The original content of Democracy Now! Headlines appears under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 License (United States). For more, including their other shows and media, visit www.democracynow.org. June 15, 2010 US Taxpayers May Be Funding Child Soldiers in Somalia ----------------------------------------------------- The New York Times is reporting the Somali government may be using US tax dollars to pay hundreds of child soldiers, some as young as nine years old. According to the United Nations, the Somali government is among the “most persistent violators” of sending children into war. The United States and Somalia are the world’s only two countries not to have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits the use of soldiers younger than fifteen. .