title: Oyster card

text: Passengers boarding a Thames Clippers riverbus service must tap their Oyster card on the reader situated on the pier before boarding. Thames Clippers operates a pay-before-boarding policy.


title: Oyster card

text: Oyster cards are accepted on the London Cable Car route between Greenwich Peninsula and Royal Docks. The cable car is outside of the London Travelcard validity. However, a 25% discount applies to Travelcard and Freedom Pass holders for both single and return journeys. The discount is automatically applied to Oyster card users, but only if their Travelcard is loaded onto their Oyster card. Freedom Pass holders and visitors in possession of ordinary magnetic stripe Travelcards have to buy a cash ticket if they wish to take advantage of the discount.


title: Oyster card

text: As with Underground and DLR journeys, Oyster PAYG users on National Rail must tap their card at the start and end of the journey to pay the correct fare. PAYG funds may also be used to cover any additional fares due from season ticket holders who have travelled outside the valid zones of their season ticket (see Travelcards above).


title: Oyster card

text: Many large National Rail stations in London have Oystercard-compatible barriers. At other smaller stations, users must touch the card on a standalone validator.


title: Oyster card

text: At a number of Tube, DLR, London Overground and National Rail stations which lie in close proximity, or where interchange requires passengers to pass through ticket barriers, an "out-of-station interchange" (OSI) is permitted. In such cases, the card holder touches out at one station and then touches in again before starting the next leg of the journey. The PAYG fares are then combined and charged as a single journey.


title: Oyster card

text: Examples include transferring between the Jubilee line at Canary Wharf and the DLR where Oyster card holders must tap their card at the ticket barriers in the Tube station, and then touch in on the validator at the DLR station. Balham (National Rail) to/from Balham (Tube) is another OSI, as is Camden Town (Tube) to/from Camden Road (London Overground). Failure to touch in or out on the validators in these circumstances will incur a maximum fare which is deducted from PAYG funds. In some cases (e.g. at West Hampstead NR stations) the OSI replicates interchanges which have existed for several decades before the invention of the Oyster system but were generally used with season tickets rather than day tickets.


title: Oyster card

text: Out-of-station interchanges can be temporary or permanent. A temporary arrangement may exist between two stations at short notice (routinely during weekend work but also when an emergency closure occurs). The two journeys that result are only charged as a single journey.


title: Oyster card

text: When the PAYG balance runs low, the balance can be topped up at the normal sales points or ticket machines at London Underground or London Overground stations, Oyster Ticket Stops or some National Rail stations. All ticket offices at stations run by London Underground will sell or recharge Oyster cards, or handle Oyster card refunds. However, some Tube stations are actually operated by National Rail train operating companies, and their ticket offices will not deal with Oyster refunds. DLR does not have any ticket offices which sell any Oyster card top-ups or handle refunds (as its stations are usually unmanned), except for the information office at London City Airport.


title: Oyster card

text: PAYG funds and Travel card season tickets (but not Bus & Tram Passes) can also be purchased online via the Oyster online website or by calling the Oyster helpline. The top up can be collected 30 mins later by touching in or out as part of a normal journey at any station or on any bus. There is no requirement to select a specific station nor to wait until the next day, which was the case in the past.


title: Oyster card

text: Customers can set up and manage Auto top-up online for their existing Oyster card. They register a debit or credit card, make a PAYG top-up purchase (minimum £10) and select either £20 or £40 as the Auto top-up amount.


title: Oyster card

text: Alternatively, a new Oyster card with Auto top-up and a minimum of £10 pay as you go can be ordered via Oyster online.


title: Oyster card

text: There is a constraint in the design, that requires a journey to be made via a nominated station, before auto top-up can be enabled. There are a number of services such as Thames Clippers, for which this initiation transaction is not offered.


title: Oyster card

text: Whenever the pay as you go balance falls below £10, £20 or £40 is added to the balance automatically when the Oyster card is touched on an entry validator. A light on the Oyster reader flashes to indicate the Auto top-up has taken place and an email is sent to confirm the transaction. Payment is then taken from the registered debit or credit card.


title: Oyster card

text: To ensure successful transactions, customers must record any changes to their billing address and update their debit or credit card details as necessary.


title: Oyster card

text: Oyster photocards, with an image of the authorised user on the card front, are issued to members of groups eligible for free or discounted travel. The cards are encoded to offer discounted fares and are available for students in full-time education (30% off season tickets), 16+ cards (half the adult-rate for single journeys on the Underground, London Overground, DLR and a limited number of National Rail services, discounted period Travelcards, free travel on buses and trams for students that live and attend full-time education in London) and for children under 16 years old (free travel on buses and trams and discounted single fares on the Underground, London Overground, DLR and most National Rail services). A 'Bus & Tram' Discount Card is specifically given to disadvantaged and 'unwaged' groups, primarily those on 'Job Seekers Allowance', 'Employment Support Allowance' and receivers of a variety of disabilities allowances, at half-fare rates for bus and tram services only; these cards simply charge the full rate on journeys not included in the discount scheme.


title: Oyster card

text: Student Oyster photocards offering a 30% discount on period tickets, are available to full-time students over 18 at registered institutions within the area of the M25 motorway, an area slightly larger than Greater London, at a cost of £20. Until the 2009–10 academic year, they cost £5 but required replacing each year of multiple-year courses. There is no discount for Pay-as-you-go, although many students hold the National Rail 16–25 Railcard, which can be added to an Oyster card at an Underground station ticket office to obtain a 1/3 reduction on off-peak caps and a 1/3 discount on off-peak Oyster single fares on all rail services. (NB peak National Rail fares may be cheaper with discounted paper tickets). A small selection of universities outside London have also registered on the scheme.


title: Oyster card

text: A replacement for lost or stolen cards costs £10 and involves applying for a replacement card online or by calling the Oyster helpline. A new photograph is not required. The funds and remaining travelcard is transferable to a new student Oyster photocard.


title: Oyster card

text: Since 8 September 2006, students at some London universities have been able to apply for their 18+ Oyster photocard online by uploading a digital photograph and paying with a credit or debit card.


title: Oyster card

text: On 7 January 2008, Transport for London unveiled the Zip card, an Oyster photocard to be used by young people aged 18 years or under who qualify for free bus and tram travel within the capital, with effect from 1 June 2008. To qualify, one must live in a London borough (and still be in full-time education if they are 18). Children outside London (and indeed the UK) may also apply for a Visitor version of the Zip card (which offers free bus and tram travel for under-16s, and half-rate fares for 16–18-year-olds) online, which they must collect from one of TfL's Travel Information Centres. From 1 September 2010 a fee of £10-15 (Dependent on age) has been charged for the card.


title: Oyster card

text: Freedom Passes are generally issued on what is in technical terms an Oyster card, though it does not bear that name. Freedom passes are free travel passes available to Greater London residents who are over a specified age (60 until March 2010, increasing in phases to 66 from March 2020) or with a disability specified in the Transport Act 2000; individual London boroughs have exceptional discretion to issue Freedom Passes to disabled people who do not meet the national statutory requirements (though they have to fund them). Travel is free at all times on the Tube, DLR, buses and Tramlink, and after 09:30 on most National Rail journeys entirely within the Greater London boundary. Holders cannot put any money or ticket products on a Freedom Pass; to travel outside these times, a separate Oyster card or other valid ticket is required.


title: Oyster card

text: Residents who are over 60 but who do not qualify for a Freedom Pass can obtain a similar "60+ Oyster Card" for a single fee. The outer boundary of the area in which Freedom Passes and 60+ Oyster Cards can be used is mostly the same as the area within which ordinary Oyster Cards can be used. Oyster PAYG cards can be used to Broxbourne station, but Freedom Passes and 60+ Oyster cannot be used north of or stations. This is solely because National Express East Anglia Railways took the decision to accept Oyster PAYG only as far as Broxbourne. Cards also have to be visually inspected on any non-TfL buses whose routes accept the concessionary cards on journeys partly entering Greater London including routes equipped with readers that accept the national standard ITSO bus pass cards with which Oyster is not compatible.


title: Oyster card

text: Freedom Passes issued to qualifying persons are also an English National Concessionary Bus Pass. They look identical to concessionary bus passes but are additionally marked "Freedom Pass" with the word "Pass" in red. Unlike the Freedom pass, the 60+ Oyster card is not valid for concessionary travel outside of the area approved by the Greater London Authority. This is because the concessionary bus travel scheme is centrally funded by government, but the Oyster 60+ and the Freedom Pass's validity on Tube, tram and rail networks is funded locally by the Greater London Authority.


title: Oyster card

text: A credit card variant of the Oyster card was launched by Barclaycard in September 2007 and is called OnePulse. The card combines standard Oyster card functionality with Visa credit card facilities. The Barclaycard OnePulse incorporates contactless payment technology, allowing most transactions up to £20 to be carried out without the need to enter a PIN (unlike the Chip and PIN system).


title: Oyster card

text: In 2005, Transport for London shortlisted two financial services suppliers, Barclaycard and American Express, to add e-money payment capability to the Oyster card. Barclaycard was selected in December 2006 to supply the card, but the project was then temporarily shelved. The OnePulse card was later launched using a combination of Oyster and Visa, but with no e-money functionality.


title: Oyster card

text: In February 2014, Barclaycard announced that the OnePulse card would be withdrawn from use and all functionality would cease after 30 June 2014. This came about due to the Oyster readers now also recognizing contactless Oyster cards and the presence of both Visa PayWave and the Oyster Contactless functionality on the card will cause a 'card clash'. Customers had their OnePulse card replaced with the Freedom Rewards credit card.


title: Oyster card

text: A number of different ticket types can be held on an Oyster card, and validity varies across the different transport modes within London.


title: Oyster card

text: Oyster is operated by Transport for London and has been valid on all London Underground, London buses, DLR and London Tramlink services since its launch in 2003.


title: Oyster card

text: The introduction of Oyster pay as you go on the National Rail commuter rail network in London was phased in gradually over a period of about six years (see Roll-out history). Since January 2010, PAYG has been valid on all London suburban rail services which accept Travelcards. Additionally, PAYG may be used at a selected number of stations which lie just outside the zones. New maps were issued in January 2010 which illustrates where PAYG is now valid.


title: Oyster card

text: Certain limitations remain on National Rail, however. Airport services Stansted Express and Thameslink Luton Airport services all run outside the Travelcard zones, so PAYG is not valid on those services either.


title: Oyster card

text: In November 2007, the metro routes operated by Silverlink were brought under the control of TfL and operated under the brand name London Overground. From the first day of operation, Oyster PAYG became valid on all Overground routes.


title: Oyster card

text: London Oyster Cards and contactless cards will be accepted on many Southern, Gatwick Express and Thameslink services in early 2016. These include to Gatwick Airport station and five other Surrey railway stations, as well as to Luton Airport.


title: Oyster card

text: Since 23 November 2009, Oyster PAYG has been valid on London River Services boats operated by Thames Clippers only. Oyster cards are accepted for all Thames Clippers scheduled services, the DoubleTree Docklands ferry, the "Tate to Tate" service and the O2 Express. Discounts on standard fares are offered to Oyster cardholders, except on the O2 Express. The daily price capping guarantee does not apply to journeys made on Thames Clippers.


title: Oyster card

text: Oyster card holders (PAYG, Travelcard or Freedom Pass) receive discounts on the London Cable Car across the River Thames between Greenwich and the Royal Docks, which opened in June 2012. Like London River Services, the cable car is a privately funded concern and is not fully integrated into TfL's ticketing system. To encourage use of the cable car as a commuter service, substantial discounts are offered with a "frequent flyer" ticket which allows 10 journeys within 12 months.


title: Oyster card

text: The pricing system is fairly complex, and changes from time to time. The most up to date fares can be found on Transport for London's FareFinder website.


title: Oyster card

text: Cash is no longer accepted on London's buses and trams and, in order to encourage passengers to use Oyster or contactless, cash fares for tubes and trains are generally much more expensive than PAYG fares. A contactless debit or credit card can be used in place of an Oyster card at the same fare.


title: Oyster card

text: The single Oyster fare for a bus or tram journey is £1.65, although the Hopper fare rules allow unlimited bus and tram journeys within one hour of first touching in for no additional cost. Passengers need to touch in using the same card on all the bus and tram journeys made and any free fares are applied automatically.


title: Oyster card

text: Using PAYG, a single trip on the tube within zone 1 costs £2.50 (compared to £6.30 if paid by cash). Tube journeys within any other single zone cost £1.80 at peak times and £1.60 off peak (£6.30 for cash at any time). Journeys in multiple zones are progressively more expensive.


title: Oyster card

text: However, even for journeys passing through the same zones, the price may be different depending on the actual line(s) used. For example, a journey from Willesden Junction to Wimbledon has 5 different routes, 3 of them involving travel between zones 1-3 and 2 of them within zones 2-3 only, defined in the route database. If travel is made by changing at onto the District line by touching the pink reader there, the fare charged is only £2.00 peak / £1.70 off-peak, while if a touch is not made there, travel is assumed to be via onto the South Western Railway which is on a more expensive fare scale than the tube even though the trips are within the same zones. Similarly, travelling via zone 1 is more expensive if a change onto the South Western Railway is made at compared to using the tube all the way from via Earl's Court.


title: Oyster card

text: Travel to Heathrow Airport via Elizabeth line is more expensive than going via the tube even though both the tube and the Elizabeth line stations are in zone 6.


title: Oyster card

text: For every possible journey, there is a default route, possibly with other routes distinguished by intermediate touches, in the fare database. Each route has an associated "zones travelled" label which are the zones assumed to be travelled through. When touching out at a reader, the system looks up the appropriate route from the database according to the touches, which is the default route if no intermediate touches are made or if they don't match any of the alternative routes, to charge the correct fare, and to record the assumed zones travelled into the card for capping purpose.


title: Oyster card

text: The zoned fare system under which Oyster operates inevitably gives rise to some quirks in the fares charged. A 21 stop journey between Stratford and Clapham Junction on the overground is charged at £1.80 at peak times (£1.60 off peak) whereas a 1 stop journey between Whitechapel and Shoreditch High Street on the overground costs £2.50 at all times. This occurs because Shoreditch High Street is the only station in zone 1 on its line, whereas the entire Stratford to Clapham Junction line runs in zone 2 only. The cash fare is £6.30 in both cases and at all times. Similar anomalies are a feature of zoned fare systems worldwide.


title: Oyster card

text: A 'capping' system was introduced on 27 February 2005, which means that an Oyster card will be charged no more than the nearest equivalent Day Travelcard for a day's travel, if penalty fares are not incurred. The daily cap is £7.70 within zones 1-2 and £14.10 within zones 1–6, provided no penalty fares are incurred for failure to touch in or out, or for touching in or out at the same station. A lower cap of £4.95 applies if the day's journeys are restricted to buses and trams only.


title: Oyster card

text: There are 3 different caps in use: all-day cap (valid from 04:30 weekdays to 04:29 the next day on all rail, tram and bus services), off-peak cap (valid from 09:30 weekdays / 04:30 weekends to 04:29 the next day on all rail, tram and bus services) and bus & tram cap (valid from 04:30 to 04:29 the next day on buses and trams only). For both the all-day cap and off-peak cap, the respective zones travelled are recorded onto the card.


title: Oyster card

text: The Oyster system supports up to 15 zones. Stations which are not officially in zones 1-9 are allocated to the unpublicised zones, denoted A-E in hexadecimal (or 10-14 in denary), such as .


title: Oyster card

text: Because of how the price capping works, it can sometimes result in overcharging compared to using multiple Oyster cards. For example, if one takes a journey from zone 6 all the way to zone 1, then takes multiple journeys within zones 1-2, the system will charge for the journeys until the zone 1-6 cap is reached even though it may be cheaper to charge a zone 1-2 cap combined with a single fare from zone 6 because zone 1-6 travel is already recorded on the card. Contactless users don't suffer from this problem as fare calculation is done at the backend after the day of travel, where the cheapest combination of fares is charged. TfL is working on a similar system for Oyster as well such that overcharged fares may be refunded afterwards. The complex interaction between single fares and the various caps may also mean that, by deliberately taking an extra bus journey, the total fare for the day may be reduced.


title: Oyster card

text: Price capping does not apply to PAYG fares on Heathrow Express, Gatwick Express, London River Services boats and on Southeastern high speed train services.


title: Oyster card

text: Holders of Disabled Persons, HM Forces, Senior, 16–25, 26-30 National Rail Railcards and Annual Gold Cards (as of 23 May 2010) receive a 34% reduction in the off-peak PAYG fares and price cap; Railcard discounts can be loaded on at London Underground ticket machines (with help from a member of staff).


title: Oyster card

text: On 20 August 2007, a 'Bus and Tram Discount photocard' was launched for London Oyster card users who received Income Support. It allows cardholders to pay £0.75 for a single bus journey (capped at £2.25 per day), and to buy half price period bus passes.


title: Oyster card

text: This was originally the result of a deal between Transport for London and Petróleos de Venezuela to provide fuel for London Buses at a 20% discount. In return Transport for London agreed to open an office in the Venezuelan capital Caracas to offer expertise on town planning, tourism, public protection and environmental issues. The deal with Venezuela was ended by Mayor Boris Johnson shortly after he took office, and the Bus and Tram Discount photocard scheme closed to new applications on 20 August 2008; Johnson said that "TfL will honour the discount [on existing cards] until the six-month time periods on cards have run out".


title: Oyster card

text: The Bus and Tram Discount Scheme reopened on 2 January 2009, this time funded by London fare payers. The scheme has been extended to people receiving Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and to those receiving Jobseeker's Allowance for 13 weeks or more.


title: Oyster card

text: Boats operated by Thames Clippers offer a 10% discount on standard fares to Oyster PAYG users, except on their O2 Express service, and a 1/3 discount to passengers carrying Oyster cards which have been loaded with a valid period Travelcard.


title: Oyster card

text: In order to prevent "misuse" by a stated 2% of passengers, from 19 November 2006 pay as you go users are automatically charged the "maximum Oyster fare" for a journey on that network when they touch in. Depending on the journey made, the difference between this maximum fare and the actual fare due is automatically refunded to the user's Oyster card upon touching out. The maximum fare is automatically charged to a passenger who touches out without having first touched in. Two maximum fares are charged (one for touching in, one for touching out) if a passenger touches in at a station, waits for over twenty minutes, and then touches out at the same station, because the system assumes that the passenger has been able to travel to another station in that time, taking no account of situations where there are severe delays.


title: Oyster card

text: Users must touch in and out even if the ticket barriers are open. At stations where Oyster is accepted but that do not have ticket barriers, an Oyster validator will be provided for the purposes of touching in and out. The maximum Oyster fare applies even if the daily price cap has been reached as this does not count towards the cap.


title: Oyster card

text: Maximum Oyster fares may be contested by telephone to the Oyster helpline on 0343 222 1234 or via email. This involves providing the Oyster card number and the relevant journey details; further journeys appearing on the card are helpful to validate the user's claim.


title: Oyster card

text: If the claim is accepted then the maximum Oyster fare minus the cost of the journey will be refunded. The user will be asked to nominate and make a journey from a specific Tube, DLR, London Overground or National Rail station, or Tram stop. On touching in or out, the refund is loaded to the card. The only way to collect a refund is as part of an actual journey, otherwise a further penalty fare is charged. This is because when the passenger touches the reader with their Oyster card, not only will the refund go on to the card, but a new journey will start.


title: Oyster card

text: The start date to pick up the refund can be the next day (at the earliest) and the refund will remain at the nominated station for 8 days in total. The customer does have the option to delay the start date for up to 8 days, and the refund will still remain at the gate for up to 8 further days. After this time the refund will be deleted from the gate line, and the customer will have to re-request the refund.


title: Oyster card

text: Oyster users who do not touch in before making a journey may be liable to pay a penalty fare (£80) and/or reported for prosecution if caught by a revenue protection inspector.


title: Oyster card

text: Commuters who were delayed 15 minutes or more on the Tube & DLR, and 30 minutes or more on London Overground & TfL Rail, are eligible to claim a refund for the cost of their journey. Commuters with Travelcards that do not pay for individual journeys will be refunded the Pay As You Go price of that single delayed journey. Customers wishing to claim these refunds must create an online TfL account, and then either manually claim online each time they are delayed, or use the free Train Reeclaim tool which automatically detects delayed TfL journeys and claims a refund on behalf of the commuter for each one.


title: Oyster card

text: The roll-out of Oyster features and migration from the paper-based system has been phased. Milestones so far have been:


title: Oyster card

text: The National Rail network is mostly outside the control of Transport for London, and passenger services are run by number of independent rail companies. Because of this, acceptance of Oyster PAYG on National Rail services was subject to the policy of each individual company and the roll-out of PAYG was much slower than on TfL services. For the first six years of Oyster, rollout on National Rail was gradual and uneven, with validity limited to specific lines and stations.


title: Oyster card

text: Several rail companies have accepted London Underground single fares because they duplicate London Underground routes, and they adopted the Oyster PAYG on those sections of the line which run alongside the Underground. When TfL took over the former Silverlink Metro railway lines, PAYG was rolled out on the first day of operation of London Overground. As a consequence, some rail operators whose services run parallel to London Overground lines were forced to accept PAYG, although only after some initial hesitation.


title: Oyster card

text: The process of persuading the various rail firms involved a long process of negotiation between the London Mayors and train operating companies. In 2005 Ken Livingstone (then Mayor of London) began a process of trying to persuade National Rail train operating companies to allow Oyster PAYG on all of their services within London, but a dispute about ticketing prevented this plan from going ahead.


title: Oyster card

text: After further negotiations, Transport for London offered to fund the train operating companies with £20m to provide Oyster facilities in London stations; this resulted in an outline agreement to introduce PAYG acceptance across the entire London rail network.


title: Oyster card

text: TfL announced a National Rail rollout date of May 2009, but negotiation with the private rail firms continued to fail and the rollout was delayed to 2010. Oyster readers were installed at many National Rail stations across London, but they remained covered up and not in use. In November 2009 it was finally confirmed that PAYG would be valid on National Rail from January 2010. The rollout was accompanied by the introduction of a new system of "Oyster Extension Permits" to allow travelcard holders to travel outside their designated zones on National Rail. This system was introduced to address the revenue protection concerns of the rail companies, but it was criticised for its complexity, and was abolished on 22 May 2011.


title: Oyster card

text: Since the introduction of the Oyster card, the number of customers paying cash fares on buses has dropped dramatically. In addition, usage of station ticket offices has dropped, to the extent that in June 2007, TfL announced that a number of their ticket offices would close, with some others reducing their opening hours. TfL suggested that the staff would be 're-deployed' elsewhere on the network, including as train drivers.


title: Oyster card

text: In August 2010 the issue of the impact of the Oyster card on staffing returned. In response to The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) ballot for a strike over planned job cuts, TfL stated that the increase in people using Oyster electronic ticketing cards meant only one in 20 journeys now involved interaction with a ticket office. As a result, it aims to reduce staff in ticket offices and elsewhere while deploying more workers to help passengers in stations.


title: Oyster card

text: By June 2010 over 34 million cards have been issued of which around 7 million are in regular use. More than 80% of all tube journeys and more than 90% of all bus journeys use Oyster. Around 38% of all Tube journeys and 21% of all bus journeys are made using Oyster pay as you go. Use of single tickets has declined and stands at roughly 1.5% of all bus journeys and 3% of all Tube journeys.


title: Oyster card

text: Since the launch of contactless payment in 2012, over 500 million journeys have been made using contactless, using over 12 million contactless bank cards.


title: Oyster card

text: In , over 12 million Oyster cards and 35 million contactless cards were used, generating around £5bn in ticketing revenue.


title: Oyster card

text: On 2 January 2013, Oyster PAYG was extended to (the terminus of the future Crossrail service) and by Abellio Greater Anglia.


title: Oyster card

text: With regard to London's airports, TfL and BAA studied acceptance of Oyster Pay As You Go on BAA's Heathrow Express service and the Southern-operated Gatwick Express service in 2006, but BAA decided not to go ahead. However, Oyster has been valid to on both the Gatwick Express and Southern Rail and Thameslink services since January 2016.


title: Oyster card

text: Oyster was extended to Hertford East when London Overground took over suburban services previously operated by Greater Anglia in May 2015.


title: Oyster card

text: In 2014, Transport for London became the first public transport provider in the world to accept payment from contactless bank cards. TfL first started accepting contactless debit and credit cards on London Buses on 13 December 2012, expanding to the Underground, Tram and the Docklands Light Railway in September 2014. Since 2016, contactless payment can also take place using contactless-enabled mobile devices such as phones and smartwatches, using Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay.


title: Oyster card

text: TfL designed and coded the contactless payment system in-house, at a cost of £11m, after realising existing commercial solutions were inflexible or too focused on retail use. Since the launch of contactless payment in 2012, over 500 million journeys have been made, using over 12 million contactless bank cards. Consequently, TfL is now one of Europe's largest contactless merchants, with around 1 in 10 contactless transactions in the UK taking place on the TfL network.


title: Oyster card

text: In 2016, TfL licensed their contactless payment system to Cubic, the original developers of the Oyster card, allowing the technology to be sold to other transport providers worldwide. In 2017, licensing deals were signed with New York City, New South Wales and Boston.


title: Oyster card

text: The same requirement to touch in and out on underground services applies to contactless cards. The same price capping that applies to the use of Oyster cards applies to the use of contactless cards (provided the same card is used for the day's journeys). The fare paid every day is settled with the bank and appears on the debit or credit card statement. Detailed usage data is written to Transport for London's systems and is available for customers who register their contactless cards with Transport for London. Unlike an Oyster card, a contactless card does not store credit (beyond the holder's credit limit) and there is no need or facility to add credit to the card.


title: Oyster card

text: An Oyster card can have a longer term "season" ticket loaded onto it (either at a ticket office or on line). Such a ticket can start on any day and be valid for a minimum of seven days and a maximum of one year. Unlike an Oyster card, a contactless card can automatically apply a seven-day travel card rate. If the card is regularly used between any Monday to Sunday period, an automatic cap is applied. The seven-day period is fixed at Monday to Sunday, it cannot be "any" seven-day period, unlike a seven-day ticket applied to an Oyster card. There is currently no automatic cap for longer periods.


title: Oyster card

text: Since the Oyster readers cannot write to a contactless card, the reader when touching out is unable to display the fare charged for the journey, as the card does not have the starting point stored in it. This is calculated overnight once the touch in and touch out information is downloaded from the gates and collated. When a touch in with a contactless card is made, the validity of the card is checked by debiting the card account with 10 pence. The final fare charged includes this initial charge. As with Oyster, a failure to touch either in or out, charges the maximum possible fare. Transport for London state that if ticket inspection is taking place, it is then necessary to present the contactless card to the ticket inspector's portable oyster card reader. As the reader at the starting station cannot write to the contactless card and the card's use is not downloaded until the following night, the portable card reader cannot determine whether the card was used to touch into the system. However, a nightly reconciliation takes place to ensure that the maximum fare is charged to any card that was presented to an inspector not having been used to touch in for that journey.


title: Oyster card

text: In late 2017, TfL introduced the Oyster card app which allows users to check their balance on a compatible Android or iOS smartphone. The app is free to download and users can top up their Oyster card on the go or check journey history. Top ups are available to collect at any London Underground station or bus within 30 minutes. The app also has a notification feature which alerts users when their balance is below a specified amount.


title: Oyster card

text: First generation Oyster cards are not compatible with the app and TfL recommends users to upgrade their cards to newer ones to use them in the app.


title: Oyster card

text: Trial versions, Transport for London staff versions and the first version of the standard Oyster card for the public were released with the roundels on the front of the cards in red. Standard issues of the Oyster card have been updated since the first public release in order to meet TfL's Design Standards.


title: Oyster card

text: There have been three issues of the standard Oyster card, including the original red roundel issue, but all three Oyster cards have retained their original dimensions of 85mm x 55mm, with Oyster card number and reference number located in the top right-hand corner and bottom right hand corner of the back of the card respectively, along with the terms and conditions.


title: Oyster card

text: The second issue of the standard Oyster card had 'Transport for London' branding on the back of the card, with the Mayor of London (having replaced the 'LONDON' branding in the blue segment of the card's back). The roundel on the front of the card was changed from the colour red to white, as white was seen to represent Transport for London (whereas a red roundel is more known to represent London Buses).


title: Oyster card

text: The most recent issue of the standard Oyster card has TfL branding on its front, removed from the back of the card in the previous issue. The Mayor of London branding has also been moved from the blue segment on the back of the card to underneath the terms and conditions, where it is more prominent.


title: Oyster card

text: With the release of the Oyster card, TfL released an accompanying Oyster card holder to replace the existing designs, previously sponsored by companies such as Yellow Pages, Direct Line and IKEA, as well as London Underground's and London Buses own releases of the holder which came without advertising.


title: Oyster card

text: The official Oyster branded holders have been redesigned on several occasions, keeping up with various iterations of the card and to increase service awareness. The initial version mimicked the blue design of the card itself, and was later modified to include the line "Please reuse your card" on the front.


title: Oyster card

text: In March 2007 the Oyster card wallet was designed by British designers including Katharine Hamnett, Frostfrench and Gharani Strok for Oxfam's "I'm In" campaign to end world poverty. The designer wallets were available for a limited period of time from Oxfam's street teams in London who handed them out to people who signed up to the "I'm In" movement. Also, to celebrate 100 years of the Piccadilly line, a series of limited edition Oyster card wallets were commissioned from selected artists from the "Thin Cities" Platform for Art project. The previous wallets handed out were sponsored by IKEA who also sponsor the tube map, and did not display the Oyster or the London Underground logos.


title: Oyster card

text: In late 2007 the standard issue wallets were redesigned with the only changes being the colour scheme changing from blue to black, and the removal of the resemblance to the Oyster card.


title: Oyster card

text: The most recent variation of the wallet came with the introduction of contactless payment acceptance on the network in 2012, where light-green "Watch out for card clash" wallets have been issued to raise awareness of "card clash", and replace the previous simplistic designs. The inside of these wallets reads "Only touch one card on the reader" on the clear plastic.


title: Oyster card

text: In addition to the official wallets distributed by TfL, which may or may not carry advertising for a sponsor, Oyster card holders and wallets are sometimes used as a marketing tool by other organisations seeking to promote their identity or activities. Such items are normally given away free, either with products or handed out to the public.


title: Oyster card

text: Although customers are usually given a free wallet when purchasing a card, the wallets themselves, including the most recent design issue, can be picked up for free at most stations or newsagents.


title: Oyster card

text: In September 2019 TfL announced that they were discontinuing their free Oyster Card wallets citing the cost and also the use of plastic.


title: Oyster card

text: The standard public Oyster card is blue but colour variants are used by transport staff. Similar cards are issued to police officers.


title: Oyster card

text: A number of limited edition Oyster card variant designs exist. These are produced in limited quantities but otherwise function as standard Oyster cards. These include:


title: Oyster card

text: In 2012, TfL released various cards to mark the Olympic Games taking place in London that year. The cards performed the same as any other card and also include all the same text, apart from a differentiating line (listed below), and the London 2012 logo. Cards like these were distributed solely to select 2012 volunteers who took part in the opening and closing ceremonies.


title: Oyster card

text: They were used for the duration of the games and therefore are no longer valid for use on the transport system. The colour of these Oyster cards is pink with a coloured stripe:


title: Oyster card

text: In October 2018, TfL partnered with Adidas to celebrate 15 years of the Oyster card. A limited number of trainers from the "Oyster Club pack" went on sale on with each of the three types costing £80 and being based on an element of the Tube's history. These designs include Temper Run, ZX 500RM and Continental 80. Only 500 limited-edition Oyster cards were produced, and each type of trainer contains a different card design in the box. Also included with the trainers is a genuine leather case (with TfL and Adidas logo engraving) and a credit of £80 preloaded on the Oyster card.


title: Oyster card

text: Card users sometimes forget to touch in or touch out, are unable to find the yellow readers or it may be too crowded to touch out. Such card users have either received penalty fares by revenue inspectors, been charged a maximum cash fare, or been prosecuted in courts which can issue high penalties. Card users are also penalised for touching in and out of the same station within a two-minute period, and charged the maximum possible fare from that station.


title: Oyster card

text: The system also applies two penalty fares (one for touching in, and one for touching out) to passengers who touch in and touch out at the same station after 20 minutes; this is due to the system assuming that, after such a long delay, the passenger has travelled to another station and returned without touching in or out at the other station, when in reality the passenger might simply have been waiting for a train, baulked at the long waiting time and exited.


title: Oyster card

text: Holders of Travelcards can add pay-as-you-go credit on their Oyster cards. This credit is used as 'extension fare' when users travel beyond the zones in which their Travelcard is valid. This extension fare equals the regular Oyster fare for a journey from/to the respective station outside of the validity area of the Travelcard to/from the closest zone still covered by the Travelcard. To distinguish between peak and off-peak fares, however, the start of the journey is taken into account. That means travellers might be charged the (more expensive) peak fare as extension fare even if they had not yet left the area of validity of their Travelcard by the end of peak time. Conversely, a journey starting in the covered zones shortly before the start of the peak time will be charged as off-peak.


title: Oyster card

text: There is an exploitable feature of the system, in that if a touch-in (or touch-out) is made in a zone where the oyster card is loaded with a valid season ticket or Travelcard but there is no associated touch-out (or touch-in), the system does not treat this as an unresolved journey. Although encouraged to do so, such ticket holders are not obliged to touch-in or touch-out within the zones of their ticket's validity (other than to operate a barrier). This means that a passenger holding (say) a valid zone 1&2 Travelcard, can touch-in at a zone 1 station (to open the ticket barrier) and then travel to a zone 3, 4, 5 or 6 station that does not have a barrier without touching out or paying the extension fare. Ticket inspectors frequently operate at such locations to catch these fare dodging passengers. Since the system maintains a record of every touch the card does make (even with a valid travelcard), TfL will assiduously seek to recover all the unpaid fares when a passenger who is caught is prosecuted for fare evasion.


title: Oyster card

text: The system has been criticised as a threat to the privacy of its users. Each Oyster card is uniquely numbered, and registration is required for monthly or longer tickets, which are no longer available on paper. Limited usage data is stored on the card. Journey and transaction history is held centrally by Transport for London for up to eight weeks, after which the transactions and journey history are disassociated from the Oyster card and cannot be re-associated; full registration details are held centrally and not on individual Oyster cards; recent usage can be checked by anyone in possession of the card at some ticket machines.


title: Oyster card

text: The police have used Oyster card data as an investigative tool, and this use is increasing. On 13 April 2006, TfL stated that "Between August 2004 and March 2006 TfL's Information Access and Compliance Team received 436 requests from the police for Oyster card information. Of these, 409 requests were granted and the data were released to the police." However, in response to another request in February 2012, "TfL said this had happened 5,295 times in 2008, 5,359 in 2009, 5,046 in 2010, and a record 6,258 in 2011".


title: Oyster card

text: Additionally, in 2008 news reports indicated that the security services were seeking access to all Oyster card data for the purposes of counter-terrorism. Such access is not provided to the security services.


title: Oyster card

text: As yet, there have been no reports of customer data being misused, outside the terms of the registration agreement. There have been no reports of Oyster data being lost.


title: Oyster card

text: The system has been criticised for usability issues in general system, website and top-up machine design.


title: Oyster card

text: Oyster pay-as-you-go users, on London Underground, DLR and National Rail (including London Overground) services are required always to "touch in" and "touch out" to cause the correct fare to be charged. This requirement is less obviously enforced at stations where there are only standalone yellow reader rather than ticket barriers. Without a physical barrier, pay-as-you-go users may simply forget to "touch in" or fail to touch their card correctly, which will result in a maximum fare being charged. Equally, if the barriers do not function (reading 'SEEK ASSISTANCE') and the TfL or train operating company staff member has to open the gates manually, then the maximum fare may be charged. If this occurs a refund may be requested by telephoning the Oyster helpline the day after the incident occurs (to allow time for the central computers to be updated); the overcharged amount can be added back to the pay-as-you-go balance on the card from the following day when the Oyster card is used to make a journey.


title: Oyster card

text: The use of Oyster cards on buses has been subject to criticism following a number of successful criminal prosecutions by TfL of bus passengers whose Oyster card, when checked by Revenue Protection Inspectors, did not show that the passenger had "touched in" correctly on boarding. In particular, problems have been highlighted in connection with the quality of error messages given to passengers when touching in has failed for any reason. In one case, a passenger successfully appealed against his conviction for fare evasion when the court noted that the passenger believed he had paid for his journey because the Oyster reader did not give sufficient error warning.


title: Oyster card

text: In 2011, London Assembly member Caroline Pidgeon obtained figures from the Mayor of London which revealed that in 2010, £60million had been taken by TfL in maximum Oyster fares. The statistics also detailed a "top ten" of stations where maximum fares were being collected, notably Waterloo and . In her criticism of the figures, Pidgeon claimed that "structural problems" with the Oyster system were to blame, such as faulty equipment failing to register cards and difficulty in obtaining refunds. A report by BBC London highlighted the system of "autocomplete" (in which Oyster cards journeys are automatically completed without the need to physically touch out, exceptionally used when large crowds are exiting stations) as particularly problematic.


title: Oyster card

text: In January 2004, on the day that the pay-as-you-go system went live on all Oyster cards, some season ticket passengers were prevented from making a second journey on their travelcard. Upon investigation each had a negative prepay balance. This was widely reported as a major bug in the system. However, the reason for the "bug" was that some season ticket holders were passing through zones not included on their tickets. The existing paper system could not prevent this kind of misuse as the barriers only checked if a paper ticket was valid in the zone the barrier was in.


title: Oyster card

text: On 10 March 2005 an incorrect data table meant that the Oyster system was inoperable during the morning rush hour. Ticket barriers had to be left open and pay as you go fares could not be collected.


title: Oyster card

text: On 12 July 2008 an incorrect data table disabled an estimated 72,000 Oyster cards, including Travelcards, staff passes, Freedom Passes, child Oyster cards and other electronic tickets. The Oyster system was shut down and later restarted during traffic hours. Some customers already in the system were overcharged. Refunds were given to those affected and all disabled cards were replaced. Freedom Pass holders had to apply to their local authority for replacement passes (as these are not managed by TfL).


title: Oyster card

text: A further system failure occurred two weeks later on 25 July 2008, when pay as you go cards were not read properly.


title: Oyster card

text: On 2 January 2016 the Oyster system failed, with readers failing to process Oyster cards but continuing to process contactless cards and Apple Pay transactions.


title: Oyster card

text: Transport for London promoted the Oyster card at launch with many adverts seeking to portray it as an alternative to the paper Travelcard. In late 2005 the Advertising Standards Authority ordered the withdrawal of one such poster which claimed that Oyster pay as you go was "more convenient" than Travelcards with "no need to plan in advance". The ASA ruled that the two products were not directly comparable, mainly because the pay as you go facility was not valid on most National Rail routes at the time.


title: Oyster card

text: Transport for London has made a significant surplus from excess fares deducted for those travelling using PAYG and failing to touch out as they exit stations. According to information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act TfL made £32m from pay as you go cards of which £18m was maximum fares for failing to touch out. Only £803,000 was paid in refunds, showing that whilst customers can apply for a refund, most do not. The oyster online site does not list all penalty fares eligible for refunds on the front page, and users must search for fares charged on a particular day to discover all penalty fares that have been charged. The maximum fares for failing to touch out were introduced late 2006.


title: Oyster card

text: Until the availability of Oyster pay-as-you-go on the whole of the National Rail suburban network in January 2010, the validity of PAYG was not consistent across different modes of transport within London, and this gave rise to confusion for Oyster pay-as-you-go users. Many passengers were caught out trying to use Pay as you go on rail routes where it was not valid.


title: Oyster card

text: On some National Rail routes where pay-as-you-go was valid, Oyster validators had not been installed at some intermediate stations. While Oyster pay-as-you-go users could legally travel along those lines to certain destinations, they were not permitted to board or alight at intermediate stations. If their journey began or ended at an intermediate station, they would be unable to touch out and consequently be liable for penalty fares or prosecution.


title: Oyster card

text: The complexity of Oyster validity on these routes was criticised for increasing the risk of passengers inadvertently failing to pay the correct fare. Criticism was also levelled at train operating companies for failing to provide adequate warnings to passengers about Oyster validity on their routes and for not installing Oyster readers at certain stations.


title: Oyster card

text: TfL published guides to the limitations of pay-as-you-go validity diagrammatic maps illustrating PAYG validity were published in November 2006 by National Rail, but these were rarely on display at stations and had to be obtained from transport websites.


title: Oyster card

text: Oyster card ticket renewals and pay-as-you-go top-ups made online allow users to make purchases without the need to go to a ticket office or vending machine. However, there were certain limitations to this system:


title: Oyster card

text: Now only the 30 minutes limitation, and the requirement to make a journey still exist. Users no longer need to select a station and can collect the ticket or top up made online at any stations, including on a bus, while making the next journey.


title: Oyster card

text: In June 2008, researchers at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, who had previously succeeded in hacking the OV-chipkaart (the Dutch public transport chip card), hacked an Oyster card, which is also based on the MIFARE Classic chip. They scanned a card reader to obtain its cryptographic key, then used a wireless antenna attached to a laptop computer to brush up against passengers on the London Underground and extract the information from their cards. With that information they were able to clone a card, add credit to it, and use it to travel on the Underground for at least a day. The MIFARE chip manufacturers NXP Semiconductor sought a court injunction to prevent the publication of the details of this security breach, but this was overturned on appeal.


title: Oyster card

text: The Mifare Classic—which is also used as a security pass for controlling entry into buildings—has been criticised as having very poor security, and NXP criticised for trying to ensure security by obscurity rather than strong encryption. Breaching security on Oyster cards should not allow unauthorised use for more than a day, as TfL promises to turn off any cloned cards within 24 hours, but a cloned Mifare Classic can allow entry into buildings that use this system for security.


title: Oyster card

text: Transport for London, in partnership with academic institutions such as MIT, has begun to use the data captured by the Oyster smartcard system for strategic research purposes, with the general goal of using Oyster data to gain cheap and accurate insights into the behaviour and experience of passengers. Specific projects include estimation of Origin-Destination Matrices for the London Underground, analysis of bus-to-bus and bus-to-tube interchange behaviour, modelling and analysis of TfL-wide fare policy changes, and measurement of service quality on the London Overground.


title: We Are (Jon Batiste album)

text: We Are (stylized in all caps) is the sixth studio album by Jon Batiste. It was released on Verve Records on March 19, 2021. In April 2022, the album won Album of the Year at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards; it earned Batiste eleven nominations in total, with five wins.


title: We Are (Jon Batiste album)

text: Following the 64th Annual Grammy Awards, "We Are" reached its peak at number 25 on the US "Billboard" 200 with 18,000 album equivalent units.


title: We Are (Jon Batiste album)

text: Batiste began working on the album in late 2019, making it in his dressing room over six days in September and finishing it by mid-2020. While largely written and recorded prior to the events of 2020, the album's lyrical and thematic content reflects such events as the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and his involvement in 2020, leading Black Lives Matter protests in New York after the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.


title: We Are (Jon Batiste album)

text: On June 12, 2020, he released the single "We Are", featuring the band from his New Orleans alma mater, the St. Augustine High School Marching 100.


title: We Are (Jon Batiste album)

text: As part of Record Store Day 2020, Batiste released a limited edition EP titled "We Are: Roots & Traditions".


title: We Are (Jon Batiste album)

text: Speaking to "Atwood Magazine", Batiste described "We Are" as "a representation of genreless music that's just about the story" and "a culmination of my life to this point".


title: Criminal Minds (season 10)

text: The tenth season of "Criminal Minds" premiered on CBS on October 1, 2014. The series was officially renewed for a tenth season on March 13, 2014. It consists of 23 episodes. This season features Jennifer Love Hewitt playing an undercover agent who joins the BAU. Episode 19 was a pilot episode for the spin-off series "".


title: Criminal Minds (season 10)

text: The entire main cast returned for the season, except Jeanne Tripplehorn (Alex Blake), who left the show in the season nine finale. On July 1, 2014, it was announced that Jennifer Love Hewitt would join the show as a series regular, playing Kate Callahan, a former undercover FBI agent whose exceptional work lands her a job with the Behavioral Analysis Unit.


title: Children in the military

text: Children (defined by the Convention on the Rights of the Child as people under the age of 18) have been recruited for participation in military operations and campaigns throughout history and in many cultures.


title: Children in the military

text: Children in the military, including state armed forces, non-state armed groups, and other military organizations, may be trained for combat, assigned to support roles such as porters or messengers, or used for tactical advantage as human shields or for political advantage in propaganda.


title: Children in the military

text: Children are targeted for their susceptibility to influence, which renders them easier to recruit and control. While some are recruited by force, others choose to join up, often to escape poverty or because they expect military life to offer a rite of passage to maturity.


title: Children in the military

text: Child soldiers who survive armed conflict frequently develop psychiatric illness, poor literacy and numeracy, and behavioral problems such as heightened aggression, which together lead to an increased risk of unemployment and poverty in adulthood.


title: Children in the military

text: Research in the United Kingdom and United States has also found that the enlistment and training of adolescent children, even when they are not sent to war, is often accompanied by a higher risk of suicide, stress-related mental disorders, alcohol abuse, and violent behavior.


title: Children in the military

text: Since the 1970s, a number of treaties have successfully reduced the recruitment and use of children worldwide. Nonetheless, a quarter of armed forces worldwide, particularly those of economically powerful states, still train adolescent children for military service, while elsewhere the use of children in armed conflict and insurgencies has increased in recent years.


title: Children in the military

text: History is filled with children who have been trained and used for fighting, assigned to support roles such as porters or messengers, used as sex slaves, or recruited for tactical advantage as human shields or for political advantage in propaganda. In 1814, for example, Napoleon conscripted many teenagers for his armies. Thousands of children participated on all sides of the First World War and the Second World War. Children continued to be used throughout the 20th and early 21st century on every continent, with concentrations in parts of Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Only since the turn of the millennium have international efforts begun to limit and reduce the military use of children.


title: Children in the military

text: The adoption in 2000 of the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (OPAC) committed states who ratified it to "take all feasible measures" to ensure that no child takes a direct part in hostilities and to cease recruitment below the age of 16. As most states have now opted into OPAC, the global trend has been towards reserving military recruitment to adulthood, known as the "Straight-18" standard.


title: Children in the military

text: Nonetheless, , children aged under 18 were still being recruited and trained for military purposes in 46 countries, which is approximately one quarter of all countries. Most of these states recruit from age 17, fewer than 20 recruit from age 16, and an unknown, smaller number, recruit younger children.


title: Children in the military

text: , the United Nations (UN) verified that nine state armed forces were using children in hostilities: Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Somalia, and South Sudan in Africa; Syria and Yemen in Western Asia; Afghanistan in Central Asia; and Myanmar in South East Asia.


title: Children in the military

text: The United Nations (UN) Committee on the Rights of the Child and others have called for an end to the recruitment of children by state armed forces, arguing that military training, the military environment, and a binding contract of service are not compatible with children's rights and jeopardize healthy development.


title: Children in the military

text: These include non-state armed paramilitary organisations such as militias, insurgents, terrorist organizations, guerrilla movements, armed liberation movements, and other types of quasi-military organisation.


title: Children in the military

text: , the UN identified 12 countries where children were widely used by such groups: Colombia in South America; Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan in Africa; Lebanon in the Middle East; Syria and Yemen in Western Asia; Afghanistan in Central Asia; and Myanmar in South East Asia.


title: Children in the military

text: Not all armed groups use children and approximately 60 have entered agreements to reduce or end the practice since 1999. For example, by 2017, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in the Philippines had released nearly 2,000 children from its ranks, and in 2016, the FARC-EP guerrilla movement in Colombia agreed to stop recruiting children. Other countries have seen the reverse trend, particularly Afghanistan and Syria, where Islamist militants and groups opposing them have intensified their recruitment, training, and use of children.


title: Children in the military

text: In 2003, one estimate calculated that child soldiers participated in about three-quarters of ongoing conflicts. In the same year, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) estimated that most of these children were aged over 15, although some were younger.


title: Children in the military

text: Today, due to the widespread military use of children in areas where armed conflict and insecurity prevent access by UN officials and other observers, it is difficult to estimate how many children are affected. In 2017, Child Soldiers International estimated that several tens of thousands of children, possibly more than 100,000, were in state- and non-state military organisations around the world, and in 2018 the organisation reported that children were being used to participate in at least 18 armed conflicts.


title: Children in the military

text: Despite children's physical and psychological underdevelopment relative to adults, there are many reasons why state- and non-state military organisations seek them out, and why children themselves are often are drawn to join up of their own volition.


title: Children in the military

text: Relative to adults, the neurological underdevelopment of children, including adolescent children, renders them more susceptible to recruitment and also more likely to make consequential decisions without due regard to the risks.


title: Children in the military

text: With these susceptibilities in mind, military marketing to adolescents has been criticised in Germany, the UK, and the US for glamorizing military life while omitting the risks and the loss of fundamental rights.


title: Children in the military

text: Research in the same three countries finds that recruiters disproportionately target children from poorer backgrounds. In the UK, for example, the army finds it easier to attract child recruits from age 16 than adults from age 18, particularly those from poorer backgrounds.


title: Children in the military

text: Once recruited, children are easier than adults to indoctrinate and control, and are more motivated than adults to fight for non-monetary incentives such as religion, honour, prestige, revenge, and duty.


title: Children in the military

text: In many countries growing populations of young people relative to older generations have made children a cheap and accessible resource for military organisations. In a 2004 study of children in military organisations around the world, Rachel Brett and Irma Specht pointed to a complex of factors that incentivise children to join military organisations, particularly:


title: Children in the military

text: The following testimony from a child recruited by the Cambodian armed forces in the 1990s is typical of many children's motivations for joining up:


title: Children in the military

text: Some leaders of armed groups have claimed that children, despite their underdevelopment, bring their own qualities as combatants to a fighting unit, often being remarkably fearless, agile and hardy.


title: Children in the military

text: The global proliferation of light automatic weapons, which children can easily handle, has also made the use of children as direct combatants more viable.


title: Children in the military

text: Child soldiers who survive armed conflict face a markedly elevated risk of debilitating psychiatric illness, poor literacy and numeracy, and behavioural problems. Research in Palestine and Uganda, for example, has found that more than half of former child soldiers showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and nearly nine in ten in Uganda screened positive for depressed mood. Researchers in Palestine also found that children exposed to high levels of violence in armed conflict were substantially more likely than other children to exhibit aggression and anti-social behaviour. The combined impact of these effects typically includes a high risk of poverty and lasting unemployment in adulthood.


title: Children in the military

text: Further harm is caused when armed forces and groups detain child recruits. Children are often detained without sufficient food, medical care, or under other inhumane conditions, and some experience physical and sexual torture. Some are captured with their families, or detained due to one of their family members' activity. Lawyers and relatives are frequently banned from any court hearing.


title: Children in the military

text: While the use of children in armed conflict has attracted most attention, other research has found that military settings present several serious risks before child recruits are deployed to war zones, particularly during training.


title: Children in the military

text: Research from several countries finds that military enlistment, even before recruits are sent to war, is accompanied by a higher risk of attempted suicide in the US, higher risk of mental disorders in the US and the UK, higher risk of alcohol misuse and higher risk of violent behaviour, relative to recruits' pre-military experience.


title: Children in the military

text: Military academics in the US have characterized military training as "intense indoctrination" in conditions of sustained stress, the primary purpose of which is to establish the unconditional and immediate obedience of recruits. The research literature has found that adolescents are more vulnerable than adults to a high-stress environment, particularly those from a background of childhood adversity. It finds in particular that the prolonged stressors of military training are likely to aggravate pre-existing mental health problems and hamper healthy neurological development.


title: Children in the military

text: Military settings are characterized by elevated rates of bullying, particularly by instructors. In the UK between 2014 and 2020, for example, the army recorded 62 formal complaints of violence committed by staff against recruits at the military training centre for 16- and 17-year-old trainee soldiers, the Army Foundation College. Joe Turton, who joined up aged 17 in 2014, recalls bullying by staff throughout his training. For example:Elevated rates of sexual harassment are characteristic of military settings, including the training environment. Between 2015 and 2020, for example, girls aged 16 or 17 in the British armed forces were twice as likely as their same-age civilian peers to report rape or other sexual assault.


title: Children in the military

text: The Convention on the Rights of the Child defines a child as any person under the age of 18. The Paris Principles define a child associated with an armed force or group as:


title: Children in the military

text: The Additional Protocols to the 1949 Geneva Conventions (1977, Art. 77.2), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (2002) all forbid state armed forces and non-state armed groups from using children under the age of 15 directly in armed conflict (technically "hostilities"). This is now recognised as a war crime.


title: Children in the military

text: Most states with armed forces are also bound by the higher standards of the widely ratified Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (OPAC) (2000) and the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention (1999), which forbid the compulsory recruitment of those under the age of 18. OPAC also requires governments that still recruit children (from age 16) to "take all feasible measures to ensure that persons below the age of 18 do not take a direct part in hostilities". In addition, OPAC forbids non-state armed groups from recruiting children under any circumstances, although the legal force of this is uncertain.


title: Children in the military

text: The highest standard in the world is set by the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, which forbids state armed forces from recruiting children under the age of 18 under any circumstances. Most African states have ratified the Charter.


title: Children in the military

text: None of the above treaties either explicitly forbids the "indirect" participation of children in "hostilities", or from contributing to a military operation in a stand-off position (i.e. away from hostilities).


title: Children in the military

text: OPAC requires governments to demobilise children within their jurisdiction who have been recruited or used in hostilities and to provide assistance for their physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration. Under war, civil unrest, armed conflict and other emergency situations, children and youths are also offered protection under the United Nations "Declaration on the Protection of Women and Children in Emergency and Armed Conflict". To accommodate the proper disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of former members of armed groups, the United Nations started the Integrated DDR Standards in 2006.


title: Children in the military

text: Opinion is currently divided over whether children should be prosecuted for war crimes. International law does not prohibit the prosecution of children who commit war crimes, but Article 37 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child limits the punishment that a child can receive: "Neither capital punishment nor life imprisonment without possibility of release shall be imposed for offenses committed by persons below eighteen years of age."


title: Children in the military

text: In the wake of the Sierra Leonean Civil War, the UN mandated the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) to try former combatants aged 15 and older for breaches of humanitarian law, including war crimes. However, the Paris Principles state that children who participate in armed conflict should be regarded first as victims, even if they may also be perpetrators:


title: Children in the military

text: This principle was reflected in the Court's statute, which did not rule out prosecution but emphasised the need to rehabilitate and reintegrate former child soldiers. David Crane, the first Chief Prosecutor of the Sierra Leone tribunal, interpreted the statute in favour of prosecuting those who had recruited children, rather than the children themselves, no matter how heinous the crimes they had committed.


title: Children in the military

text: In the US, prosecutors charged Omar Khadr, a Canadian, for offences they allege he committed in Afghanistan while under the age of 16 and fighting for the Taliban against US forces. These crimes carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment under US law. In 2010, while under torture and duress, Khadr pleaded guilty to murder in violation of the laws of war, attempted murder in violation of the laws of war, conspiracy, two counts of providing material support for terrorism, and spying. The plea was offered as part of a plea bargain, which would see Khadr deported to Canada after one year of imprisonment to serve seven further years there. Omar Khadr remained in Guantanamo Bay and the Canadian government faced international criticism for delaying his repatriation. Khadr was eventually transferred to the Canadian prison system in September 2012 and was freed on bail by a judge in Alberta in May 2015. , Khadr was appealing his US conviction as a war criminal.


title: Children in the military

text: Before sentencing the Special Representative to the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict wrote to the US military commission at Guantanamo appealing unsuccessfully for Khadr's release into a rehabilitation program. In her letter she said that Khadr represented the "classic child soldier narrative: recruited by unscrupulous groups to undertake actions at the bidding of adults to fight battles they barely understand".


title: Children in the military

text: Children's rights advocates were left frustrated after the final text of the convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) did not prohibit the military recruitment of all children under the age of 18, and they began to call for a new treaty to achieve this goal. As a consequence the newly formed Committee on the Rights of the Child made two recommendations: first, to request a major UN study into the impact of armed conflict on children; and second, to establish a working group of the UN Commission on Human Rights to negotiate a supplementary protocol to the convention. Both proposals were accepted.


title: Children in the military

text: Responding to the committee on the Rights of the Child, the UN General Assembly acknowledged "the grievous deterioration in the situation of children in many parts of the world as a result of armed conflicts" and commissioned the human rights expert Graça Machel to conduct a major fact-finding study. Her report, "Impact of Armed Conflict on Children" (1996), was particularly concerned with the military use of younger children, which was killing, maiming, and psychiatrically injuring many thousands every year. It noted:


title: Children in the military

text: Meanwhile, the UN Commission on Human Rights established a working group to negotiate a treaty to raise the legal standard. After a global campaign and complex negotiations, the new treaty was agreed in 2000 as the Optional Protocol to the convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict. The treaty prohibited the direct participation of all children in armed conflict for the first time, while continuing to allow state armed forces (though not non-state armed groups) to recruit children from age 16. The protocol came into force on 12 February 2002.


title: Children in the military

text: The Machel Report led to a new mandate for a Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict (SRSG-CAAC). Among the tasks of the SRSG is to draft the Secretary-General's annual report on children and armed conflict, which lists and describes the worst situations of child recruitment and use from around the world.


title: Children in the military

text: The United Nations Security Council convenes regularly to debate, receive reports, and pass resolutions under the heading "Children in armed conflict". The first resolution on the issue, Resolution 1261, was passed in 1999. In 2004 Resolution 1539 was passed unanimously, condemning the use of child soldiers and mandating the UN Secretary-General to establish a means of tracking and reporting on the practice, known as the Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism.


title: Children in the military

text: The Secretary-General publishes an annual report on children and armed conflict. , his report identified 14 countries where children were widely used by armed groups during 2016 (Afghanistan, Colombia, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Mali, Myanmar, Nigeria, Philippines, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen) and six countries where state armed forces were using children in hostilities (Afghanistan, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, and Syria).


title: Children in the military

text: This section covers the use of children for military purposes today. For historical cases, see History of children in the military.


title: Children in the military

text: In 2003, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated that up to half of children involved with state armed forces and non-state armed groups worldwide were in Africa. In 2004, Child Soldiers International estimated that 100,000 children were being used in state and non-state armed forces on the continent; and in 2008 an estimate put the total at 120,000 children, or 40 percent of the global total.


title: Children in the military

text: The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (1990), which most African states have ratified, prohibits all military recruitment of children aged under 18. Nonetheless, according to the UN, in 2016 children were being used by armed groups in seven African countries (Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan) and by state armed forces in three (Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan).


title: Children in the military

text: International efforts to reduce the number of children in military organisations in Africa began with the Cape Town Principles and Best Practices, developed in 1997. The Principles proposed that African governments commit to OPAC, which was being negotiated at the time, and raise the minimum age for military recruitment from 15 to 18. The Principles also defined a child soldier to include any person under the age of 18 who is "part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or group in any capacity ... including girls recruited for sexual purposes..."


title: Children in the military

text: In 2007, the Free Children from War conference in Paris produced the Paris Principles, which refined and updated the Cape Town Principles, applied them globally, and outlined a practical approach to reintegrating current child soldiers.


title: Children in the military

text: The use of children by armed groups in the Central African Republic has historically been common. Between 2012 and 2015 as many as 10,000 children were used by armed groups in the nationwide armed conflict and children were still being used. The mainly Muslim "Séléka" coalition of armed groups and the predominantly Christian "Anti-balaka" militias have both used children in this way; some are as young as eight.


title: Children in the military

text: In May 2015 at the "Forum de Bangui" (a meeting of government, parliament, armed groups, civil society, and religious leaders), a number of armed groups agreed to demobilize thousands of children.


title: Children in the military

text: In 2016 a measure of stability returned to the Central African Republic and, according to the United Nations, 2,691 boys and 1,206 girls were officially separated from armed groups. Despite this, the recruitment and use of children for military purposes increased by approximately 50 percent over that year, mostly attributed to the Lord's Resistance Army.


title: Children in the military

text: Thousands of children serve in the military of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and various rebel militias. It has been estimated that more than 30,000 children were fighting with various parties to the conflict at the height of the Second Congo War. It was claimed in the film "Kony 2012" that the Lord's Resistance Army recruited this number.


title: Children in the military

text: Currently, the DRC has one of the highest proportions of child soldiers in the world. The international court has passed judgment on these practices during the war. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, one of the warlords in the DRC, has been sentenced to 14 years in prison because of his role in the recruitment of child soldiers between 2002 and 2003. Lubanga directed the Union of Congolese Patriots and its armed wing Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Congo. The children were forced to fight in the armed conflict in Ituri.


title: Children in the military

text: A report published by the Child Soldiers International in 2004 estimated that 200,000 children had been recruited into the country's militias against their will since 1991. In 2017 UN Secretary-General António Guterres commented on a UN report which estimated that over 50 percent of Al-Shabaab's membership in the country was under the age of 18, with some as young as nine being sent to fight. The report verified that 6,163 children had been recruited in Somalia between 1 April 2010 and 31 July 2016, of which 230 were girls. Al-Shabaab accounted for seventy percent of this recruitment, and the Somali National Army was also recruiting children.


title: Children in the military

text: In 2004 approximately 17,000 children were being used by the state armed forces and non-state armed groups. As many as 5,000 children were part of the main armed opposition group at the time, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). Some former child soldiers were sentenced to death for crimes committed while they were soldiers.


title: Children in the military

text: In 2006, children were also recruited from refugee camps in Chad, and thousands were used in the conflict in Darfur. In 2005 the government ratified the OPAC treaty and by 2008 the military use of children had reduced in the country, but both state armed forces and the SPLA continued to recruit and use them. The use of children has continued to diminish, but in 2017 the UN was still receiving reports of children as young as 12 in government forces.


title: Children in the military

text: "The LRA in Uganda became known mainly through the forced recruitment of thousands of children and adolescents who were trained as soldiers or forced to 'marry' members of the rebel group. ... Unlike all other, or earlier, rebel groups in Uganda, the LRA made the violent abduction or enslavement of children (preferably aged between twelve and fourteen) its main method of recruitment and concentrated its activities on attacking the civilian population."


title: Children in the military

text: In 2003, the "Guardian" reported multiple human rights violations by the National Youth Service, a state-sponsored youth militia in Zimbabwe. Originally conceived as a patriotic youth organisation, it became a paramilitary group of youth aged between 10 and 30, and was used to suppress dissent in the country. The organisation was finally banned in January 2018.


title: Children in the military

text: In 2001 the government of Bolivia acknowledged that male children as young as 14 may have been forcibly conscripted into the armed forces during recruitment sweeps. About 40% of the Bolivian army was believed to be under the age of 18, with half of those below the age of 16. , Bolivia invites children to begin their adult conscription early, from age 17.


title: Children in the military

text: In Brazil the local organized crime groups, such as Comando Vermelho, recruit children to sell drugs and commit homicides, as well as to fight with the police and other rival groups. Also the Brazilian militias recruit children to fight in the conflict against Comando Vermelho.


title: Children in the military

text: In Canada, people may join the reserve component of the Canadian Forces at age 16 with parental permission, and the regular component at 17 years of age, also with parental permission. They may not volunteer for a tour of duty until reaching age 18.


title: Children in the military

text: In the Colombian armed conflict, from the mid-1960s to present, one-fourth of non-state combatants have been and still are under 18 years old. In 2004 Colombia ranked fourth in the world for the greatest use of child soldiers. There are currently 11,000–14,000 children in armed groups in the country. In negotiations with the government, armed groups have offered to stop the recruitment of minors as a bargaining chip, but they have not honoured these offers. Bjørkhaug argues that most child soldiers were recruited through some combination of voluntary participation and coercion.


title: Children in the military

text: In 1998 a Human Rights Watch press release indicated that 30 percent of some guerrilla units were made up of children and up to 85 percent of some of the militias, which are considered to serve as a "training ground for future guerrilla fighters", had child soldiers In the same press release it was estimated that some of the government-linked paramilitary units consisted of up to 50 percent children, including some as young as eight years old.


title: Children in the military

text: In 2005 an estimated 11,000 children were involved with left- or right-wing paramilitaries in Colombia. "Approximately 80 percent of child combatants in Colombia belong to one of the two left-wing guerrilla groups, the FARC or ELN. The remainder fight in paramilitary ranks, predominately the AUC." According to P. W. Singer the FARC attack on the Guatape hydroelectric facility in 1998 involved militants as young as eight years old and a 2001 FARC training video depicted boys as young as 11 working with missiles. The group has also taken in children from Venezuela, Panama, and Ecuador.


title: Children in the military

text: The Colombian government's security forces do not officially recruit children as the legal age for both compulsory and voluntary recruitment has been set at 18. However, students were allowed to enroll as cadets in military secondary schools and 16- or 17-year-olds could enter air force or national army training programs, respectively. In addition, captured enemy child combatants were employed by the Colombian military for intelligence gathering purposes in potential violation of legal prohibitions.


title: Children in the military

text: The demobilization efforts targeted toward the FARC in 2016–2017 have provided hope that the conflict will come to an end, limiting the number of children involved in violence. However, other armed groups have yet to be demobilized, and conflict is not yet resolved.


title: Children in the military

text: In Cuba, compulsory military service for both boys and girls starts at age 17. Male teenagers are allowed to join the Territorial Troops Militia prior to their compulsory service.


title: Children in the military

text: In Haiti an unknown number of children participate in various loosely organised armed groups that are engaged in political violence.


title: Children in the military

text: In Mexico an unknown number of children are used by criminal organizations like the Gulf Cartel in the mexican drug war to fight the government and the other rival cartels. Also the Grupos de autodefensa comunitaria recruited some children to defend their villages from the violence of the local crime groups, one of the self-defense groups that recruit soldier children is Coordinadora Regional de Autoridades Comunitarias-Pueblos Fundadores (CRAC-PF) to fought with Los Ardillos, a criminal group split from the Beltrán Leyva Cartel. The battles between CRAC-PF and Los Ardillos caused 53 deaths.


title: Children in the military

text: The government of Paraguay accused the guerrilla groups EPP and the ACA of recruit child soldiers to fight the government in the ongoing insurgency in the northeastern part of the country.


title: Children in the military

text: In the United States 17-year-olds may join the armed forces with the written agreement of parents. approximately 16,000 17-year-olds were being enlisted annually.


title: Children in the military

text: The US Army describes outreach to schools as the 'cornerstone' of its approach to recruitment, and the No Child Left Behind Act gives recruiters the legal right of access to all school students' contact details. Children's rights bodies have criticized the US' reliance on children to staff its armed forces. The committee on the Rights of the Child has recommended that the US raise the minimum age of enlistment to 18.


title: Children in the military

text: In negotiations on the OPAC treaty during the 1990s the US joined the UK in strongly opposing a global minimum enlistment age of 18. As a consequence the treaty specified a minimum age of 16. The US ratified the treaty in 2002 (but U.S. ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child has not happened).


title: Children in the military

text: Per OPAC, US military personnel are normally prohibited from direct participation in hostilities until the age of 18. Still, they are eligible for 'forward deployment', which means that they may be posted to a combat zone to perform support tasks. The committee on the Rights of the Child has called on the US to change this policy and ensure that no minor can be deployed to a forward operating area in a combat zone.


title: Children in the military

text: In 2003 and 2004 approximately 60 underage personnel were deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq in error. The Department of Defense subsequently stated that "the situations were immediately rectified and action taken to prevent recurrence."


title: Children in the military

text: In 2008 President George W. Bush signed the Child Soldiers Protection Act into law. The law criminalizes leading a military force which recruits child soldiers. It also prohibits arms sales to countries where children are used for military purposes. The law's definition of child soldiers includes "any person under 18 years of age who takes a direct part in hostilities as a member of governmental armed forces." Waivers from the act were issued by both the Obama and Trump administrations.


title: Children in the military

text: Military cadets, NCO trainees and technical personnel can enlist in the Bahrain Defence Force from the age of 15.


title: Children in the military

text: During the Iran–Iraq War, male children were drafted into the Basij army where, according to critics of the Iranian government, they "were sent to the front as waves of human shields". Other sources have estimated the total number of all Iranian casualties to be in the 200,000–600,000 range. One source estimates that 3% of the Iran–Iraq War's casualties were under the age of 14.


title: Children in the military

text: There were male Iranian children who left school and participated in the Iran–Iraq War without the knowledge of their parents, including Mohammad Hossein Fahmideh. Iraqi officers claimed that they sometimes captured Iranian child soldiers as young as eight years old.


title: Children in the military

text: William O'Brien, a professor of Georgetown University, wrote about the active participation of Palestinian children in the First Intifada: "It appears that a substantial number, if not the majority, of troops of the intifada are young people, including elementary schoolchildren. They are engaged in throwing stones and Molotov cocktails and other forms of violence." Arab journalist Huda Al-Hussein wrote in a London Arab newspaper on 27October 2000:


title: Children in the military

text: In 2002 a report by Jihad Shomaly for the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers (now Child Soldiers International) said that, "while there are reports of children participating in hostilities, there is no evidence of systematic recruitment by armed groups". In 2004, however, the organisation reported that there were at least nine documented suicide attacks involving Palestinian minors between October 2000 and March 2004, stating:


title: Children in the military

text: In May 2008 a Child Soldiers International report highlighted Hamas and Islamic Jihad for having "used children in military attacks and training" in its Iranian section.


title: Children in the military

text: On 23 May 2005 Amnesty International reiterated its calls to Palestinian armed groups to put an immediate end to the use of children in armed activities: "Palestinian armed groups must not use children under any circumstances to carry out armed attacks or to transport weapons or other material."


title: Children in the military

text: During the Kurdish–Turkish conflict, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has actively recruited and kidnapped children. The organization has been accused of abducting more than 2,000 children by Turkish Security Forces. The independent reports by the Human Rights Watch (HRW), the United Nations (UN) and the Amnesty International have confirmed the recruitment and use of child soldiers by the organization and its armed wings since the 90's. In 2001, it was reported that the recruitment of the children by the organization has been systematic. Several reports have reported about the organization's battalion, called "Tabura Zaroken Sehit Agit", which has been formed mainly for the recruitment of children. It was also reported that the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) had recruited children.


title: Children in the military

text: According to the Turkish Security Forces, the PKK has abducted more than 983 children aged between 12 and 17. More than 400 children have fled from the organization and surrendered to the security forces. The United Nations Children's Fund report, published in 2010, saw the recruitment of the children by the PKK concerning and dangerous.


title: Children in the military

text: In 2016, the Human Rights Watch, accused the PKK of committing war crimes by recruiting child soldiers in the Shingal region of Iraq and in neighboring countries.


title: Children in the military

text: Throughout the Syrian Civil War multiple media outlets including Human Rights Watch have confirmed that the YPG, an organization linked to the PKK, has been recruiting and deploying child soldiers. Despite a claim by the group that it would stop using children, which has been violation of international law, the group has continued the recruitment and use of children.


title: Children in the military

text: In 2018, the annual UN report on children in armed conflict found 224 cases of child recruitment by the People's Protection Units and its women's unit in 2017, an almost fivefold increase from the 2016. Seventy-two of the children, nearly one-third, were girls. The group was also reported to had abducted children to enlist them.


title: Children in the military

text: Many different sides in the Lebanese Civil War used child soldiers. A May 2008 Child Soldiers International report stated that Hezbollah trains children for military services. In 2017, the UN reported that armed groups, suspected to be Islamist militants, were recruiting children in the country.


title: Children in the military

text: During the ongoing Syrian Civil War children have joined groups opposed to Bashar al Assad. In 2012 the UN received allegations of rebels using child soldiers, but said they were unable to verify these. In June 2014 a United Nations report said that the opposition had recruited children in military and support roles. While there seemed to be no policy of doing so, the report said, there were no age verification procedures. Human Rights Watch reported in 2014 that rebel factions have been using children in support and combatant roles, ranging from treating the wounded on battlefields, ferrying ammunition and other supplies to frontlines while fighting raged, to acting as snipers.


title: Children in the military

text: The Turkish government linked think tank SETA withdrew a report detailing the composition of the Syrian National Army as it revealed the use of child soldiers. The Syrian National Army is currently funded by Turkey, who signed the optional protocol to the convention on the rights of the child on the involvement of children in armed conflict 8 September 2000. It was reported that Turkey has deployed child soldiers in the Syrian National Army to Libya according to a report by Al-Monitor, citing sources on the ground. In July 2021, the United States of America added Turkey to the list of countries that implicated in the use of child soldiers, because it used them in Syria and Libya.


title: Children in the military

text: The 2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices mentioned the recruitment of child soldiers from Turkish-supported forces in Syria.


title: Children in the military

text: Kurdish forces have also been accused of using this tactic. In 2015 Human Rights Watch claimed that 59 children, 10 of them under 15 years old, were recruited by or volunteered for the YPG or YPJ since July 2014 when the Kurdish militia leaders signed a Deed of Commitment with Geneva Call.


title: Children in the military

text: President Assad passed a law in 2013 prohibiting the use of child soldiers (anyone under 18), the breaking of which is punishable by 10–20 years of 'penal labour.' Whether or not the law is actually enforced on government's forces has not been confirmed, and there have been allegations of children being recruited to fight for the Syrian government against rebel forces.


title: Children in the military

text: Iranian government is recruiting children from Iran and Afghanistan to fight in the Syrian Civil War on the side of the government forces loyal to Assad.


title: Children in the military

text: U.N. Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy stated in January 2010 that "large numbers" of teenage boys are being recruited in Yemeni tribal fighting. NGO activist Abdul-Rahman al-Marwani has estimated that as many as 500–600 children are either killed or wounded through tribal combat every year in Yemen.


title: Children in the military

text: Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates hired child soldiers from Sudan (especially from Darfur), and Yemen to fight against Houthis during the Yemeni Civil War (2015–present).