did you know...?

• There are more than 30 wars raging around the world right now.
• In the past 10 years, more than 2 million children have died, 12 million have been forced from their homes, 5 million have been disabled, and millions of others have been psychologically scarred by war.
• Over 90% of the casualties of modern warfare are civilians and more people have died because of the war in the 20th century than in the entire history of world.
• There are over 300,000 soldiers in the world who can be classified as child soldiers. The three top offending nations for the use of illegal soldiers are Columbia, the Thai-Burmese border and Northern Uganda. In the case of Northern Uganda, 90% of rebel forces are under the age of 15.
• In 2002 alone, the world spent $800 billion on the global war machine. Compare that figure to the fact that in 2000 the United Nations estimated that it would cost a mere $45 bullion a year to:
• Reduce world hunger and poverty by half
• Reduce the number of child deaths by 2/3
• Completely stop the spread of AIDS and other communicable diseases, and
  
• Send every single child in the world to school.
• The G-8 nations (the wealthiest countries in the world) manufacture 75% of the world's weapons and 70% of those weapons are bought by the world's poorest nations.
• Nearly 1/3 of all wars are either directly or indirectly linked to the trade in natural resources.

*Information provided by War Child Canada