Child Soldiers: A Plea for Amnesty

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Did you know there are kids out there as young as nine, being abused and drugged to the point where they are told to hate on americans and kill people in war? This is a daily routine for any child soldier all around the world. These children are taken in at a young age and are put into war as an unofficial soldier. These kids are treated so terrible by their commanders and fellow soldiers that they can become a threat to society. When they’re finally freed from being a soldier, many are put on trial for whether they should receive amnesty for their crimes or not. In this case, child soldiers should be given amnesty for their crimes since they were forced into the war, drugged, and abused. To start, child soldiers should be given amnesty …show more content…

Many people believe this and I recognize why, but on the other hand, child soldiers should not be locked away and actually be put into rehab so they become less of a danger. Many citizens also think, child soldiers should be locked away since all of their actions as an illegal soldier were indeed, illegal. This would make sense if they chose to join as an illegal soldier, but what they didn’t choose though was whether they were forced into doing all of these illegal crimes with drugs and alcohol stuffed in them. So why lock them away for doing something they had no control over doing? Finally, it has been said by many people that child soldiers are exact replicas of child criminals. For example, “Child soldiers are no different from child criminals. Child soldiers have been responsible for some of the most brutal and violent acts in wartime. In Sierra Leone child soldiers committed acts of rape, mutilation and mass killings of civilians” (INSERT author). To reinforce what was said before, these kids had no control over what they were doing! They were just trying to defend their drugged, abused, and unprotected bodies from getting injured in battle. Imagine you were a child soldier in battle. They drugged you up before hitting the fields. You see a large man with a gun bigger than yours. Do you fight back, or just stand there and let him kill

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