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Granted Amnesty Research Paper

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Recently there has been a lot of talk about child soldiers, and with that talk comes the tough question of whether or not they should be granted amnesty. There is plenty of evidence for both sides of the argument, but by far there is more reason to believe that they should be granted amnesty.
First, one of the major reasons why child soldiers should be granted amnesty is that they often have no choice but to fight. Sometimes the children are given a ‘choice’ to fight or leave safety, however as Ishmael Beah said during an interview with Harry Smith, that appeared on CBS “Sunday Morning”, “That may seem like a choice to some but as soon as a few left they were shot down.” This shows that when they are brought in the are forced to fight or die. …show more content…

Being the victim of your own crime or even another's should be punishment enough without extra persecution. One of the children who was convicted of a crime that they were also the victim of is Omar Khadr, and is situation is described by Andrea Persaw in The Daily Beast “As I sat watching the sentencing hearing at Guantanamo Bay of Omar Khadr, a former child soldier, I wondered how his being detained here for eight years without trial could actually be used against him,”(Prasow, 2010). It states later that he was charged with violation of the laws of war, but he was also injured in the firefight when the incident happened. There are many other cases like Omar, where a child was put into service and was the victim of a crime, and the children should not be prosecuted because they committed a crime, when they were forced to and often a victim of countless others. People on the other side may counter this by saying that they still committed a crime and therefore should be punished, I agree with this claim up to a point, they should be persecuted, but they should be exempt if they have been harmed because of the

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