who have been radicalized, trained and digitally weaponized. In the absence of updated frameworks, armed groups gain a strategic advantage. They can exploit children without technically violating existing definitions or rules.
The international community must urgently adapt its protection mechanisms to this emerging threat.
Three steps to protect children are essential:
Expand the definition of child soldiers: The existing legal and policy frameworks must evolve to recognise digital participation in hostilities. Children recruited through digital platforms or used as drone operators to detonate explosives, engage in online propaganda, intelligence gathering, or trained remotely through gaming, coding and virtual simulations, should receive the same protections as those carrying weapons. Most importantly, international institutions with child focused mandates, including the United Nations, UNICEF and relevant human rights bodies, must be central to this reform. They should provide guidance, resources and monitoring frameworks to help states and humanitarian actors address hybrid threats that blend digital and physical exploitation of children. Such monitoring mechanisms must also ensure that these children receive appropriate rehabilitation and reintegration support.
Integrate child online safety into security, peace and education policies: Digital literacy and child online protection must become core components of school curricula, equipping children to recognise and resist online recruitment and manipulation. Ministries of education and defence, especially in conflict affected countries, must coordinate to detect and prevent the digital militarisation of youth.
Governments and technology companies should work together to monitor how children are targeted, recruited and militarised in online spaces. Prevention must focus on awareness and resilience. In both the Global North and South, vulnerable children, those who are isolated, bullied or highly exposed online; are at increased risk of radicalization. Schools and communities must therefore teach practical digital literacy, including how armed and extremist groups operate, manipulate and recruit online.
Monitor and strengthen international accountability for all actors exploiting children digitally: Whether state or non-state, any entity that exposes children to the moral burden of digital warfare must face international scrutiny. State, in particular, cannot justify the militarisation of childhood, whether through rifles or remote controls under the guise of patriotism or national defence. The political and military leadership responsible for such recruitment must be held accountable.
The Russian aggression in Ukraine has revealed how necessity, ideology and nationalism can breed indoctrination. It has also shown that the child soldier of tomorrow may not carry a gun, but sit behind a screen executing commands they cannot morally comprehend. The next wave of non-state armed groups will not ignore this lesson. They will perfect it.
Dr. Charles Kings Wratto is Director at the Center for Peace and Violence Prevention (CPVP).
Dr. Charles Kings Wratto is Director at the Center for Peace and Violence Prevention (CPVP).