UN general secretary Ban Ki-moon estimates the current number of child soldiers to be around 250,000, ethnologist Rita Schäfer said on the occasion of a lecture she held in Vienna on April 27 this year. Child soldiers are mainly being recruited by warlords and leading generals of the army for their political, economical and ideological battles. They profit from the vast availability of small arms weapons such as machine guns, as they can be easily handled by children and juveniles due to their little weight and their ease of operation.