Military use of children

Imagine you are in the military. Fighting for your country's freedom when you see a small child no more than ten years old firing an AK-47 at your fellow troops. The child’s shooting is chillingly accurate. The thoughts of what has this child gone through? and why are they even in this position of military enforcement? Race through your brain. The child is then captured. Three months later you are in a massive court room face to face with the same child you saw fighting with a gun almost the size of him sitting anxiously awaiting his trial to start. Now here is the big question, should this child be given amnesty or not? Child soldiers should receive amnesty because it was not the child's fault, the fact that they were drugged, and their role…

“‘At our age, it’s more complicated for the rebels. So they use stronger stuff, like drugs or money, to bait us and to make us march…I remember the attack on Njola-Kombouya village, in the south of Sierra Leone. They made us wake up at 1 in the morning and we marched until 7. A doctor came. He had a small bowl of cold water, and, every two injections, he rinsed his needle in the water. It was always a small vial with red liquid. At first, I constantly felt weak and then after, I had a sense of…

The idea of child soldiers is illegal, but, in a span of ten years, 19 million children have been scarred by a war they were in (Child Soldiers: Invisible Children 1). This dates back to WWII, when the Nazi’s got desperate, then in Iran in the 1980’s, boys were made to clear minefields, and even right now, the Tailban uses them as suicide bombers (Gettleman 2). If most children play on soccer fields, then why should some of them have to clear minefields? One side feels they’re victims of war,…

#6 Child Soldiers, Should They be given Amnesty Child soldiers are a big problem in the world, and the question is that if they should be given amnesty? Child soldiers are normal children from the start, they play and do what children do, but what happens is that they are abducted or they join a rebel group or an army because they need food because their families were killed and they have nowhere else to go, or they were abducted. Child soldiers SHOULD be given amnesty because they have nowhere…

Doctrine into a child solider “If the first casualty of war is innocence, them perhaps with each bullet fired, bomb detonated, leader overthrown, wall built, economy destroyed and family member killed, we are not creating goodwill and harmony, but rather another child who believes violence is the only means to bring about change in the world” Michael Franti. If kids were being turned into soldiers at a young age what kind of a world is expected? They don’t know any better than then life style…

A Long Way Gone (2007) is a true story of Ishmael Beah, who unwillingly is forced to become a child soldier when a civil war breaks out in Sierra Leone. The story starts with Beah only 12 years old, who is away to perform along with his brother and friends when rebels attack his village. During all this chaos, confusion and ambiguity of war, all of them are left to wander from village to village in search of food and shelter and along the way commit to acts they had never thought of doing so…

Summary: In this story Ishmael Beah, a 12-year-old, is living through hard times. The African Civil war is going on and he tries to escape the rebels and the military. Unwillingly, he joins the military at age 13 on the front lines with 7-years-olds. He killed so many people throughout his military years. The African government sucked all the innocence from him. For 3 years he fought in military and at age 16 was sent to a rehabilitation center by the UNICEF. He struggles to understand…

foreign countries children are constantly put in danger of being blown up or shot repeatedly to death. Why are these children put in so much danger you may ask. The answer is that foreign countries and revolutionary groups often let children join their armies. Even worse is most of these groups purposely kidnap children for their armies despite the legal age to serve being 15. When these children are captured and taken to be put on trial for their crimes a great debate arises. Some people say…

worthiness to other towns. Ishmael is forced to become a soldier at the age of 12. Ishmael has a new perspective on life and is turned into “killing machine” when forced onto drugs. Later being saved helps ishmael get his life back on track. Ishmael Beah going through what he has, has worked hard to get to the level of success he has now. Telling the reality of what war in foreign countries is really like, is what keeps Mr. Beah going today. Gives him meaning in life. The main theme of this…

betrayed him by dismissing him from being a child soldier without any explanation. Lastly, one of his biggest breakthroughs was when he started to believe that all of the violence that he had done and that had been done to him, was not his fault at all (165). These interactions impacted Ishmael’s development because it allowed him to recover from being a child soldier and return back to reality. When he started to trust and believe Esther when she would say, “None of these things are your…