Child Soldiers Essay

Furthermore, the lack of proper rehabilitation or care programs post-war will also reflect the state of the nations. After the catastrophes of war have subsided, the affected areas are left in not only physical ruin, but also mental and emotional ruin. Child soldiers, who have been separated from their families, are stuck between not knowing if their other family members were

Children Shouldn’t be blamed if they were forced to do something that they didn’t want to. This is called Amnesty because they are not blamed for their actions.

Imagine having to fight in a war you don’t want to fight in, seeing friends and family die all around you, but no matter how far you run you can never escape. Child soldiers in Sierra Leone do not have to imagine this - for them, it is reality. Ishmael Beah, who became a soldier at just age 12, as well as researchers such as Christophe Bayer, Fionna Klasen, Hubertus Adam know too well that the events in the war can never be forgotten. The story Beah told in his memoir A Long Way Gone captures the inhumane events that take place in Sierra Leone and tells of a story that many children have to endure. Sources like Harvard claim “among the 87 war-torn countries...300,000 - 500,000 children are involved with fighting forces as child soldiers.” Many of those children are being forced into the war without any choice at all and having to kill others as well. With this information we’re forced to ask the question: how are these children being affected by the war?

Recently, two million children have died over the past ten years due to becoming a child soldier. A huge deplorable development that has extended recently is the increase of child soldiers. Children are constantly being used as soldiers for various reasons. In some countries, there are more child soldiers than they are adults because children are more compliant. Children have been exploited as soldiers because they are being recruited to do a violent action, it is difficult for them to, later on, assimilate back to their lives, and child soldiers are regularly used in developing countries.

As with any victims of trauma, child soldiers experience post traumatic stress disorders, but they may also experience withdrawal if drugs were used to keep the child soldiers in line. In A Long Way Gone, Beah describes his experience with withdrawal: “My hands had begun to shake uncontrollably and my migraines had returned with a vengeance… No one paid any attention, as everyone was busy going through our own withdrawal stages in different ways” (140) and post traumatic stress disorder: “Whenever I turned on the tap water, all I could see was blood gushing out… Other times, the younger boys sat by rocks weeping and telling us that the rocks were their dead families” (145). The wounds these children gain might be physical as well, as children were often used to clear minefields or as cannon fodder (Child Soldiers

What are child soldiers? Child soldiers are people under eighteen who partake in either a regular or irregular armed group in any way. According to Warchild there are an estimated 250,000 child soldiers in the world and often as a part of their recruitment they are forced to either kill or maim a loved one so that they cannot go back home. In Ishmael Beah’s novel A Long Way Gone (Memoirs of a Boy Soldier) the author recounts his life as a child soldier fighting on the government side in Sierra Leone from age thirteen to sixteen. This paper will be attempting to answer the questions of why certain armed groups use children, why it is wrong to do so, and how people are taking a stand to stop it.

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,

For years children are being forced by commanders into being a soldier, this is due to conflicts between states and civil wars. Some children are even under 10 years old when they are being forced to serve, despite this, in the last 10 years, at least 10 million children are being killed or left seriously injured. Some children are willingly volunteer themselves, as they believe it would be giving some form of income and security. At least 10 or 30% of soldiers are reported to be girls, they are often used for fighting, many of them are abducted or recruited by the force.

Greater attention and action against the worldwide use of child soldiers need to be addressed by the world community because children are being forced out of their homes, traumatized by all of the killings and dying surrounding them and they are being starved and beaten. Today, there are thousands of children involved in these armed jobs all around the world. There is an estimated 3,000 children, many under 16, including 500 girls in the army. (“Child Soldiers”)

Many countries are now recruiting children to join their forces. It is mostly countries in Southern Africa that are using these tactics. Child soldiers have been around for many years, but the problems it is causing is just now coming to the attention of government officials.

“Children often volunteer because their family members have been gunned down by paramilitaries or other groups,” said Marco Puzon of UNICEF East Asia about the armed conflict in the Philippines (8). Of course child soldiers might be doing this due to their families dying, but why turn around and do the same thing to other people's family. They had a choice and they made the one that could ruin peoples lives. “Child soldiers are often exposed to extreme levels of violence that result in lifelong emotional and psychological scars,”(8) says Tom Malinowski. Malinowski proves a point.

Child soldiers have been used all over the world throughout history; even today, things have not changed in countries in East Africa. Ugandan children are still being recruited to fight the wars of adults. In 2012, there was a viral movement to bring awareness of the child soldiers under Joseph Kony’s command. The phrase “Kony 2012” was plastered all over various social media outlets by an organization named Invisible Children, or IC for short (Karlin 256). Kony 2012 was ignited from a short video centered on Kony’s army called the Lord’s Resistance Army, also known as the LRA, which consisted mostly of kidnapped children (Gould 207). The use of child soldiers is not just reduced to the LRA. Kids are being brought to arm all over Uganda; it is most common in Northern Uganda. Countless children have been forced to do things way beyond their years, for a fight that isn’t theirs. The effects of the experiences on child soldiers are widespread as well as deeply rooted.

Recruitment and use of children in war is one of the six grave violations against children in situations of conflict. Currently, there are over 300,000 child soldiers being exploited in battle, while six million have been gravely injured or are now permanently disabled. Additionally, there are about 20 million boys and girls that have been displaced and are refugees in surrounding countries due to the gross violations of conflict and human rights. The role of children in armed conflict is not restricted to direct participation in warfare, but includes boys and girls in support functions that ultimately are a bigger risk and hardship than combat.

Child soldiers have become very common in places of constant war or combat. With the need for more soldiers as others die off, the juvenile population in places such as West Africa and the Middle East is plentiful and available. Military recruiters in these regions specifically look into children because of their “immaturity and basic curiosity which makes them susceptible” and easily influenced (Somasundaram 1269). Commonly, child soldiers don’t have a choice if they want to be recruited or not because they are usually trapped (by socioeconomics or other factors) and forced to participate. In war times, the country of recruitment is usually in chaos to begin, and child removal from families is effortless for recruiters. Once brought into the training camps where propaganda is well presented, children immediately feel scared, a result of the detachment from their families. Recruiters often feed detrimental information to the children, which typically includes certainty of family deaths and subsequent threats of the death of loved ones which “create a sense of fear, frustration, hopelessness, and general discontent” (Somasundaram 1269). The overload of emotions and inexperience causes children to immediately look to re-fulfill the authority figure in their lives (which was once their family) in order to regain a sense of comfort; similarly to the

Around 120,000 adolescent children are now engaged in conflicts throughout Africa (“Child Soldiers: An Overview” 4). In Sudan, for instance, thousands of children, some as young as 12, were recruited against their will into separatist and government groups (“Child Soldiers: An Overview” 5). Thousands more children have been enlisted into the armed forces throughout Asia and the Pacific. The most significant numbers are in Afghanistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and recently, Cambodia. Myanmar, a country in Asia, has some of the most child soldiers throughout the world, with children being recruited into both non-government and government armed forces (“Child Soldiers: An Overview” 6). The number of child soldiers has been decreasing annually, but these children are still being taken against their will.