Child Soldiers

In places of the world there are children who have to face adult decisions and are growing up too fast. There are children who, by our standards, their childhood is being taken away from them because they are being kidnapped to be a child soldiers. It is surprising to think that a small child would wield a gun to kill a person they are told to kill, when they definitely shouldn't be experiencing that kind of trauma at all. 

In class we watched a video about a child soldier who was kidnapped and forced to work in the field. He was found and rescued, then returned home, but he made the decision at a young age to join the army to fight against those who kidnap children and turn them into slaves. To his father it was more important that he get an education first before making an adult decision to join the army, especially when he was needed at home. The boy decided to quit and return home but I think that for child he shouldn't have to make that kind of decision in the first place. According to the website www.child-soldiers.org the definition of a child soldier is "a child associated with an armed force or armed group (child soldier) is any person below 18 years of age who is, or who has been, recruited or used by an armed force or armed group in any capacity, including but not limited to children, boys and girls, used as fighters, cooks, porters, messengers, spies or for sexual purposes. It does not only refer to a child who is taking or has taken a direct part in hostilities." I have learned that being a child soldier doesn't just refer to children holding guns and fighting but could also mean any type of forced labor. 

A story that I heard about during a volunteer event called We Day was from an inspirational speaker name Michel Chikwanine who talked about his experience about being a child soldier when he was the age of 5. He, unlike the boy in the video, had a worse experience because Michel was force to shoot his best friend because the warlord covered his eyes and yelled shoot at him. Michael described his horrible experience that opened my eyes to what bad experience young childreen face that I would have never have otherwise known. 

There aren’t many solutions I could find that could help stop child soldiers other than donating to organizations that fight to stop these terrible warlords. Since we are learning about human rights in class I was able to learn more about child soldiers and the true meaning of them.