Nakia Cornelius INTL 1101-001

Child soldiers is a serious issue worldwide, there are about 300,000 children as young as nine years old involved in armed conflicts all around the globe today. This problem is most critical in Africa; however children are also used as soldiers in various Asian countries, parts of Latin America, Europe and Middle East. Children are used as child soldiers mostly by nongovernment armed groups for many different reasons. Conditions are usually very harsh for the child soldiers and discipline is kept by brutal punishment. Life is very dangerous and characterized by a great amount of hard work in an environment that lack food, drinking water and no sanitation, many children die from these causes under such inhuman conditions. The use of child soldiers is totally unacceptable and against human rights. The child soldiers basic rights are being abused in many different ways by being forced to fight. One of the biggest fears for families in third world countries are their children being used for child soldiers against their will. This is very common in places such as Uganda, Congo, Central African Republic, and Sudan. There are hundreds of kids being abducted and killed. As of March 26, 2012 there are 1068 civilian deaths and 2328 abductions. Child soldiers have become a highly debated issue very recently, with the rising popularity of Joseph Kony. Joseph Kony is the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, a guerrilla group which used to operate in Uganda. Kony's Lords Resistance Army (LRA) has kidnapped an estimated 20,000 children for use as fighters or sex slaves. As part of their initiation, these children are often required to kill their own parents, so they'll have no homes to return to. Once kidnapped, children are used as pack mules, carrying LRA supplies until they are too weak to walk, at which time they're killed or simply left to die. Kidnapped girls that Kony or his senior commanders find

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attractive become their "wives". Girls are often infected with sexually transmitted diseases or HIV/AIDS and have great possibilities of being pregnant. In 2012, the STOP KONY campaign started as an experiment. The experiment yielded the fastest growing viral video of all time. 3.7 million people pledged their support for efforts to arrest Joseph Kony. The KONY 2012 experiment sparked more international activity focused on stopping the LRA than ever before. To this day, Kony is still at large. Child slavery is unfortunately accepted usually because of the economic need of families to survive in poverty. Poverty is a very common thing in these countries. According to the Invisible Children organization, the majority of children being used as soldiers are voluntary. The children are voluntarily joining because they have no money and this is the best choice for their families. The children barely get any food or water when they are soldiers, but its better than nothing, which they get at their homes. When soldiers, they get just enough food to survive, when at home there is no telling if they have enough food survive or not. The kids arent the only ones voluntarily giving them away. The families of the children sell them to become soldiers also. The money they get from selling their children is not much at all. But it is better for the families in their eyes. A child becoming a child soldier can be a devastating event, which can scare them for life. Child soldiers are being used for many reasons by non-government armed groups. Children are frequently killed and injured while forced to carry out life threatening task such as laying mines or explosives this is totally against the childrens human rights, the basic entitlements all human being should have regardless of age, sex, gender, religion, and politics. Children lived under constant fears of being trapped in an ambush, landmines or gunfire.

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These children are denied a real childhood or any real life other than the destruction and death that surrounds them. All of these children, from a young age participate in modern warfare. They hold AK-47s and M-16s on the front lines of these wars, serve as human mine detectors, take part in suicide missions, carry supplies, and act as spies, messengers or lookouts for whatever country they are fighting for. Children are very vulnerable and easily intimidated they make very obedient soldiers. Some of these children are younger than 10 years old and have witnessed or taken part in acts of unbelievable violence, often against their own families or communities. These children are dealing with the worst dangers and the most horrible suffering and tricked into bring danger to their village. In an interview with United Nations staff in Liberia, a boy of 13 years admitted that he felt that he could not return to his family because he knew that his father would be angry with him for bringing men to the village that had raped and killed his mother in front of the whole family. He said that he had brought the men to the village because the commander had told him that he was going to be taken back to his family. Throughout the semester the Child Soldier battle has been worsening the South Sudan war. Many child soldiers are joining the war for revenge. "I just want to fight because of what they have done to my parents," said 13 year old Gach Chuol, speaking at a rally organized by the White Army, a militia that took up arms again to fight government troops in South Sudan's four month-old civil war. Some of the soldiers are very bitter because they lost some of their relatives and they decide to take up arms to carry out revenge. In Northeast India, there are at Least 500 Child Soldiers fighting and still being recruited. New Delhi refuses to recognize the existence of child soldiers and insists there are legislative provisions that prevent involvement of children in

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armed conflict. The use of child solders is still a huge issue and will continue if countries such as India continue to pretend like they are unaware of the situation.