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Recommended: Child soldiers
Imagine your children taken away from you by the military and you know you will never see them again. Does it make you flinch? Maybe not, because you know that will never happen, right? Millions of parents in third world countries, in Africa and Asia, experience this nightmare. Everyday children join or are recruited into the military. Any child under the age of 18 is a target. The most vulnerable are children under the age of 10. Why? The younger they are, the easier it is to control them. No children should ever experience anything this inhumane and horrific. Unfortunately, these children are ripped from their innocence and forced into an unimaginable hell.
Life in the military is not easy for anyone. Dedication is essential to be a successful soldier. However, the children forced into the military are frightful and lost. They are trained to be strong. It’s hard to imagine being strong in an environment full of deaths, rape, blood, and weapons. The treatment every child receives is no mercy. If you can’t hold a gun, you are either sentenced to kill or death. Some children are for...
In the novel All quiet on the western front by Erich Maria Remarque one of the major themes he illustrates is the effects of war on a soldier 's humanity. Paul the protagonist is a German soldier who is forced into war with his comrades that go through dehumanizing violence. War is a very horrid situation that causes soldiers like Paul to lose their innocence by stripping them from happiness and joy in life. The symbols Remarque uses to enhance this theme is Paul 's books and the potato pancakes to depict the great scar war has seared on him taking all his connections to life. Through these symbols they deepen the theme by visually depicting war’s impact on Paul. Paul’s books represent the shadow war that is casted upon Paul and his loss of innocence. This symbol helps the theme by depicting how the war locked his heart to old values by taking his innocence. The last symbol that helps the theme are the potato pancakes. The potato pancakes symbolize love and sacrifice by Paul’s mother that reveal Paul emotional state damaged by the war with his lack of happiness and gratitude.
In A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, Beah tells of his past in Sierra Leone as a boy soldier. As a child in the war, Beah and his fellow soldiers committed many acts of violence, including murder. This raises the question as to whether or not child soldiers should be held accountable for their actions. The answer to this question is no, they should not be, because as children, they are easier to manipulate, and their minds have become addled by much exposure to drug use and sleep deprivation.
...be seen as an entity that promotes vile results. However, it is imperative to understand that globalization is multilayered and difficult to fully understand. In the case of child soldiers, globalization has played a pertinent role in unifying international organizations in hopes of finding a solution to this “phenomenon”. On the other hand, although certain international organizations such as United Nations have had a prominent role in advocating against child soldiery, for the following reasons, its attempts are insufficient: it lacks the ability to enforce sanctions established within the international community and it does not do enough to recognize the political, social and economic inequalities that are prevalent in most of these fragile states. Therefore, child soldiery, cannot be eradicated until these issues are dealt with on a collective global scale.
middle of paper ... ... Children within the United States whose parents serve in the military are left to deal with issues of separation and fear. The fear of not knowing when their parents are coming home, and if they’ll come back to the same person they were when they left. Since we are incapable of hiding violence and the act of war from children, it is better to help them understand the meaning behind it and teach them that violence is not always the answer. Children react based on what they see and hear, and if the community and world around them portrays positive things, then the child will portray a positive attitude as well.
In the early 1990s, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) of Sierra Leone, led by former military agents invaded Sierra Leone from Liberia. The RUF initially said they were leading a political movement. Their main goals were to promote liberation, democracy, and freedom. They said they wanted justice and equality for all civilians living in Sierra Leone. In spite of what the RUF said they were doing, they were forceful and left trails of murder in their path. When civilians lacked support for the “political revolution”, the RUF started a decade long war that ravaged the country as a whole. The RUF developed a sense of structured, militarized violence. It created a climate of opportunities for average civilians to obtain cheap weapons. With the greater access to weapons for civilians and the RUF, the politics became more militarized also. As the war waged on, poverty rose and people began to resort to looting of national resources. Laws diminished and seemed to lack any strength against the brute force of the RUF and their civilian followers (Denov, 2010).
“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.
Andy grew up as a military child and he assures, “Being in a military family I can appreciate the veterans and their families more.” (Moore) Military children recognize the importance of sacrificial service that their parent committed. This ensures parents that raising a child in the military can help develop an appreciative, respectful, and prideful child by experiencing and interacting within the military lifestyle. The military provides a strong structure or values and traits that promote a healthy development of characteristics for
So the harsh discipline and the threat of death continue to underscore the training programs of almost all child soldier groups. Works Cited Singer, P. W. Peter Warren: Children at war. New York : Pantheon Books, c2005. Eichstaedt, Peter H., 1947- First kill your family. Chicago, Ill. :
Throughout the world children younger than 18 are being enlisted into the armed forces to fight while suffering through multiple abuses from their commanders. Children living in areas and countries that are at war are seemingly always the ones being recruited into the armed forces. These children are said to be fighting in about 75 percent of the world’s conflicts with most being 14 years or younger (Singer 2). In 30 countries around the world, the number of boys and girls under the age of 18 fighting as soldiers in government and opposition armed forces is said to be around 300,000 (“Child Soldiers: An Overview” 1). These statistics are clearly devastating and can be difficult to comprehend, since the number of child soldiers around the world should be zero. Furthermore, hundreds of thousands adolescent children are being or have been recruited into paramilitaries, militias and non-state groups in more than 85 countries (“Child Soldiers: An Overview” 1). This information is also quite overwhelming. Child soldiers are used around the world, but in some areas, the numbers are more concentrated.
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.
First, I think there shouldn’t be Child Soldiers because their brain hasn’t fully developed, which means they will be scared. For example, when they have to kill someone, they’re going to panic and then run away and get killed. Also, if they kill someone, they’re going to see the blood gushing and would want to go home. For example, they will shoot someone and then see them fall down, then they will go up to see they are “OK” and they will see the blood and try to help them which will get them killed, Or one of their fellow mates will get injured and then they’ ll see the blood and panic and won’t know what to do. My point is they will be scared.
An article by CNN talks about how children that become soldiers are abducted and forced to join the army, it’s not their choice. “(ISIS) abducts boys from Friday prayers at mosques or indoctrinates children as young as 10 to become fighters or suicide bombers” (“U.S. must get Tough over Child Soldiers”). These child soldiers do not have a say in if they would like to serve in armed forces or not. “Child soldiers . . . are abducted, then forced into murdering innocent human beings. They have no choice, if they don't fight their killed, if they fight they kill” (“Summative Essay- Child Soldiers”). These children are being told to kill or be killed. Due to the child soldiers being young ages, they chooses to live. Young soldiers do not wish to fight these battles, but if they do resist they die. Lastly,in one article, the author writes, “‘Al-Shabaab came one morning . . . there was a car waiting outside and they forced the children in . . . Children have been victims of . . . horrific human rights abuses, including stonings, amputations,and killings carried out by armed Islamic groups” (“Children in Somalia Facing War Crimes”). These children have seen terrifying things, and know that if they refuse to join this fight, they will
But in the article “The Challenges of the African Criminal Court in Prosecuting Child Soldiers” it turns out that the recruiters of child soldiers use alcohol and drugs to make the children more compliant to come with them. They also threaten their lives and their families lives if they don’t come with. Sometimes they don’t even ask the child's opinion and just take them from their homes and schools. What this makes clear is that the children didn't want to come and put up a fight but sadly they lost. The children don’t want to go with these people but they also don’t want to lose their families, so they had to choose between two evils. This also shows that the recruiters are the people who should be treated like criminals and not the children because the recruiters took them against their own
The conflict in Sierra Leone began in 1991 and officially ceased January of 2002. Liberia’s conflicts from 1990 to 1997 and 2000 to 2003, as well as Cote d’Ivoire’s conflict in? 2002, seeped across Sierra Leone’s borders as corrupt governments and armed groups supported or fought one another. The wars became an income generation opportunity for child soldiers, and others were forcibly recruited and thrust across borders to fight. The Human Rights Watch found in 2005 that most child soldiers in these wars were promised an income, and few knew what the motivation was for the fighting (Child Soldiers International, 2008).
Are child soldiers victims or perpetrators? Today I have brought some information about child soldiers, send my thoughts on it and how we should handle it. Based on the facts and video I watched, child soldiers are victims because it wasn't exactly their fault, they were forced to and adult soldiers manipulated them to know what's “bad” and what’s good. For example, in the country of Sierra Leone in Africa, the corrupt government has started and still is collecting child soldiers to help fight in the wars there with others, like the U.S. This is happening all around the world, not just Africa.