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Essay about child labor during the war
Essay about child labor during the war
Essay about child labor during the war
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Imagine yourself being 10 years young. You are taken from your home. The person who takes you away, hands you a gun and tells you that you must shoot at everyone who isn't of their group. If you don't follow their rules, you're beaten and denied food. What would you do? Would you kill to survive? You don't know whats going on, you're just a child. Children Soldiers have been around for a very long time. The earliest references to children being involved in wars come from antiquity. It was customary for youths in the mediterranean basin to serves as aids, charioteers and amour bearers to adult warriors. This practice can also be found in the bible, Davids service to King Saul. Using children as soldiers not only affects the children themselves, …show more content…
They need fewer resources such as smaller weapons and equipment. Children often join the armed forces because of economic situations or social pressures. When children join they think that they will offer more income, food or security. Often children are recruited by force, abduction or under threat of penalty. Kids are often abducted from their homes and taken from their families. Many families that are without any sort of income, job, or are without food. This may encourage their children to join so they will have at least something to eat. Kids that are vulnerable to recruitment are poor, separated from families, displaced from home, living in a war zone or if they have limited education. Military leaders prefer younger children because of their inability and fearlessness to estimate the dimensions of danger. They also tend to listen, and making them listen is easy. Children who choose to fight often think that they are helping protect themselves and their family. Children who involve themselves in fighting have no or limited access to any information regarding their consequences for joining. When they join they don't often think about the consequences, they are thinking about survival, food to eat and the security. Children don't comprehend the forces that they are dealing with when they join, and often don't know the long term affects
As defined by Timothy Webster, author of Babes with Arms: International Law and Child Soldiers, a child soldier is “any person under the age of eighteen who is or has been associated with any kind of regular or irregular armed group, including those who serve as porters, spies, cooks, messengers and including girls recruited for sexual purposes (Webster, 2007, pp.230). As this definition reveals, a child soldier is more than simply a child with a gun. It is estimated that there are approximately 300,000 children under the age of 18, being used as soldiers in 33 conflicts currently, and this figure continues to rise (Webster, 2007, pp.227). Similarly, in 1999 it was estimated that more than 120,000 children, under the age of 18, were used as soldiers to fight ...
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.
...t they are easy to access; they are low cost, and easy to manipulate. When children are on the battlefield fighting for their lives, they become more violent and tend to do more killing than usual, raping girls, and torturing others. The armies, militia, and rebel groups recruit the children and separate the community to resist the conscription. The child is being forced to commit murder and turn against their family and friends because this proves that the child is recognized and implicated in the violence they have created. Child soldiers are known to be criminals, traitors, or even terrorists, so they would be held in military prisons. When either girl or boys are captured they go through abusive interrogation procedure, torture, isolations, rape, and death threats. These are the consequences of children being on the battlefield and shortly after being captured.
Children have been used as soldiers in many events, however two that stand out are the use of child soldiers in the Sierra Leone civil war and the drug cartels in Mexico. Most people agree that forcing children to be soldiers is wrong and not humane. The people that make them soldiers transform them into belligerent beings by force. Child soldiers of drug cartels and the armies of Sierra Leone were threatened with their lives if they didn’t become soldiers. The lives of these child soldiers are lives that nobody should live. Situations in both countries are horrible because of the high number of youngsters that are forced to take part in drug use and are transformed into extremely belligerent and inhumane people; in addition they are deprived
First of all the child soldiers/suicide bombers are located in many different continents all around the world. The majority is based in the Middle East and Africa: Burma, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Congo, Liberia, and also Sierra Leone (British Broadcasting Corporation World Watch). Being poor, disconnected from their families, or get a poor to no education make them more likely to become victims (Human Rights Watch). Girls make up an estimated 10-30% of the child soldiers in Uganda and Nepal (Do Something). Some join because they are too young to realize the consequences that war may bring upon them, and want to be a part of the army because of the weapons they use and uniforms they wear. Being bathed, fed, and properly clothed is another reason for them wanting to be a part of these groups, in which they would not receive during their every-day lives (British Broadcasting Corporation World Watch). The children that survive the war are captured by the rebel groups and are then converted into child soldiers, along with the kids who had just...
A child soldier is a child who has been abducted and forced to fight in a conflict in which they would not typically be involved in. Child soldiers have their relatively normal childhood taken away if they are abducted. Instead of playing with the other children, they are forced to murder them. Many are forced to watch the people they once knew be tortured and they may even take part in the act. Child soldiers are internationally banned, yet many countries still utilize them to this day. Uganda is one country in which they are used. The use of children in armed combat in Uganda sheds light on the fact that the concept of power is indeed a double-edged sword.
“Children, you call them? They can pull a trigger just as well as veterans …” (Colonel Marcus Cullen, War Hammer 40,000). People should question the world in which they live when a child is forced to become a soldier. Especially when the children are under the age of 18, they should not be required to fight. Many children who are demanded to fight are taken from their families. These young adolescents are mistreated; malnurtured, abused and the girls are usually used for sexual purposes.
Those who are forcibly recruited are forced to fight and they get taken away from their families. Those who joined willingly probably didn’t join because they want to, but because they wanted to escape hunger and poverty. When they are forced to join, they have to follow orders, and in some cases if you don’t do what you’re told to do, you get killed. They get recruited because they can easily be intimidated, and since most lack mental maturity, they tend to be manipulated easily. Others
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 age of 10 when they are forced to serve. Physically vulnerable and easily intimidated, children typically become 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 with no access to school, driving them from their homes, or separating them from family members, many children feel that rebel groups are their best chance for survival.
Child soldiers are a prevalent issue in the international community and must be stopped. Whether kidnapped, enslaved, or volunteered: child soldiers are a clear violation of human rights. The United Nations are actively working to eradicate the issue by creating programs such as the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) which is a treaty that contains three Optional Protocols, the first of which is aimed at protecting children’s rights.
Throughout the world children younger than 18 are being enlisted into the armed forces to fight while suffering through multiple abuses from their commanders. Children living in areas and countries that are at war are seemingly always the ones being recruited into the armed forces. These children are said to be fighting in about 75 percent of the world’s conflicts with most being 14 years or younger (Singer 2). In 30 countries around the world, the number of boys and girls under the age of 18 fighting as soldiers in government and opposition armed forces is said to be around 300,000 (“Child Soldiers: An Overview” 1). These statistics are clearly devastating and can be difficult to comprehend, since the number of child soldiers around the world should be zero. Furthermore, hundreds of thousands adolescent children are being or have been recruited into paramilitaries, militias and non-state groups in more than 85 countries (“Child Soldiers: An Overview” 1). This information is also quite overwhelming. Child soldiers are used around the world, but in some areas, the numbers are more concentrated.
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.
Every year an estimation of child soldiers is about 300,000. Child soldiers are another form of human trafficking or in other words modern day slavery. A child soldier is any child under the age of eighteen who is a part of any armed grouped. Children, who are poor, have limited access to education or separated are most likely to be abducted. Both girls and boys as young as age seven are forced into child soldiers. Young girls and women are raped by the soldiers and if they refuse they are killed instantly. Once recruited, child soldiers serve as spies, cooks, messengers, and guards. Children are easily targeted because they can easily be manipulated especially when drugs are being
Child combatants have been found on the battlefield throughout history. One of the first notable examples of the use of child combatants was the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth), a militia group of young boys, that fought in the Nazi party during the closing days of World War II. There has since been a rise of children combatants on the modern-day battlefield. The rise in using children in combat is due to many factors. One of those factors are the crumbling social structures that surround children in the war torn countries. Without a solid social structure, children are more likely to be found on the battlefield. Additionally, a large majority of children volunteer to become soldiers. They often believe that the best option for survival is to join the fight instead of risking their lives battling against it. Other children enlist because they want to seek revenge on behalf of their families who have been murdered, raped, tortured, and abused by the conflict. (Kaplan) Other factors that lead children to join on the battlefield include poverty, lack of work, and few educational opportunities. Many girls that have joined have reported enlisting to escape do...
Child Soldiers: The use of children in the military. Child Soldiers have three different roles in armed conflict. They can take a direct part in hostilities, or they can be used for support, such as sexual slaves, lookouts, messengers, and spies. Also, they can be used in the political aspect of war. Because many children have been physically or mentally damaged by their participation in armed conflict, children should not have any involvement in any armed conflict and should be removed indefinitely from warfare. Every child has the right to go to school, free from violence. Children have been used in the military for hundreds of years.