Transcript Child Soldiers ppt

Child Soldiers
Contemporary Crisis
• recent
United Nations estimation:
250,000 child soldiers worldwide
• current Amnesty International count:
over 300,000 child soldiers
• in more than 85 countries
• both boys & girls
• ages 8 to 18
Afghanistan
A Global Issue
Sri Lanka
Congo
Chechnya
Thailand
Nepal
Sudan
Columbia
Palestine
Iraq
Somalia
What is a Child Soldier?
• “A person under the age of 18
who directly or indirectly
participates in an armed conflict
as part of an armed force or
group.”
Why are Children Used?
• Poverty – Leaders find it easier to recruit young
children when there is widespread poverty.
Many will consider they have nothing to lose by
entering into war, especially if they get meals,
clothing, and medical care
• Manipulation – Children are easier to
manipulate and are cheaper than adults
Why are Children Used?
• Environment – Children who grow up with a
country that has been at war see it as a way of
life
• Light Weapons – Weapons have become
lighter, so anyone can use them. With the end
of the Cold War, many weapons were sold
cheaply on the world market
“The Perfect Weapon”
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adults can resist warlords; children can’t
available in great numbers
intensely loyal
fearless
Expendable
Much cheaper
than adults
Roles
• infantry shock troops
• raiders
• sentries
• spies
• trench diggers
• porters
• Recruited
Exploitation
– propaganda
– poverty
• Abducted
– kidnapped from families
– taken from orphanages
• Forced to serve
– Uganda: Lord’s Resistance Army
teaches child soldiers to burn
huts and beat infants to death
– Iran: child soldiers used to
clear mine fields in 1980s
"No one is born violent. No child in Africa,
Latin America, or Asia wants to be part of
– Palestine: children from the
war.”
West Bank & Gaza used
— Ishmael Beah at a Paris
as suicide bombers
conference, author of A Long Way
Gone
Some “Volunteer”
• promise of safety
• sense of community
• motivated by poverty & hunger
Why “choose” to
join an armed
group?
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Hunger
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Poverty
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Loss of family / home
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Protection
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Tricked
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Vengeance
•
Defining their
identity
Trained to Kill
Thailand
Liberia
Uganda
Palestine
Iraq
Bound by Belief
• commanders conjure spirits
• magic & superstition
• oils & amulets
"The commanders
would wear certain
pearls and said that
guns wouldn't hurt us,
and we believed it.''
— Beah
In the Congo, leaders told boys that if they
ate their victims they would grow stronger.
Intimidated by Fear
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extreme punishments
death for desertion
rejection upon return
orphaned, homeless
no where else to go
"These are brutally thuggy people who
don't want to rule politically and have no
strategy for winning a war.''
— Professor Neil Boothby
Columbia University
Weakened by Deprivation
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separated from families
denied educational opportunities
denied health care
denied a childhood
Fueled by
Drug Use
• amphetamines
• marijuana
• “brown brown”
(cocaine and gunpowder)
“I shot at everything that moved.”
— Beah
Drawing by former child soldier
Ishamel A. Kamara, age 18.
Trapped
in Abuse
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mental & emotional
physical
sexual
chemical
15-year-old soldier with
her infant in Liberia
Rebels called the
amputation of just
four fingers “one
love” after the
rastafarian phrase
“thumbs up.”
Amputation
There are more than 6,000
amputees in Sierra Leone
as a result of civil war.
Former Liberian leader,
Charles Taylor, is accused
of backing a rebel group
that cut off limbs, mutilated
and raped thousands of
civilians in Sierra Leone.
Human Rights Groups’ Efforts
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restore children to their families when possible
return to former communities
Children at a mission school in Africa
enroll in schools
place in homes
“It's ridiculous to appeal to
human rights with these groups
because they are so far on the
criminal end of the spectrum.”
— Victoria Forbes Adam
Coalition to Stop the Use
of Child Soldiers
United Nations Involvement
• UN passed protocols:
no combatants under age 18
Rescue, Rehabilitation & Hope
Above: Maxwell Fornah and Victor Musa,
members of the Single Leg Amputee Sports
Club of Sierra Leone, Freetown April 2006.
About Ishmael Beah
• At the age of twelve, Ishmael fled attacking
rebels and wandered a land rendered
unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d
been picked up by the government army, and
Beah, at heart a gentle
boy, found that he was
capable of truly terrible acts.
Eventually released by the
army and sent to a UNICEF
rehabiliation center, he
struggled to regain his humanity and to reenter
the world of civilians, who viewed him with fear
and suspicion.