Minors detained in the War on Terror

The United States has disputed the number of minors detained in the global War on Terror.

Elaine Chao, the US Secretary of Labor, has spoken about the responsibility to give child soldiers special treatment and to provide help for them to re-integrate into society. She announced a $3 million program to help re-integrate child-soldiers in Afghanistan into Afghan society.

However, the Department of Defense did not follow the policy Secretary Chao cited. They stated that they only considered a captive they suspected had been a combatant to be a minor if he or she were under sixteen years old.

Three children who had been detained with adults, and treated and interrogated as if they were adults, at the Bagram Collection Point were provided with more humane conditions at Camp Iguana. But half a dozen teenagers who should have been considered minors even by the DoD's more stringent standards were not only detained with adults, and not provided with schooling, but reported being punished by long periods in isolation and subjected to abusive interrogation.

On May 15, 2006 the Department of Defense exhausted its legal appeals and published a list of the names, ages, or estimated dates of birth of all the detainees who had been detained in military custody in the Guantanamo Bay detainment camps.

May 2008 report to the United Nations
On May 15, 2008 the American Civil Liberties Union published a report that the Bush Presidency had submitted to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. The report stated that the USA had apprehended 2500 juveniles—2400 of them in Iraq. The report stated that a total of ten juveniles had been held in the Bagram Theater Detention Facility. The report stated that a total of eight juveniles had been held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps.

Sandra Hodgkinson the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs defended the report, claiming "...the lower figure was based on the best information in U.S. databases."