Children’s childhoods and human rights are taken away once they are recruited to become child soldiers. Many of them are brainwashed to think it is okay to be serving in war zones at such a young age and often end up having psychological problems.
— Priscilla Rodarte
What do child soldiers do?
Children living in poverty with lack of education or living in a combat zone are most likely to become child soldiers. Some children volunteer to be child soldiers because they feel that their families need the food or income. They are used for purposes from cooking to fighting, spying, human shields, and suicide bombing. It is very easy to send children on suicide missions because they are too young to understand what is happening. Girls make up 10 to 30 percent of child soldiers and are especially susceptible to sexual assault. Over two million children have died in combat over the last ten years.
How are children recruited? Children are recruited in a number of ways. They may be kidnapped from their homes and forced into war. Some villages are threatened with attack if they do not supply the army with children. Some parents volunteer their children, and some children even volunteer themselves.
Why use child soldiers instead of only adults?
Child soldiers are easy to use because they don’t eat much, don’t need pay, and don’t have a developed sense or understanding of danger. They are less fearful and possibly don’t understand the dangers of being on the front line. New technological advancements such as light automatic weapons that are easy to operate make it a lot easier for children to participate in the fight. Also, it is easier to ensure that they have nowhere to retreat to. Many children are forced to kill their families and neighbors when they are recruited, so that they have nowhere to return to.
What are the effects of war on the children?
Child soldiers are affected for their whole lives. If they live through the violence, they may have drug dependencies, no education, and no family to return to. Many escaped or freed soldiers must return to the rebel group they were originally a part of, just because they have nowhere else to go.
Children in all different countries have different experiences in the war. In the Philippines, where there is an ongoing clash between the government and rebel groups, children under the age of 11 have been recruited on both sides. Government forces have been known to arrest children who they claim to be parts of rebel groups and make them fight with the government, even though no ties have been found between the children and the rebel groups.
The Somali terrorist group Al-Shabaab has been known for recruiting child soldiers for years, and using them for suicide bombings and in the missions too dangerous for adults to carry out. As Al-Shabaab grows weaker, more children are recruited to make up for their failing forces. They prefer to use children because on the front line, they cannot tell whether a battle is being lost or won, and will continue fighting until the death. Even worse, after years of brainwash, these children grow up wholeheartedly supporting Al-Shabaab and their cause.
In Colombia, thousands of children fight guerrilla warfare without proper nourishment in the hot jungle. They are trained to kill as soon as they are recruited, and are not allowed to escape. Attempts to escape are punishable by death.
A banned rebel group called PREPAK (People’s Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak) in India has been abducting young boys looking for work opportunities and sending them to remote training camps in Burma, where they are trained to mindlessly maim and kill.
In the Central African Republic, the ongoing civil war contains at least 6,000 child soldiers, both boys and girls. Both boys and girls undergo sexual assault and drug use, which inhibits their instinctual sense of right and wrong.
The horror stories are endless. Every child undergoes different, yet unimaginable horrors on and off the battlefield. One thing that is constant is the inhumanity of what is happening in these countries. If no one is supporting these children, they will not be lucky enough to have the chance to grow up and be adults, and as it is, they don’t have the chance to be children.