Child Soldiers Persuasive Speech

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“Mama!” the crying boy screamed as he was flung around the shoulder of a tall man with a gun slung around his other shoulder. His mother painfully watched her son being dragged away. She continually told herself it was for his own wellbeing and that he could've died if he was left with her. The boy screamed and screamed, not understanding why his mom was just quietly watching in the distance, doing nothing. This is happening to thousands of children all over the world. Children who are forced to fight in wars when they want nothing to do with it. These children are then manipulated into committing serious war crimes. This situation has caused an ongoing debate, should child soldiers be prosecuted for their war crimes? To many, child soldiers …show more content…

This is usually do to the parents’ regretful choice or simply just being a vulnerable child that is taken in the night, which occurred to Ojok Charles. Most of us can't even imagine the feeling of being dragged to a military base and seeing our parents’ crying faces get farther and farther away, knowing that it was their life changing choice, possibly even mistake. We can't imagine being awaken in the middle of the night by dangerous men that take us away from our homes that we might never see again because we probably haven't experienced it and have no idea what these child soldiers are going through, so we feel sympathetic toward them. According to Jeffrey Gettleman, a New York Times writer in Somalia, “…hunger and poverty drive parents to sell their children into service,” (2010). Therefore, the children aren't choosing to fight, they may be sold into war, which occurs to many children in poor countries. Some situations may even be darker than this. For example, rather than your parents giving consent for fighting in the war, you are abducted and never see your parents’ faces again. Some children may choose to fight, but most do it out of vulnerability and food and shelter necessities and don't think about the outcome of their choice. Still, the large majority of child soldiers don't choose to fight or don't want to. Ojok Charles, a former child soldier for the Lord’s Resistance Army, told Nick Taussig that …show more content…

It's difficult to forget the intense crimes these children committed, but you must remember that it is often not their choice. Specifically, in Ishmael Beah’s interview, a former child soldier from Sierra Leone, on The Hour by the CBC, he claimed that, “…there is always ways of killing people in front of you to desensitize you, you are given more drugs after that,” (2007). Rather than children just deciding to commit war crimes, their commanders drug them and use tactics to make them lose human emotion, so the children aren’t freely making decisions, but are being manipulated and controlled to do so. Many child soldiers can relate to Ishmael Beah because they didn't just openly decide to commit war crimes, they were forced. Beah also said that the manipulation didn't stop after he was rescued. He claimed he wanted to fight the people at his rehabilitation facility that were just trying to help him because he lost trust for anyone due to the brainwashing. Johannesburg, an IRIN reporter, also said that, “[Children] lack the mental maturity and judgement to express consent or to fully understand the implications of their actions…and are pushed by their adult commanders into perpetrating atrocities…” (2011). This piece shows how children don't have the mental capability of understanding the outcome of their dangerous decisions. The horrific commanders then prey on

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