What do thousands of kids do when they are scared that they will be charged with war crimes if they escape from there battle? That is what child soldiers across the world, ask themselves every day. Because they do not know if they should risk their lives to get amnesty that is promised to them, just to be thrown in jail. Because there are rules that the child soldiers don't even know, so it is a gamble they have to bid their lives on.. Child soldiers deserve amnesty because they are drugged and brainwashed, they are kidnaped or forced to join, also they are killed and abused for little to no reason. On top of that almost all child soldiers are drugged, to subdue them so that they will do what they are told without hesitation. Also while they are drugged the child soldiers are brainwashed by the commanders everyday to trick the kids into thinking what they are doing is good. CNN reporter states that “Once recruited, many are brainwashed, trained, given drugs and then sent into battle with orders to kill.”(O'Neill Paragraph 3). Because these kids are young and are high, when threatened, they will do almost anything because they are scared, and worried that they could die. Along with this they aren't just using regular drugs, but they are using drugs that make child soldiers into super soldiers. In a recent …show more content…
They have little to no say in anything. They get tossed around like trash and they are treated the same as well. But they stay through it because as long as they do what they are told they get a place to sleep, food, and even some drugs that make it easier to do some of the hard, and horrible things that they are forced to do. That is why thousands of scared kids do not know whether to risk escaping just to be sent to jail for life, or to stay and fight until they are eventually
First of all, child soldiers go to extremes for such little things like having to ask for thing to be given to them. In the book by Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone, an actual child soldier who is now rehabilitated shared his experiences through the war in Sierra Leone. It says, “We placed a bucket over the cook’s head and pushed him around the kitchen until he burned his hand on a hot boiling pot and agreed to put more milk in our tea,” (Beah, 2007). This demonstrates how dangerous they can be to innocent people, even those that are trying to help. They hurt those no matter what, for their own desires and sometimes they just do this for their own entertainment.
In the world today, there is more than 25 countries who still actively use children in warfare. Child soldiers are human beings under the age of 18 who participate in military actions. They are evidently cheaper to maintain and to train than adult soldiers. They are also more loyal and obedient because the young respect their elders. It has been noted that estimately, 300 thousand children were recruited to fight and perform in war (Child Soldiers.)
Child Soldiers should not be prosecuted, but should be rehabilitated. These are all the reasons why these children should not be prosecuted. Why I think these children needs to go to rehab is because that they are too young and they are not even mature enough. People who prosecute Child Soldiers Might be insane furthermore, children are not even an adult they might be influenced by drugs and think it is good. unless you are an adult, then you may need to be prosecuted, other than that children are too young to go to rehab and needs to understand life.
Many of these children passed away while being in the war but the ones that didn’t could be suffering from PTSD, Drug addiction, and more. Child soldiers are used around the world, from ages seven and up. Many child soldiers after being in war suffer from psychological trauma like PTSD, drug addiction, and physical trauma. History has proven that the use of
The first reason i think that child soldiers should not be prosecuted is because while kids are young they don 't have much control over what they get to do, lots of kids have to do what their parent or guardian says, and i am sure that when kids get recruited they have no choice but to go. In an article i read said that when a child soldier is recruited that they have no choice but to join. This matches with the story because it explains that kids don’t have a choice but to join when they get recruited. Kids also don’t get to choose what
In the memoir, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah the child soldiers are being mentally and physically abused at too young of an age. Ishmael Beah describes this by saying “We walked for long hours and stopped only to eat sardines and corned beef with gari, sniff cocaine, brown brown, and take some white capsules. The combination of these drugs gave us a lot of energy and made us fierce.” (Beah 122). Generally, young kids should not be exposed to drugs and forced to do them.
This quote shows that many of them don’t have any interest in being soldiers, so they don’t want to be violent. “They are easily manipulated.” (Gettleman) Since they are only kids, we shouldn’t expect them to be mature enough to think about what they are doing as soldiers. Besides, most child soldiers don’t
Many young children under aged have been taken in by the government. They are being held captive tell they are drugged enough and brainwashed to go out and kill or to be killed. They are forced to train to kill under the influence of drugs and they are hardly aware of what they or doing. Child soldiers should be given amnesty because of the absents of their minds and them not being able to process what they are doing. These children are often seen as targets because they are under aged and not able to take responsibility for their actions so they are targeted to be able to kill without punishment.
Even though this may be true, it still suggests that the acts these children are committing are not their doing but instead the orders of their officers. The extraordinary circumstances that Wessells talks about forces the kids to fight for their lives. Young children are taught to act as killing machines, destroying anything in their path. That’s a far world away from playing soccer with friends or holding a lemonade stand. Therefore, while these kids are off fighting to stay alive, people in charge still seem to be to be taking the easy way out and using jail time as the first answer instead of
Have you ever mentioned the subject of child soldiers in a standard conversation? Most likely not. Child soldiers are not an everyday discussion topic, but recently they have grown more and more popular. While in the past, “children were not particularly effective as front-line fighters since most of the lethal hardware was too heavy and cumbersome for them to manipulate” (unicef.org), weapons have become lighter, and younger infantries have followed suit. While childhoods usually don’t consist of shooting people, taking villages, and other awful acts of war, they can, and this physiologically impacts a child.
When children and teens commit a violent crime such as murder, courts convict them as adults. This means that children as young as eight have been tried as adults in court. Eventually, these convicts will be housed in jails with adults. Despite the federal law stating that juvenile and adult inmates must be separated, most states do not comply with these rules. Furthermore, a law that varies throughout the states is the age in which courts send the children to adult or juvenile prisons.
An unhealthy obsession with guns, being drugged to make killings seem normal, and being undoubtedly loyal to commanders is only part of what a child soldier is. Child soldiers can be dangerous and make up many armies in war-torn countries. In much of the world, usually in unstable countries, when conflict breaks out, children can quickly be swept up and put on the front lines to fight. Children may carry ten-pound guns and use bullets twice the size of their fingers. Some children are old enough to understand what they are doing, and others have no idea.
When I think of a soldier, I think of a strong young man fighting for his country. When I think of a child, I get the image of a young child playing outside with no worries in the world and no responsibilities. However, this is not true, as there are millions of children who have become child soldiers and have been displaced in the world. What makes children want to become child soldiers? Children become soldiers for their governments, as they recruit them.
Assignment page Video Where many children all over the world merrily and freely live under the protection of the law, for others, this is a distant reality, they live in a world where they’re battling poverty, stripped of their childhood and basic human rights are expunged, they’re the innocent victims of conflict, and war is made to seem their one and only duty, not to mention that these are children no more than 10 years of age. They are put into a situation where it’s to kill or be killed. The United Nations defines a child soldier as, “Any person under 18 years of age who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity.” Since the past 15 years, child soldiers are being used in almost every region of the world. Unlike most children, who go to school, they’re abducted from their families and forced into becoming a child soldier, where living conditions are beyond imaginable.
Have you ever imagined growing up on a life of drugs, war, crime, and seeing things that many adults won’t dare to ever see? In many countries around the world, this is what many children have to deal with. There is an occurring issue of people across Africa and parts of Asia using children as soldiers in war. They act and take upon the roles of real combatants, causing the people of the public to act in different ways. It’s been well documented that these children have used guns and war tactics, and committed various illegal and illicit acts of violence.