The African Child Soilder

Jeffrey stated that “More than 200,000 children worldwide are still used as child soldiers.” This trend is reportedly present mostly in Africa, as generals need to be able to two people for every person that they lose. Moreover, it’s easy to teach kids to something that they can’t tell is right from wrong. After being trained these newly made warriors are trained to kill while being completely stoned or high on a cocaine-gunpowder mix that is given as a drug to them. The fault does not fall upon those trained to kill, but the trainees that put them up to such an awful

Child Soldiers Ishmael Beah once said “My squad is my family, my gun is my provider, and protector, and my rule is to kill or be killed”(Beah 116). Most children live a normal and happy life, but not all children live that way. Some children hold baseball bats while others hold guns larger than they are; some children dodge dodgeballs, others dodge bullets. Most children go home to see their parents or guardians, child soldiers often go “home” to their squads and Lieutenants. Child soldiers can be rehabilitated if civilians and officials aren’t indifferent .

The use of child soldiers have become a normal contribution to armies, especially in countries such as Africa. Although, countries such as Afghanistan, India, and Libya have been using child soldiers since 2011. According to “Children in Conflict: Child Soldiers,” there has been 36 countries involved since 1998. Something needs to be done about this issue due to the fact that thousands of

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.

War, in and of itself, is an atrocity, but it becomes even more abhorrent when children are pulled into the conflict. Unfortunately, some military groups find children useful in the war effort. The wars these children are forced to be part of often leave wounds--both psychological and physical, but these kids can be healed, at least to an extent, and rehabilitated. Children are often used in war because it is easy and efficient to use them as compared to their adult counterparts. For one, children are easy to control, coerce, and indoctrinate.

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.

Suicide bombers, rebel groups, minefield clearers, and soldiers are words used to describe these children in a terrible situation. In places like Afghanistan, Iran, and Guantanamo Bay children as young as 5 years old are apprehended from their families, and are taken to army camps to fight against the U.S-backed government. These children are so innocent, but many think that they need to be arrested for what they are doing. Instead of playing on a playground with their families they are brainwashed, drugged, forced to kill, and poisoned with alcoholic beverages.

Visualize men with guns breaking down your door and pointing them at your family. Now imagine these men taking your children, forcing them to serve in their military force. In only an instant, your children are gone and you are left with no knowledge of the fate of your kids. As terrifying and seemingly impossible as this imagined scenario may be, it is a stark reality for many families in third world countries. Where families fear not if their children will be taken but when those doors will be broken down, and their screaming children will be dragged out through the front door. The parents know that they cannot not stop these men even if they attempt to. Yet, in an unreasonable twist becoming a child soldier is not only a gamble with the reaper, but it is also a chance to survive. Enough food to survive is more or less guaranteed, while back at home the odds of surviving are insurmountably against them. Becoming a child soldier is a double edged sword that is neither ally nor enemy to the children. These children are abused and coerced into staying with the men who ripped them from their families. Those that attempt to escape or resist are torn down brutally in order to be rebuilt, while those that embrace it sacrifice their humanity and risk the onset of psychologically damaging PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Militias and rebel forces, strained on man power, turn to child soldiers as a cheap and readily available replacement source. Trained to become war hardened

This examines how fear had such a big role in being a child soldier, & how fear dictated the child soldiers.

27% of child recruits in the Sierra Leone civil war who were interviewed by Theresa Betancourt’s research team had killed or injured others during the war. 77% saw stabbing and shooting close-ups. “We went from children who were afraid of gunshots to now children who were gunshots”, a dispirited information reported by Ishmael Beah in the article EX-Child soldiers: Shooting became just like drinking a glass of water from CNN. Children learn from adult’s actions. Kids such young ages are more likely to be influenced by the violent actions from their commanders and adult fighters. In effect, they would become vicious human beings.

These children are forced to leave parents and loved ones to join the army for a long period of time. Nick Taussig, author of the article “Innocence lost: The Child Soldiers Forced to Murder,” interviewed a former child soldier named Ojok, and his tragedy childhood. Ojok expressed his feelings and memories of how he was dragged, and beaten, when forced to become a child soldier. Ojok was taken in the middle of the night, without knowing, and with only his shirt and underpants. He suffered walking 12 hours straight, without food, just water, and this horror continued for 3 days.

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.

Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi once said “... no child has ever waged a war; children are victims of war”. Throughout history, wars have continued to go on, but aside from the damage to land and resources, we don’t often look at how the children are affected by the bloodshed. Many times, children are the most impacted by war because they are in the most fragile part of their life. Children growing up during wartime have to struggle with and endure psychological and educational impacts, but somehow, they do grow as a person after it.

“Compelled to become instruments of war, to kill and be killed, child soldiers are forced to give violent expression to the hatreds of adults” (“Child Soldiers” 1). This quotation by Olara Otunnu explains that children are forced into becoming weapons of war. Children under 18 years old are being recruited into the army because of poverty issues, multiple economic problems, and the qualities of children, however, many organizations are trying to implement ways to stop the human rights violation.