"I've seen people get their hands
cut off, a ten-year-old girl raped and then die, and so many
men and women burned alive . . . So many times I just cried
inside my heart because I didn't dare cry out loud."
---14-year-old girl abducted by the Revolutionary United Front
in Sierra Leone
You're
lying in your bed and slowly drift off to sleep. Suddenly,
you are awakened by violent screams. You are frozen with fear.
The door of your room bursts open and before you know it you
have been picked up by strange men in uniform and are being
dragged out of your house and thrown into a truck with twenty
other teenagers your age. It is still dark outside and difficult
to see exactly what is going on. But you already know what's
happening.
You
are about to become a 'child soldier'.
For
thousands under the age of eighteen, this is their reality.
More than 300,000 child soldiers are fighting in armed conflicts
in more than thirty countries worldwide.
According
to one group commander in the Democratic Republic of Congo,
"[children] make good fighters because they're young and
want to show off. They think it's all a game, so they're fearless."
A
large number come from disrupted family backgrounds, economically
or socially deprived families or are children who come from
conflict zones themselves.
Widely
perceived to be a cheap and expendable commodity, child soldiers
tend to receive little or no training before being thrust into
the front line. In the early 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq war,
thousands of Iranian children, many straight from school, were
sent with popular militias to the frontline, often given a symbolic
key to the paradise promised them as martyrs.
Most
prevalent are child soldiers in Africa and Asia, but across
the globe it is a growing phenomenon. One of the reasons behind
its growth is the shortage of male recruits in countries at
war. And with the technological development of smaller more
lightweight weapons children are able to load, carry and fire
deadly arms.
One
former child soldier from Burundi stated that, " My first
role was to carry a torch for grown-up rebels. Later I was shown
how to use hand grenades. Barely within a month or so, I was
carrying an AK-47 rifle or even a G3."
Once
recruited, the children are often treated brutally and punishments
for mistakes or desertion are severe.
'Susan' a 16-year-old soldier abducted by the Lord's Resistance
Army in Uganda recalls, "One boy tried to escape [from
the rebels], but he was caught... His hands were tied, and then
they made us, the other new captives, kill him with a stick.
I felt sick. I knew this boy from before. We were from the same
village. I refused to kill him and they told me they would shoot
me. They pointed a gun at me, so I had to do it. The boy was
asking me, "Why are you doing this?" I said I had
no choice. After we killed him, they made us smear his blood
on our arms... They said we had to do this so we would not fear
death and so we would not try to escape. . . I still dream about
the boy from my village who I killed. I see him in my dreams,
and he is talking to me and saying I killed him for nothing,
and I am crying."
However,
not all child soldiers are forced to kill, yet the horrors they
suffer will continue to haunt them for the rest of their lives.
One Peruvian woman recruited by The Shining Path at the age
of 11 recalls, "They beat all the people there, old and
young, they killed them all, nearly 10 people... like dogs they
killed them... I didn't kill anyone, but I saw them killing...
the children who were with them killed too... with weapons...
they made us drink the blood of people…"
Besides
the risk of death or injury in combat, child soldiers suffer
disproportionately from the rigours of military life. Younger
children collapse under heavy loads, malnutrition, respiratory
and skin infections and other ailments are frequent.
Child
soldiers may also be at additional risk of drug and alcohol
abuse (often used to recruit children or desensitize them for
violence), sexually transmitted disease, including HIV/AIDS,
and unwanted pregnancies.
Harsh
training regimes and other forms of ill-treatment often lead
to casualties and even deaths among young recruits. Emilio,
who was recruited by the Guatemalan army at age 14 says, "The
army was a nightmare. We suffered greatly from the cruel treatment
we received. We were constantly beaten, mostly for no reason
at all, just to keep us in a state of terror. I still have a
scar on my lip and sharp pains in my stomach from being brutally
kicked by the older soldiers. The food was scarce, and they
made us walk with heavy loads, much too heavy for our small
and malnourished bodies. They forced me to learn how to fight
the enemy, in a war that I didn't understand why was being fought."
In
2000, a dramatic breakthrough was achieved in efforts to end
the use of children as soldiers. On January 21, after six years
of negotiations, governments from around the world agreed on
a new international treaty to prohibit the use of children as
combatants.
The
new child soldiers protocol establishes eighteen as the minimum
age for direct participation in hostilities, for compulsory
recruitment, and for any recruitment or use in hostilities by
non-governmental armed groups.
By
late May 2001, a year after its adoption, 79 countries had signed
it.
Despite
the endorsements made, more than half of the countries signed
have not followed them in practice. It is apparent that protocols
and proposals offer little help to the children who are dangerously
forced into the violence of war. Political pressure from the
international community is needed to help the situation. Evidently,
there is still much work to be done until no child soldiers
are used in war.
As
you drift off to sleep tonight, give some thought to those children
who are dragged out of their beds and conscripted to fight in
armed conflicts and treasure the fact that you are safe under
your covers.
For
more information on child soldiers visit:
The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers:
www.child-soldiers.org
Human Rights Watch: www.hrw.org
UNICEF: www.unicef.org
Warchild Canada:
www.warchild.ca
…and
check out UNICEF Canada's www.giveitup4kids.ca
to see how you can help those less privileged.
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