Sometimes they are in the news, dressed in military clothes, guns in their hands and pain in their eyes, the child soldiers. You get touched for the moment, but a few minutes later you’ve forgot about them. You surely shouldn’t, because they are more than we think. They suffer a lot and are active in the most conflicts in the world today. Often they are forced to kill their family, friends and other children.

About 300 000 children are active in 30 armed conflicts today. Burundi, Congo-Kinshasa, Liberia, Somalia and Afghanistan are countries that have several of them. In Congo-Kinshasa they are about 8000. Leaders of military units have claimed that every family should leave money, a cow or a child to the unit. Many families don’t have any choice, the only thing they can give is their child. Kidnapping from schools is also usual in Congo.

Soldiers from different reasons.
Reasons for becoming a soldier vary. Some of them are voluntary, because of their situation at home. Maybe they think that it’s better to be a soldier with protection and food, than starving at home afraid of getting hurt. Others are affected by group pressure or want revenge. Parents and siblings could have been exposed with acts of cruelty, and now they want to punish those who did it. Girls are also in war, often like cooks or sex slaves. But even girls are out on the fields fighting.

Why are children used in war? Children are very easy to manipulate and to persude, a child is also cheaper than an adult. The military units often pick up children in villages they are passing, because they want to replace people they have lost. Units are often seeking for children in refugee camps. They think that the children there don’t care if they must be a soldier, because of their bad situation in the camps. The development of light firearms makes it easier for children to handle and carry weapons, and they can be active in the war for longer periods.

Psychical and physical hard.
Even if some of the children are volunteers, that doesn’t mean that they are feeling good, because they are not. The life on the fields is hard and they are not allowed to play or study. This is both psychically and physically hard for the children. Many of them are anxious, have an apathetic behavior and some refuse to eat. Sight and hearing is also a problem for many, because of mines that explod. Almost all children are underfed and have skin diseases or infections.

Where is the UN in this question?
No child deserves this treatment. The UN has accepted a lot of resolutions against the use of child soldiers, but without any results. There’s one resolution that the UN has not accepted, the one about punishment for countries who use children in war. It was a proposal from some help organizations, they had an idea that the UN should make sure that those countries shouldn’t have the possibilities to weapons and money. But the UN didn’t like this proposal. The UN has agreed to a convention for children where it’s written that a child has a right to life. Is it life if you are a soldier when you are 10?
© 2004 Freeway
Writer:Anna Hagström (sp05-05@park.se)
HTML by:Stefan Nilsson (te06-11@park.se).