Imagine waking up in cold sweats, hearing screams of plea in your dreams, dreading having to wake up every single day knowing that you will have to take away innocent lives that day. Well, for some kids in Africa, this is a sad, twisted reality. According to the United Nations Children Funds, known as UNICEF, defines a child soldier as “any child- boy or girl- under eighteen years of age, who is a part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity.”(Kaplan, cfr.org) For Africa, this is a very problematic area since many children are often part of a rebel group or even part of the government army. Under international law, the participation of children under 18 armed is generally prohibited, and the recruitment and use of children under 15 is a federal crime. (amnesty.org) An estimate of about 250,000 child soldiers are used around the world today and nearly 40% of child soldiers are girls. (warchild.org) The following countries have reported to have child soldiers since 2011: Afghanistan, Colombia, India, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Mali, Pakistan, Thailand, Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and more. (dosomething.org) Children combatants aren’t a new practice either; it has been found that child soldiers have been in battlefields throughout history. An example would be the Hitler Youth during the closing days of World War II. Also Africa having AIDS as an epidemic disease, this leads to many orphaned children as much as 40 million by 2010. (Kaplan, cfr.org)
You might ask your self, why the use of child soldiers? Children have been known to be extremely loyal. Most children are easily manipulated and can be brainwashed easily as well. Since they are small, some army groups barely feed the ...
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"Children as Soldiers." Children as Soldiers. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Mar. 2014.
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Kaplan, Eben. "Child Soldiers Around the World." Council on Foreign Relations. Council on Foreign Relations, 02 Dec. 2005. Web. 14 Mar. 2014.
Staff, NPR. "A Former Child Soldier Imagines 'Tomorrow' In Sierra Leone." NPR. NPR, 9 Jan. 2014. Web. 14 Mar. 2014.
Thompson, G. (2003, Mar 21). Young, hopeless and violent in the new south africa. New York Times (1923-Current File).
Wessells, Mike. "Sierra Leone: Child Soldiers." Sierra Leone: Child Soldiers. N.p., Nov.-Dec. 97. Web. 14 Apr. 2014.
The Sierra Leone Civil War was a savage conflict that would rage for over a decade, claiming the lives of 300,000 and displacing 2.5 million civilians. The Bite of the Mango and A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier are firsthand accounts of children affected by the war. Mariatu Kamara had her hands severed and was left for dead. Ishmael Beah was conscripted by the government army to fight the rebel forces. Ishmael and Mariatu were both victims of the bloody Sierra Leone civil war, however their journeys to safety were vastly different.
Think about how your life was when you were ten. For most people, the only worries were whether you finished your homework and if you’ve been recently updated for new games. Unfortunately, in Sierra Leone, kids at the age of ten were worried about if that day was the only day they’d be able to breathe. The cause of one of this devastating outcome is Sierra Leone’s Civil War. This war was a long bloody fight that took many lives and hopes of children and families.
There was a war in Sierra Leone, Africa, from 1991 to 2002 where a rebel army stormed through African villages amputating and raping citizens left and right (“Sierra Leone Profile”). Adebunmi Savage, a former citizen of Sierra Leone, describes the reality of this civil war: In 1996 the war in Sierra Leone was becoming a horrific catastrophe. Children were recruited to be soldiers, families were murdered, death came easily, and staying alive was a privilege. Torture became the favorite pastime of the Revolutionary United Front rebel movement, which was against the citizens who supported Sierra Leone’s president, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah.
“Child Soldiers Global Report 2001- Sierra Leone.” refworld. Child Soldiers International, 2001. Web. 4 Dec. 2013.
...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.
The consequences of Sierra Leone civil war are children like Ishmael and his friends “by pass villages by walking through the nearby bushes” (Beach 37). By hiding behind bushes and sneaking by villages that is how they “would be safe and avoid causing chaos” (Beah 37). This civil war consequences were having people not only to be living in fear but fear of being caught or be in a village that gets under attack. Another consequence was losing loved ones, friends, and neighbors. But the final consequence was turning children and teenagers into child soldiers. (word count
There is no exact known number of children currently being utilised in warfare worldwide. The issue of the military use of children is so widespread that no figure can be calculated, although it is estimated that there are currently over 250,000 child soldiers across the world. Many are drugged and brainwashed into murder, many are forced to sever all ties with their family or watch them die. Most are faced with a simple choice: kill or be killed. Although the notion of child soldiers is vastly alien to contemporary Australian society, it is a reality in many parts of the world.
Zack-Williams, A.B. (2001). Child Soldiers in the Civil War in Sierra Leone. Review of African Political Economy, 28 (87), 73–82.
Wells, Karen C.. "Children and youth at war." Childhood in a global perspective. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2009. 152. Print.
Child soldier is a worldwide issue, but it became most critical in the Africa. Child soldiers are any children under the age of 18 who are recruited by some rebel groups and used as fighters, cooks, messengers, human shields and suicide bombers, some of them even under the aged 10 when they are forced to serve. Physically vulnerable and easily intimidated, children typically make obedient soldiers. Most of them are abducted or recruited by force, and often compelled to follow orders under threat of death. As society breaks down during conflict, leaving children no access to school, driving them from their homes, or separating them from family members, many children feel that rebel groups become their best chance for survival. Others seek escape from poverty or join military forces to avenge family members who have been killed by the war. Sometimes they even forced to commit atrocities against their own family (britjob p 4 ). The horrible and tragic fate of many unfortunate children is set on path of war murders and suffering, more nations should help to prevent these tragedies and to help stop the suffering of these poor, unfortunate an innocent children.
The lack of parenting during the civil war in Sierra Leone is a major cause that leads to the use of child soldiers during the war. The outbreak of the war in Sierra Leone caused everyone to run for their lives, leaving behind loved ones. Due to the sudden outbreak, many children were split apart from their parents leaving them abandoned. Wen the war began “fathers had come running from their workplaces, only to stand in front of their empty houses with no indication of where their families had gone. Mothers wept as they ran towards schools, rivers and water taps to look for their children. Children ran home to look for their parents who were wandering the streets in search of them. As the gunfire intensified, people gave up looking for their loved ones and ran out of town” (Beah 9). Ishmael realizes that he will be alone without his family and begins to feel as if a part of his is lost. As for the separation of families, the children in Sierra Leone were forced to make their own sensible decisions in order to stay alive during that time. Young children who lost their families were brainwashed into believing that fighting in the war was the right thing to do. Correspondingly, the lack of parenting during this difficult...
Taylor, Rupert. “The Plight of Child Soldiers.” Suite 101. Media Inc., 11 May 2009. Web. 15 Feb. 2011. .
Capturing children and turning them into child soldiers is an increasing epidemic in Sierra Leone. Ishmael Beah, author of the memoir A Long Way Gone, speaks of his time as a child soldier. Beah was born in Sierra Leone and at only thirteen years old he was captured by the national army and turned into a “vicious soldier.” (Beah, Bio Ref Bank) During the time of Beah’s childhood, a civil war had erupted between a rebel group known as the Revolutionary United Front and the corrupt Sierra Leone government. It was during this time when the recruitment of child soldiers began in the war. Ishmael Beah recalls that when he was only twelve years old his parents and two brothers were killed by the rebel group and he fled his village. While he and his friends were on a journey for a period of months, Beah was captured by the Sierra Leonean Army. The army brainwashed him, as well as other children, with “various drugs that included amphetamines, marijuana, and brown brown.” (Beah, Bio Ref Bank) The child soldiers were taught to fight viciously and the effects of the drugs forced them to carry out kill orders. Beah was released from the army after three years of fighting and dozens of murders. Ishmael Beah’s memoir of his time as a child soldier expresses the deep struggle between his survival and any gleam of hope for the future.
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.
25. IRIN, "Sierra Leone: Child Soldier Rehabilitation Programme Runs out of Cash," IRIN Humanitarian News and Analysis, last modified July 22, 2003, accessed May 20, 2014, http://www.irinnews.org/report/45097/sierra-leone-child-soldier-rehabilitation-programme-runs-out-of-cash.