COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — A Sri Lankan court on Wednesday acquitted a rebel-turned-lawmaker of charges that he was involved in the killing of an ethnic Tamil legislator at the height of the...

KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) — The man portrayed as a hero in the movie “Hotel Rwanda” has admitted in court that he backed a rebel group, but denied that he supported any violence or killings.

KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) — A Rwandan court on Thursday denied bail to Paul Rusesabagina, whose story inspired the film “Hotel Rwanda,” saying the terrorism and other charges against him are serious and...

YAMBIO, South Sudan (AP) — When he escaped the armed group that had abducted him at the age of 15, the child soldier swore he'd never go back. But the South Sudanese teen still thinks about...

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Prosecutors urged International Criminal Court judges Thursday to put on trial two alleged leaders of a predominantly Christian militia involved in a bitter conflict...

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — An Indonesian military spokesman said Tuesday that any use of child soldiers by Papuan independence fighters would be a violation of human rights that implicates both the...

YAMBIO, South Sudan (AP) — South Sudan's rival armed groups are forcefully recruiting civilians, including child soldiers, violating a fragile peace deal signed five months ago.

JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — After coming face to face with "unpredictable" gun-waving children almost 25 years ago, the former commander of the failed U.N. peacekeeping mission during the Rwandan genocide dedicated his life to eliminating the use of children as weapons of war.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A Central African Republic militia leader and lawmaker who goes by the nickname Rambo told the International Criminal Court on Friday he was beaten and tortured after his arrest late last month in parliament.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A lawyer defending an alleged commander in Uganda's shadowy Lord's Resistance Army accused of crimes including murder, sexual slavery and using child soldiers cast him Tuesday him as a victim of the rebel group and its brutal leader, Joseph Kony.

GENEVA (AP) — U.N. human rights experts said Tuesday the governments of Yemen, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia may have been responsible for war crimes since Yemen's conflict intensified 3½ years ago, including rape, torture, arbitrary detention and use of child soldiers.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Evidence presented at the International Criminal Court trial of a rebel leader known as "The Terminator" proves his guilt on all 18 charges he faces for his alleged role in deadly attacks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, prosecutors told judges Tuesday in their closing statement.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Liberian man who was accused of lying on his U.S. immigration forms about his ties to his country's war criminals was convicted on Tuesday, a few months after another man was found guilty of similar offenses.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — More than 10,000 children were killed or maimed amid armed conflicts worldwide last year, while others were raped, forced to serve as armed soldiers or caught in attacks on schools and hospitals, a United Nations report said Wednesday.

A total of more than 21,000 violations of children's right were reported in 2017 — a sharp increase from the previous year, according to the annual "Children and Armed Conflict" report.

JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — More than 200 child soldiers were released by armed groups in war-torn South Sudan, part of a series of releases that will see almost 1,000 children freed in the coming months.

An estimated 19,000 children are believed to be in armed forces amid the country's 5-year civil war, which has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions. South Sudan has one of the highest numbers of child soldiers in the world, according to the U.N.

JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — Six African nations are among the 10 worst in the world to be a child in a war zone, a new report says.

The Save the Children report released Thursday looks at factors including attacks on schools, child soldier recruitment, sexual violations, killings and lack of humanitarian access and is based on analysis by the Norway-based Peace Research Institute Oslo.

Here's your look at highlights from the weekly AP photo report, a gallery featuring a mix of front-page photography, the odd image you might have missed and lasting moments our editors think you should see.

This week's images include a building tilted by an earthquake in Taiwan; former child soldiers in South Sudan standing in a UNICEF registration line; and scientists testing gear in the desert of Oman for a future mission to Mars.

YAMBIO, South Sudan (AP) — More than 300 child soldiers have been released by armed groups in South Sudan, the second-largest such release since civil war began five years ago. Over 19,000 children are thought to have been recruited by all sides.

The "laying down of the guns" ceremony for 87 girls and 224 boys on Wednesday was the first step in a process that should see at least 700 child soldiers freed in the coming weeks, the United Nations said.

YAMBIO, South Sudan (AP) — More than 300 child soldiers were released Wednesday by armed groups in South Sudan, the second-largest such release since civil war began five years ago. Over 19,000 children are thought to have been recruited by all sides.

The "laying down of the guns" ceremony for 87 girls and 224 boys was the first step in a process that should see at least 700 child soldiers freed in the coming weeks, the United Nations said.

GULU, Uganda (AP) — A brutal rebellion by the Lord's Resistance Army brought years of suffering to northern Uganda. Tens of thousands of children were abducted, their childhoods lost and communities broken.

Now that the fighting is over, a group of former child soldiers is helping some heal through music therapy.

JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — She had no body to bury, so the grieving mother kneeled in the dirt outside her small hut, recited psalms and simply traced her finger over the uneven earth.

It was December 2015, a year after Nyayan Koang's boy was abducted by government soldiers at the age of just 14 to fight in South Sudan's army. Now Koang was told that her James was dead, from a gunshot to his leg. She was so broken, she could hardly move.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Appeals judges at the International Criminal Court have ruled that the court has the authority to prosecute a Congolese rebel — whose trial is already underway — for the alleged rape and sexual slavery of child soldiers by members of the armed group they were serving in.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A Congolese rebel leader on trial at the International Criminal Court began testifying in his own defense Wednesday, saying that as a young rebel soldier he helped end the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Bosco Ntaganda, an ethnic Tutsi from Rwanda, briefly took the stand in the afternoon at the start of what is expected to be weeks of questioning by his defense lawyer and cross-examination by prosecutors.

PARIS (AP) — Child soldiers, underage sex slaves, orphaned adolescent refugees — France's president and UNICEF are urging the international community to do more to protect the more than 200 million children of today's conflict zones.

"The situation is as urgent as ever," French President Francois Hollande pleaded as he opened a conference in Paris on Tuesday with representatives from 80 countries, decrying "the nightmare that killed these children's innocence."

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has expressed dismay about clashes in the Democratic Republic of Congo he described as "violent and brutal."

In remarks to the faithful in St. Peter's Square on Sunday, Francis singled out for concern the "many children torn from families and schools to be used as soldiers" in the fighting.

The pope spoke days after the United Nations voiced grave concern about reports of more than 100 people killed in recent clashes between Congolese soldiers and fighters.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — An alleged senior commander in the brutal militia of fugitive warlord Joseph Kony pleaded not guilty Tuesday to 70 charges including murder, rape, sexual enslavement and using child soldiers during the group's insurgency in northern Uganda.

Dominic Ongwen, whom prosecutors say is a commander in the Lord's Resistance Army, listened intently and wrote notes as an official at the International Criminal Court in The Hague read out the 70 charges.

BASHIQA, Iraq (AP) — New reports emerged Friday of public killings and other atrocities committed against Mosul residents by Islamic State militants, including dozens of civilians whose bullet-riddled bodies were hung from telephone polls after they were accused of using cellphones to leak information to Iraqi security forces.

JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — President Barack Obama has issued waivers that continue millions of dollars in U.S. military assistance for troubled South Sudan and six other nations where child soldiers have been used, disappointing advocates who say his administration hasn't made curbing the use of children in combat a higher priority.

The waivers circumvent parts of the 2008 Child Soldiers Prevention Act, which is meant to block certain kinds of military assistance.

BEIRUT (AP) — The suicide attacker who detonated his explosives amid an outdoor Kurdish wedding party in southeastern Turkey, killing at least 51 people, was an Islamic State group child as young as 12 years old. The extremist group has a history of using children as weapons, sending them to their death strapped with explosives and putting them on front lines in Iraq and Syria.