Child Soldiers in Africa – Toy Gun becomes Rifles and Hand Grenades
What do you a call a world where 8 year old boy was handed a gun and made to kill an old man or a 15 year old girl was made to kill a boy who was trying to escape or a girl watching silently as another boy got killed for helping a friend to escape? Can a person even imagine the plight of a boy who is forcefully made to kill his own family before being taken away to fight a war
or the mental trauma of a 14 year old girl who was given to become wife of a man who had killed his own and forced to help kidnap children to recruit in army or a 16 year old girl who is still haunted by a boy in her dreams whom she was forced to kill with a stick.
The list of such inhuman incidents is endless and shocking. Mere thought of such incidents sends shivers throughout the body; imagine the condition of the children who are going through this hell every day and every moment.
This is the plight of thousands of children around the world who are being exploited as child soldiers. There are around 300,000 children fighting in conflicts and wars in the world out of which around 120,000 are in Africa. They are either in the government armed forces or armed opposition groups of Africa. The term child soldier does not mean only boys; girls too are forcibly made to join these people. The childhood of these children is getting snatched away and they are fighting in wars created by elders. They are replacing the children toys with rifles, hand grenades and turning the innocent children towards the violent and brutal conflicts. The age, at which these children should be in the school playgrounds playing, they are in the battle grounds killing people on orders from their seniors.
In Africa, the main reasons for child soldiers is poverty, inaccessible education, lack of earning livelihood, injustice and easy proliferation of arms. The average age of recruitment of child soldiers is 7 years but there have been cases of child soldiers as small as 5 years old. Children are preferred soldiers as they are physically and emotionally immature so they can be easily ‘brainwashed’ to become a perfect soldier. With the help of drugs, they transform the innocent children into ruthless killers. They require little food to survive and carry out orders without questioning and are considered as easily replaceable by the commanders. The children are not only used as soldiers in war, they are also used as spies, messengers, laborers, porters, cooks, guards, human shield, mine sweepers, servants, sexual slaves and decoys.
The child soldiers are forcibly recruited at gun points in most cases, but sometimes there are voluntary involvements also. The voluntary involvement includes orphaned children, children living on streets, revenge seekers or children who see military as a guarantee of food, shelter and clothing. Orphans and refugee kids, schools are the most vulnerable targets. Studies show that the children who were recruited against their will from villages were handed a gun and made to kill their family. It was done to limit the chances of escaping as the children would have nowhere to go and nobody to care for them and the military remained the only place of survival for them.
There are many rehabilitation programs being conducted in Africa specially catering to the essentials and needs of child soldiers. These programs are an opportunity for the former child soldiers to integrate with and become a part of the society. If these children are not given proper environment and space, the violence they have seen and heinous murders they have done in wars will turn them into criminals.
Though any organization or government cannot give back the child soldiers their care free childhood, they can at least give them a chance to become a part of an unbiased society and a progressing nation.
