The Child Soldiers Epidemic

What Are Child Soldiers?

In Third World countries the use of children under the age of 15 as soldiers is becoming more and more prominent. Some of these children can be as young as nine or ten years old. This type of child soldiering is most common in places like Africa, and other Third World countries that are stricken by poverty or disease.. Rebel groups tend to recruit these children from different relief camps by using other children as they can be integrated into these camps easily. They are also used as distraction techniques, they are sent into conflict unarmed in hopes of the other side thinking that they are just an innocent citizen caught in the crossfire, but really they are allowing the other side to approach.

What Are The Possible Reasons Why Child Soldiers are So Prominent Now?

In the article No Place to Hide Refugees, Displaced Persons, and the Recruitment of Child Soldiers by Vera Achvarina and Simon Reich they cover four reasons why they believe that child soldiering is on the rise. These reasons include the rise of smaller and lighter weapons, rising orphan rates, higher poverty levels, and the child soldier recruitment in refugee camps. Poverty is a major problem according to previous research, it is said that many developed countries do not employ child soldiers. Poverty can lead to food shortages and extreme poverty and food shortages can lead to families volunteering their children for these child soldiering rebel groups in order to get food and/or money. Many of these children can also tend to volunteer themselves in order to benefit from these rebel groups for both themselves and their families. These children are then turned into bread winners for the families, at the ages as early as five these children can be supporting not only themselves but their parents and siblings.

While poverty is possibly a reason why child soldiering is a epidemic in poverty stricken countries Achvarina and Reich also site high orphan rates as a reason why child soldiering is so high in Third World countries. Due to countries like Africa being struck with high rates of AIDS, HIV, and Malaria many children become orphans at a very young age. These diseases cause many orphanages to be full to capacity and these children out on the streets. This leaves this children very open to recruitment as they are just looking for a place to be accepted and fed, and taken care of.

Another explanation could be the globalization and selling of smaller and lighter arms into these countries. While many children at the age of five cannot wield large weapons such as a twenty-two or an axe a young child could easily carry an AK-47 which in some of these countries can be bought very cheaply. They are also small, lightweight, and simple enough to use for a small child. The intimidation factor of a child holding a AK-47 is also higher than just an adult holding one as most people are more likely to hesitate before shooting a child then they are an adult and that moment of hesitation is one that can cost that person their life.

Though all of the above reasons are plausible it takes a combination of all of these to get a full handle on why child soldiering still exists. The theory that Achvarina and Reich favor and focus on the most, is the recruitment of child soldiers through refugee and IDP camps. These camps can tend to make children extremely vulnerable. Whether it be from the separation or abandonment from their family that make these children vulnerable to incentives or threats, or some other reason the highest recruitment rates do come from these camps. Many of the current child soldiers find it easy to slip into these camps unnoticed in order to recruit these children, which is a task that adults may find harder. These camps are also vulnerable to raids by armed rebels seeking recruits. In time of conflict many children will agree to be child soldiers just to guarantee living a bit longer.(reliefweb)

How Could The Child Soldiers Be Helped?

Due to the prevalence of child soldiers in over thirty countries it is inevitable that the military will come up against child soldiers. There is in fact a confirmed 8,000 child soldiers in Afghanistan alone. Unfortunately these child soldiers need more than just physical help. It many studies it has shown that these children face extreme difficulty when trying to integrate back into society because they have trouble processing what they have done in the past. In order to help these children they would need not only physical and psychological help, but also drug withdrawal and post-traumatic stress disorder treatment. Some of the ways that they have been helped is through games that emphasize trust building, recruitment into training for peaceful roles, and careful reintroduction to communities. Some of these children can take as long as three years to be ready to be integrated into society.

What Is Being Done To Help Now and What Can Be Done?

The United States military and politicians came together and introduced the Child Soldier Prevention Act of 2007. This bill also would help these children by refusing military assistance to any government that are implicated of having or supporting the use of child soldiers. The United States was also being urged with this bill to help the child soldiers by removing them and rehabilitating them from armed forces and rebel groups around the world. Unfortunately this bill has yet to be passed, but the Child Soldiers Accountability Act of 2008 was. This bill imposes a fine and/or up to a twenty year prison sentence for recruiting these children. Though is this really enough? So many of these children are being recruited daily, yet you never really hear about people being arrested for recruiting these children.

What can be done? There is not much that can be done unfortunately. These children are in a separate country where it is hard to do much. In order to help these children you would have to disarm them by collecting weapons during times of conflict, discharge them from the army and reintegrate them into society by convincing them that there are alternatives. While this seems easy enough, it is actually quite difficult because if say the United States were to tell Sudan that they needed to get rid of their child soldiers now or risk military intervention, we would never truly know whether they did so, and the country would resent us. Many of these countries do not view child soldiering as wrong. In fact many of these parents volunteer their children in order to have food and shelter.

There are many small groups in these countries trying to help. Such as the organization Rebuilding Hope. Which as of now is specifically focusing on Mozambique and the helping to reintegrate these child soldiers after 16 years of war. They are working with the local healers who do their traditional healing methods and then have agreed to send them to psychologists for additional help. The result of this group is that these children now have support from the second they start until far after they end their transition. They are reintegrated into society and are able to live relatively normal lives.

Child Soldiers are becoming more and more prominent and with 40 children a day, with many also being killed everyday we are seeing a problem that needs to be fixed. Small groups such as Rebuilding Hope help rescue these children and reintegrate them into society. They are helping when there is a standstill on the political and military front. Different bills that have gone through Congress in the United States have been denied or they are bills that wont really help in the first place. In order to help these children various countries need to make a commitment to help them. It is not just an easy fix where you can say stop recruiting child soldiers or else, and they will just up and disappear. This article argued that through different sources of intervention the use of child soldiers could be improved.