Everyone loves and cherishes their childhood especially once they are grown up and dealing with issues they didn’t have as children. Many look back and remember all the good times they had growing up. However, this isn’t always the case. For some kids growing up in times of war they completely lose out on their precious childhood. In countries in the Middle East and Africa, such as Sierra Leone, governments and rebel groups are recruiting and using children in battles. Due to this, these children are exposed to shooting guns such as 10 pound AK-47s. They take part of mass killings and many other crimes such as rape. The generals are teaching kids as young as 7 or 8 that war is “okay” and that it is apart of everyday life. 2nd graders are …show more content…
Child soldiers should be spared because they have been forcibly recruited into fighting. In countries such as Sierra Leone and others throughout the Middle East and Africa, governments have taken children from their families to fight for a cause that they may not believe in or for their nation that they may not support. In the article, Child Soldiers Should Be Prosecuted, published by debatewise.org, it states, “It may be that the child thought it would be safer to enlist or factors such as poverty and hunger influenced their decision rather than a desire to fight.” In this situation, the children may have joined from free will, which leads others to believe they should be prosecuted. However, joining out of free will isn’t always because of their heart telling them to, not because they want to. Today, in parts of Africa and the Middle East many places such as cities or even the entire nation is in ruins. Therefore, many of the citizens who inhabit the country are poor and have very little. For example, if a child were to lose their family, a safe home and even food it would be safer and smarter …show more content…
Child soldiers aren’t morally responsible for their actions because of their age and how easily manipulated children can be and a young age. In the article, Child Soldiers: Victims or Perpetrators?, it says, “Children are forced by commanders through false promises, drugs and things which you can’t even imagine, to kill innocent civilians, other children and even their own families.” (invisiblechildren). Through the use of drugs and unimaginable acts these kids are brainwashed into following orders of their commanders who order them to kill. Some commanders will go as far as having children kill their own families and other civilians. They don’t keep promise where a child might of thought the prize is worth it, but, in the end, it was all a scam and they get nothing but more ill treatment to turn them into weapons. Also, In the article, Child Soldiers Should Be Prosecuted, it says, “The recruiters of child soldiers also use drugs and alcohol to make children more compliant and to enable them to commit acts they would not ordinarily commit. Child soldiers should therefore not be held responsible for actions they were forced to commit and had little understanding of.” (debatewise.org). This text shows that these kids wouldn’t normally commit the acts without being under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Therefore, these kids shouldn’t be held responsible. With drugs and
The first reason these kids shouldn’t be prosecuted or punished in any way is because it wasn’t their choice to be a soldier to begin with. According to Child Soldiers, Prosecution, most kids were forced to fight and had no choice of weather to enlist or not. There are about 200,000 child soldiers worldwide state's Armed and Underage, (Gettleman) and these kids are doing things their adolescent brains
As Garbarino recognizes, the effects of war and such violence is something that sticks with a child and remains constant in their everyday lives. The experiences that children face involving war in their communities and countries are traumatic and long lasting. It not only alters their childhood perspectives, but it also changes their reactions to violence over time. Sadly, children are beginning to play more of a major role in wars in both the...
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.
Wells, Karen C.. "Children and youth at war." Childhood in a global perspective. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2009. 152. Print.
“This is how wars are fought now: by children, traumatized, hopped-up on drugs, and wielding AK-47s” (Beah). Innocent, vulnerable, and intimidated. These words describe the more than 300,000 children in nations throughout the world coerced into combat. As young as age seven, boys and girls deemed child soldiers participate in armed conflict, risking their lives and killing more innocent others. While many individuals recollect their childhood playing games and running freely, these children will remember “playing” with guns and running for their lives. Many children today spend time playing video games like Modern Warfare, but for some children, it is not a game, it is reality. Although slavery was abolished nearly 150 years ago, the act of forcing a child into a military position is considered slavery and is a continuously growing trend even today despite legal documents prohibiting the use of children under the age of 18 in armed conflict. Being a child soldier does not merely consist of first hand fighting but also work as spies, messengers, and sex slaves which explains why nearly 30 percent of all child soldiers are girls. While the use and exploitation of these young boys and girls often goes unnoticed by most of the world, for those who have and are currently experiencing life as a child soldier, such slavery has had and will continue to have damaging effects on them both psychologically and physically.
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.
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.
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.
Children at such a young age don't have the mental ability to think long term about their actions, especially when they are being forced or drugged. Some may argue that if child criminals get punished for their actions, then child soldiers should too, but that is just not the case. The difference being, child criminals choose to commit their crimes, child soldiers are forced to commit crimes. As an example, in the article Child Soldiers it states, “More often than not, children have no say in whether they enlist or not and once recruited the children have become brainwashed through the use of drugs and alcohol” (Child Soldiers).
Machel, Graca & Sebastian Salgado. The Impact of War on Children. London: C. Hurst, 2001.
War commanders can purposely get their child soldiers in trouble because they know that they will be given amnesty. Finally, people say that they shouldn’t get amnesty because child soldiers are no different than child criminals. I don’t agree with this and neither does the author in the article “Child Soldiers: Victims or Perpetrators” where it says “children are forced by commanders through false promises, drugs and things which you can’t even imagine” This says that kids are drugged to make sure that they don’t know what’s happening and are made promises that never come true in order for them to join the
But without a shadow of a doubt the child soldiers are designed to only one thing, kill. First, most child soldiers are told to kill their parents. Their commander may tell them to do that in order to show loyalty to the military gang they support. Which is not fair to the children.
Combined with questions of poverty, the lack of access to education or training, discrimination, and vulnerability, children are easy targets for recruitment by armed groups. Children who are orphaned, unaccompanied or living in a difficult family environment, see it as a solution to their problems, and taking part in an armed group seems safer than confronting these problems. Revenge, community identity, and ideology can also influence children. Armed groups often target children because they “cost less”: the necessary investments for recruiting, training, and arming children are less than for adults. (Della)
Most of the children put into conflict are unlawfully recruited, either because they were forced or because they fall under the legal recruitment age. 2/3 nations agree that banning the use of children under 18 is necessary to their wellbeing. However, not all of the children are forced into conflict, and many join out of sheer desperation. As well as this , children aren't just solely on the front line.