What is a kid Soldier?
Is using Child Military really ok? Some may say that it is alright to utilize child soldiers while some want to stop some countries inside our world from using children as soldiers.
Child soldiers are being used in the world today, these children are used to be spies, decoys, cooks, in leading lines of the battles and the girls are many times used as sex slaves. To become a child soldier often the kids are kidnapped off their homes and pressured to wipe out their own family so they don't have a home to come back to. Many people inside our world today do not trust militaries using children to battle battles because it is ruining the lives children and and yes it is not good to put a child fighting with each other against a increased male or female. The US or the UN is wanting to put an end to children being used as soldiers plus they have made an objective to have no child soldiers in the world by 2016. Many people believe using child soldiers is very incorrect and messed up, yet some countries use children as soldiers. The amount of children being used as soldiers in our world has been growing each year. Inside our world today the number of child soldiers being found in wars is near to 250, 000 children. Of all the child soldier in this world about 60% of these are guys and about 40% are ladies. Back in the days of the past when guns were not as popular as they are nowadays, child soldiers weren't as popular. They weren't as popular because the weapons used during wars were swords or large knifes which were way too heavy for a child to work with against an adversary and would not have a chance against a genuine adult soldier. Although inside our world today the child soldiers have the ability to use assault rifles that are light enough for a child to handle. The assault rifles that are commonly found being used by the child troops will be the M16 and the AK47 because these weapons are incredibly light as well as very simple to use. These weapons are so easy to use a child soldier at an get older of a decade old can disassemble and reassemble it in a matter of minutes. Groups will use child soldiers during wars because no one on the planet wants to destroy a child during a war.
The reason children are being used as soldiers is basically because they are very easy to brainwash and change. When an military or group has a kid as a soldier they don't need to pay the kid approximately they would have to pay people in the army. Children likewise have not developed a full sense of danger so the army does not need to worry quite definitely about the children running away from the battle. Since the children do not eat approximately adults the army doesn't need to spend a lot of money on food. Another reason militaries prefer to use children as soldiers is because they could be used as spies or even decoys because children can easier blend into a group than a grown-up spy could because most people take a look at a child and don't think they could do any harm to anyone or be an enemy.
Children are very vulnerable to recruitment by categories or armies if they are not informed, poor, not with a family, or they are in a war area. Many children do not volunteer to become listed on these militaries that have child military but instead they have been forcibly recruited by the militaries. Despite the fact that many governments have announced that using children as a soldier is illegitimate, rebel organizations and armies still use children as soldiers. Many times nowadays children are abducted of their homes and these children mainly emerge from the country's poorest villages and locations. A town may be forced to provide a required volume of their children to the army or group and in return they would be safe from any attacks by that military or group; a tactic that was made popular by the Lord's Level of resistance Army which, is a rebel group that started in Uganda that is known for using children as troops. Some children would be forced by their parents to volunteer because the parents could manage to cover the food and shelter with their children, so if the kids proceeded to go into one of the armies then your child would at least be able to have food and water. Sometimes, the group will say that if the child joins the military then your child will be granted coverage, food, and even payment but, the majority of the time the children aren't given everything these were told they would get.
When soldiers will go and get new child soldier recruits they many times make the child kill a member of their own family so they would not be able to back again to their family. "Once recruited, children undergo varying examples of indoctrination, often verging on the brutal. . . . . Some rebel groupings in Cambodia and Mozambique turned children into fierce warriors by subjecting them to a limited period of terror and physical abuse-'socializing' them into violence. " Since many of the children have been outlawed by their community, have been brutal beaten both actually and psychologically as well as being drugged multiple times, they are able to go to different villages and do the same thing to other children and recruit them because they have been brainwashed. Girls are used as well but not found as often in the gun fights like the kids. The girls are instead mainly used as cooks and fetching drinking water for the troops. Unfortunately the girls are very vulnerable there for they are generally used for erotic pleasures by the military. ("Children as Troops. "Children as Military. UNICEF, n. d. Web. 12 Jan. 2014).
The results on the children after what they have done and experienced will stick with them longer than it took their physical marks to heal and for them to get over their drug addictions. Many of these children don't think anything of the violent acts they commit, whether that is beating someone or getting rid of someone they do not see what they are doing is incorrect. This can damage the child's brain for the others of these life since when these were committing all the assault, their brain was in its developing levels. Even when the youngsters that were one of the kid troops have escaped or establish free, the kids cannot return back to the their villages and families because they are outlawed by their community. These children have been outlawed off their village since when the kids were being recruited for the army that they had to kill a family member of theirs to be able to join. Adequate girls that are child troops can't go back to their villages because while they were a child soldier they truly became pregnant from one of the soldiers and today have your baby, which their community wouldn't normally allow inside the community. The vast majority of the child military have little if any education since they missed so a long time of school in the first many years of their life. Since they don't have a lot of an education they do not have a very promising future ahead of them so they'll get back to these categories that formerly recruited them so that they will at least be able to have food and water.
"In June 2013 the UN set an objective to have no child soldiers anywhere in the world by 2016. A few of eight Federal government armies shown for the recruitment and use of children and six of these have already focused on making their armies childfree. In 2012, South Sudan, Myanmar, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo authorized action plans with the US. The previous year, Afghanistan and Chad made similar commitments. Conversations initiated with the Governments of Yemen and Sudan are expected to lead to action packages soon. " Despite the fact that most of these government authorities have outlawed the use of children as troops, rebel communities within these countries will still continue steadily to use children as soldiers, ("Child Troops. " Child Soldiers. Warfare Child, n. d. Web. 22 Jan. 2014).
The Child Troops International is a group of people from throughout the world that will work together to be sure that all children under the age of 18 are permitted to live in peace, have their rights and grow up in an area where they can thrive and reach their full probable. They believe that if this is to happen then children must be guarded from being in any form of military and stay out of the wars. Child Soldiers International says a child is anyone under the age of 18 yrs. old; also these children must be protected because they are in their most significant developmental stages of their lives, where they develop what is morally right or incorrect and maturity both actually and psychologically. This international group has established an international rules stating a child under the age of 18 can't be recruited to maintain any form of armed service or armed group.
The use of children through both civil wars and country wars has been clear over the years. Often the leaders of the organizations and armies give the children false hopes and promises, the kids are drugged to get rid of other people and even eliminate their own family. Even though using children as troops is searched down after people inside our world don't see the harm it can to the children, they just take a look at the way the children will help them. "Despite this, in the last ten years over two million children have been killed, over one million orphaned, over six million have been kept seriously injured or once and for all disabled and over 10 million have been diagnosed with psychological stress. " You will find two arguments as it pertains down to this issue of whether child soldiers should be performed responsible for their violent acts, ("Child Soldiers: Invisible Children - Child Military- Defining this issue. " Child Soldiers: Invisible Children. Weebly, n. d. Web. 23 Jan. 2014).
One area of the debate says that child soldiers shouldn't be help responsible for their actions. They shouldn't be held responsible because many of them didn't have a selection of whether or not they wanted to turn into a child soldier. Also while these were child soldiers they were brainwashed through the use of drugs. The drugs would allow the kid soldier to commit violent serves and not think works were wrong. Some children would join to get water and food but never could have thought that they would have to do any actual fighting with each other.
The other aspect of the debate is the fact that child military should be placed in charge of the violent serves they have dedicated. Some believe child criminals and child troops are the same thing in a way and really should be cared for the same and be prosecuted. Child troops have been accountable for some of the most troubling, brutal, and violent acts throughout a time of war, for example raping and eradicating huge amounts of innocent people in villages and places. Child soldiers remain being put in jail and put on trial, even though International Offender Court Article 26 states that anyone under the age of 18 may not be prosecuted in a courtroom of law. It might be a lie to state that all child troops are pressured to battle because some child soldiers join the battle because they want to avenge a family group members death. If a child is not compelled to become a soldier but joins by free will then that child should be taken into custody because this child known what they were doing and that it was incorrect. Some assume that it is not right to the victims of the kid soldiers if the children are just allowed to walk free. If child soldiers did not need to be prosecuted for their crimes then their leaders would most likely make the kids do all the crimes against others since the children will never be priced with anything.
In the world today everyone has different opinions about whether or not child troops should be kept accountable for their violent works. The Children and Justice During and in the Aftermath of Armed Issue survey says: "If a child under the age of 15 is considered too young to struggle, then he or she must also be looked at too young to be placed criminally accountable for serious violations of IHL while associated with military or armed teams. " Children are recruited very much to be a soldier because they are incredibly easily manipulated and intimidated. The children are to young to understand what the results of their activities can lead to, quite simply they haven't developed much mental maturity. Every one of the drugs that are used on the kids does a great deal of mental harm because their frontal lobes which handles what decisions to make is being significantly damaged and can not develop right. Radhika Coomaraswamy, SRSG for child troops, said, "If minimal children who've committed serious war crimes are not prosecuted, this could be an incentive for his or her commanders to delegate to them the dirtiest purchases, aiming at impunity, " ( "Humanitarian News and Examination. " IRINnews. IRIN, n. d. Web. 24 Jan. 2014).
In my estimation, I believe that child soldiers should not be held accountable for the violent works. I have learned that child troops are often kidnapped from their own families and required to kill a member of family and are given many false expectations from their leaders. The child troops are drugged and brainwashed in order to go around and eliminate innocent people as well as recruit more children like themselves. I believe that anybody, especially a kid, should not be prosecuted because of their violent functions because they were not aware of whether what these were doing was right or incorrect. I believe there is a difference in a child criminal and a kid soldier just because a child offender is making the decision themselves and are completely alert to that they are doing, while a kid soldier does not. For example, let us say a 10 season old boy eliminates his baby brother by drowning him in the tub. The 10 yr old boy would be considered a child criminal and should be prosecuted because the youngster was not obligated to wipe out his baby brother. Now if a child soldier has killed another person then I do not think they must be persecuted because these were forced to commit the violent work. Instead the kid soldier must have to undergo rehab. The Truth and Reconciliation Commissions and Disarmament is a much better way of supporting children recover from their violent functions as a soldier so that they can go back out into the real world. Rehab programs have been proven to be successful as it pertains to people dealing with war. A good example of someone that was a child soldier in Sierra Leone and experienced rehabilitation when he was rescued is Ishmael Beah, the writer of QUITE A DISTANCE Gone. "At get older sixteen, he was removed from preventing by UNICEF, and through the assistance of the personnel at his rehabilitation center, he discovered how to forgive himself, to regain his humanity, and, finally, to treat, " (Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of an Boy Soldier. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. Printing).
A child soldier has an extremely rough and puzzling life. A child soldier begins with no a family or village any more because they are outlawed credited to killing a family member. The children are drugged and are obligated to commit the most brutal serves of violence such as, raping and eradicating innocent people. Some say that child soldiers should be prosecuted because of the violent acts they may have committed but, almost all of these children did not even understand what these were doing when committing the offences. No child should have to eliminate to survive, if they try to break free the horror that surrounds them then they are killed. Our world today must make a huge effort to stop the utilization of children as troops because it is not to mess up a child's life for something they don't even know.
Bibliography
Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of the Boy Soldier. NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. Print.
"Cambridge Publications Online - The Journal of Modern African Studies - Abstract - Children of Warfare: Child Troops as Victims and Individuals in the Sudan Civil Warfare by C. Ryan London: I. B. Tauris, 2012. Pp. 320. 59. 50 (hbk). " Cambridge Journals Online - The Journal of Modern African Studies - Abstract - Children of Conflict: Child Troops as Victims and Members in the Sudan Civil War by C. Ryan London: I. B. Tauris, 2012. Pp. 320. 59. 50 (hbk). Cambridge College or university Press, n. d. Web. 24 Jan. 2014. "Child Troops. " Child Soldiers. Battle Child, n. d. Web. 22 Jan. 2014.
"Child Military: Invisible Children - Child Military- Defining the Topic. " Child Soldiers: Invisible Children. Weebly, n. d. Web. 23 Jan. 2014.
Dixon, Robyn. "Former Sierra Leone Child Soldier Helps Other Victims. " Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 30 Aug. 2012. Web. 24 Jan. 2014.
"Government Forces Invest in End Recruitment and Usage of Child Soldiers. " US Office of the Special Agent of the SecretaryGeneral for Children and Armed Conflict. United Nations, 17 June 2013. Web. 24 Jan. 2014.
"Humanitarian Information and Analysis. " IRINnews. IRIN, n. d. Web. 24 Jan. 2014.
