“This is how wars are fought now: by children, traumatized, hopped-up on drugs, and wielding AK-47s” (Beah). Innocent, vulnerable, and intimidated. These words describe the more than 300,000 children in nations throughout the world coerced into combat. As young as age seven, boys and girls deemed child soldiers participate in armed conflict, risking their lives and killing more innocent others. While many individuals recollect their childhood playing games and running freely, these children will remember “playing” with guns and running for their lives. Many children today spend time playing video games like Modern Warfare, but for some children, it is not a game, it is reality. Although slavery was abolished nearly 150 years ago, the act of forcing a child into a military position is considered slavery and is a continuously growing trend even today despite legal documents prohibiting the use of children under the age of 18 in armed conflict. Being a child soldier does not merely consist of first hand fighting but also work as spies, messengers, and sex slaves which explains why nearly 30 percent of all child soldiers are girls. While the use and exploitation of these young boys and girls often goes unnoticed by most of the world, for those who have and are currently experiencing life as a child soldier, such slavery has had and will continue to have damaging effects on them both psychologically and physically.
In order to understand the effects that come with being a child soldier, one must first understand how a child ends up in such a position. To three teenage boys living in a small Indian village, the hope of a better life for themselves and their families as well as the affirmation of employment seemed promising. So pr...
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...ild Soldiers Become Whole Again.
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As Garbarino recognizes, the effects of war and such violence is something that sticks with a child and remains constant in their everyday lives. The experiences that children face involving war in their communities and countries are traumatic and long lasting. It not only alters their childhood perspectives, but it also changes their reactions to violence over time. Sadly, children are beginning to play more of a major role in wars in both the United States and other countries.... ...
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Capturing children and turning them into child soldiers is an increasing epidemic in Sierra Leone. Ishmael Beah, author of the memoir A Long Way Gone, speaks of his time as a child soldier. Beah was born in Sierra Leone and at only thirteen years old he was captured by the national army and turned into a “vicious soldier.” (Beah, Bio Ref Bank) During the time of Beah’s childhood, a civil war had erupted between a rebel group known as the Revolutionary United Front and the corrupt Sierra Leone government. It was during this time when the recruitment of child soldiers began in the war. Ishmael Beah recalls that when he was only twelve years old his parents and two brothers were killed by the rebel group and he fled his village. While he and his friends were on a journey for a period of months, Beah was captured by the Sierra Leonean Army. The army brainwashed him, as well as other children, with “various drugs that included amphetamines, marijuana, and brown brown.” (Beah, Bio Ref Bank) The child soldiers were taught to fight viciously and the effects of the drugs forced them to carry out kill orders. Beah was released from the army after three years of fighting and dozens of murders. Ishmael Beah’s memoir of his time as a child soldier expresses the deep struggle between his survival and any gleam of hope for the future.
These are the words of a 15-year-old girl in Uganda. Like her, there are an estimated 300,000 children under the age of eighteen who are serving as child soldiers in about thirty-six conflict zones (Shaikh). Life on the front lines often brings children face to face with the horrors of war. Too many children have personally experienced or witnessed physical violence, including executions, death squad killings, disappearances, torture, arrest, sexual abuse, bombings, forced displacement, destruction of home, and massacres. Over the past ten years, more than two million children have been killed, five million disabled, twelve million left homeless, one million orphaned or separated from their parents, and ten million psychologically traumatized (Unicef, “Children in War”). They have been robbed of their childhood and forced to become part of unwanted conflicts. In African countries, such as Chad, this problem is increasingly becoming a global issue that needs to be solved immediately. However, there are other countries, such as Sierra Leone, where the problem has been effectively resolved. Although the use of child soldiers will never completely diminish, it has been proven in Sierra Leone that Unicef's disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration program will lessen the amount of child soldiers in Chad and prevent their use in the future.
Many child soldiers are taken away from their families, majority of them being taken away after school or just stolen from their own homes (O’neill, 2007. pg.1). Kids tend to not fight back because they don’t want to risk their
In the article “Should child soldiers be prosecuted for their crimes?” The Children and Justice During and in the Aftermath of Armed Conflict report says “Children are often desired as recruits because they can be easily intimidated and indoctrinated. They lack the mental maturity and judgment to express consent or to fully understand the implications of their actions… and are pushed by their adult commanders into perpetrating atrocities,” This shows that because kids have brains that aren’t developed all the way they become targets to recruiters because they don’t know what’s right and wrong and can be tricked into joining the
“An estimated 300,000 children serve as child soldiers around the world today. Their average age is 14. Forty percent of child soldiers are girls.” (Kozak, 2014). In many instances children are directly involved in the conflicts on the front lines. With technology advancing at a quick rate, weaponry is easy enough for a 10 year old girl to carry and operate. “In the past, children were not particularly effective as front-line fighters since most of the lethal hardware was too heavy and cumbersome for them to manipulate...a child with an assault rifle, a Soviet-made AK-47 or an American M-16, is a fearsome match for anyone,” (United Nations Children’s Fund, 1996). Direct involvement is not their only position. A common job is acting as a porter/messenger carrying many heavy loads all day, like weapons, ammunition, and injured fellow soldiers. Other jobs include lookouts, spies, cooks, etc. Children are also used to perform acts of terror towards their enemies. An example is a suicide bomber, a sort of ‘kamikaze’ as it were. Girls are extremely vulnerable in the regard that they are used as sex slaves and become ‘wives’ to the soldiers and commanders (United Nations,
Did you know that human rights experts estimate that more than 200,000 children worldwide are used as soldiers?(Jeffrey Gettleman) These children are prosecuted for the crimes they committed, are forced to fight against their own will, and can be mentally and physically affected afterwards. There may be some conditions where kids choose to go out everyday and kill people, but when you think about, these children are brainwashed with drugs and alcohol by their leader, causing them to commit crimes against humanity without even realizing. As you listen to this, please understand that child soldiers across the world, are not at fault.
A child soldier is anyone under the age of eighteen who is a member of government armed forces or any other armed group. Child soldiers should not be given amnesty, therefore, they should be prosecuted. This is because they have as much responsibility for their actions as everyone else, and most kids volunteer to become soldiers out of patriotism or desire to average the death of their families.
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