What happened to the peace deal?
SLA leader Minni Minawi, who signed the May peace deal, was given a large budget, but his fighters have already been accused by Amnesty International of abuses against people in areas opposed to the peace deal.
The smaller SLA faction and Jem did not sign the deal.
The government again promised to disarm the Janjaweed but there appears no evidence of this.
The UN's Jan Egeland says that there has been a dramatic increase in violence and displacement since the deal was signed.
With the peace deal looking unworkable and amid fears of renewed "all-out war", there appears little prospect of people returning to their villages for some time yet.
Is anyone trying to stop the fighting?
About 7,000 African Union troops have slowly been deployed in Darfur on a very limited mandate.
Experts say the soldiers are too few to cover an area the size of France, and the African Union says it does not have the money to fund the operation for much longer.
Sudan has resisted strong western diplomatic pressure for the UN to take control of the peacekeeping mission. The latest plan envisages a more than doubling of numbers and a hybrid force with much greater UN involvement but at present there is deadlock.
In April 2006, the UN Security Council passed a resolution imposing sanctions against four Sudanese nationals accused of war crimes in Darfur that include two rebel leaders, a former air force chief, and a Janjaweed militia leader.
A dossier of evidence compiled by a UN commission has also been passed to the ICC in The Hague, along with the names of top war crimes suspects.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3496731.stm
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
NewsPaper Article
(CBS) The United Nations has called it the greatest crisis in the world. The United States calls it genocide. It's happening in the African nation of Sudan, and 60 Minutes went to see for ourselves. What we saw and what you will see again tonight is evidence of a government-backed campaign to wipe out a race. There are at least 180,000 dead and more than 2 million on the run. It all started two years ago in a part of Sudan called Darfur, where rebels looking for a measure of freedom revolted against Sudan's authoritarian Islamic government. The government apparently decided to end the revolt by trying to wipe out all of the native Africans in Darfur, to clear the territory for Arabs. We should tell you that some of the evidence of the killing that we found is hard to watch. But, as we did last fall, we will start with the survivors. They are the innocent victims, pouring across the border of Sudan into Chad. Correspondent Scott Pelley reports.
60 Minutes traveled to the middle of Africa. There are refugee camps up and down the Chad-Sudan border. Some are larger; others smaller. One camp has about 19,000 refugees, but in the entire region, there are 189,000 refugees, and the United Nations is planning for another 100,000 on top of that. One camp is the farthest north, which means it’s in the driest part of the Sahara. Walking around it, you are struck by one thing. If this is better than where they came from, imagine what they are fleeing. Pelley visits one of the villages burning in Sudan. The Sudanese government has unleashed African Arabs, called the Janjaweed, to wipe out tribal blacks. The name "Sudan," ironically, is Arabic, meaning "land of the blacks." But the Janjaweed is rewriting that history in blood. Janjaweed, by the way, has a translation, too. It means "evil on horseback." John Prendergast, who was director of African Affairs at the National Security Council for the Clinton White House, says that these tribal blacks have "been subjected to one of the most brutal campaigns of ethnic cleansing that Africa has ever seen." Prendergast is now with the International Crisis Group, a human rights organization documenting the disaster in Sudan and neighboring Chad. "A government-made hurricane hit Darfur ... using these Janjaweed militias," Prendergast says. "And the human debris has washed up on the shores of Chad." The refugees are from Sudan’s western province, Darfur, which is about the size of Texas. Prendergast says the survivors lucky — many of them were chased across the desert border into Chad by the Janjaweed. "The Janjaweed are like a grotesque mixture of the mafia and the Ku Klux Klan," says Prendergast. "These guys have a racist ideology that sees the Arab population as the supreme population that would like to see the subjugation of non-Arab peoples. They’re criminal racketeers that have been supported very directly by the government to wage the war against the people of Darfur." Survivors say the attacks usually start at dawn, with bombs falling from planes of the Sudanese Air Force. "And then here come the Janjaweed on camel or on horseback," Prendergast says. "They come rolling into the town, shooting and torching the village, often bringing women to the side and raping women indiscriminately. And in order to ensure that the destruction is complete, the government either sends ground forces to oversee the operation, or the attack helicopters, which often are the most deadly things." "They arrived on horseback, killed my husband and took my son," says Toona, who still didn't know what happened to her son eight months later. She left Sudan with five surviving children after the Janjaweed burned her village. "They never gave me a chance to talk to my child," Toona says. "Some of them dragged my son away, others slaughtered my husband, and some others took me to the side, and tortured me and left me there. My newborn was snatched off my back, and was left lying on the ground. I found him in that situation when they let me go."
Zara lost eight members of her family. "They attacked us very early in the morning, some militiamen on horseback and camels and some soldiers in military vehicles. There was an airplane above," she says. "They burned the village, they killed some people, they slashed their throats and captured others." Zara's husband was killed, along with two of her children, two sisters and three of her brothers. To reach Chad, Zara walked 10 days carrying a 1-year-old boy, now her only child. They found refuge in the sprawling camps that are an emergency response by the International Rescue Committee and the United Nations. They are holding the desert back with nothing more than tarps and trucks. Tents that go up white are soon painted by the Sahara. Food comes from hundreds of miles away. Water flows in, one tanker at a time. 60 Minutes found a 4-month-old refugee and orphan in a shelter for severely malnourished children. His mother died in childbirth. His father was murdered in Sudan. All he has is a grandmother and five brothers. His grandmother pours formula past his lips all day to wash away the hunger that nearly killed him. Many of the children bear the look of the hunted and the haunted. They are people holding on in the midst of a genocide that aims to exterminate them. One of the things you notice is just how many kids there are. Because most of the men are missing or dead, 90 percent of the refugees are women and children. "These guys have been through hell and back," says Prendergast. "And it’s just amazing. Look at the smiles and the resilience ... The Zagawa people: these are the people that ... are legendary within Sudan for their survival skill." One woman told Pelley she carried her 1-year-old child for 12 days just to get to a camp. "These are the survivors. For many of those people, that was a death march," says Prendergast. "I mean, there were people they had to bury along the way. "These are the lucky ones," he continues. "That tells you something about what’s going on in Sudan today, if these are the lucky ones." The refugees are telling their stories to another American, Samantha Power. She has investigated ethnic cleansing in Sudan, Rwanda and Kosovo. In 2003, she won a Pulitzer Prize for her book "A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide." What is the evidence that this is ethnic cleansing, or genocide? "When the Janjaweed come in, and there is interaction between the Janjaweed and the local people, the Janjaweed are shouting ethnic slogans. They are saying, 'You blacks, you Zurga,' sort of like an equivalent of 'nigger.' 'Get out. You’re slaves. You’re hyena. Never come back,'" says Power. "When rape is committed, often the same epithets are issued. 'You’re gonna give birth to a light-skinned child now.' They see their task, those who are racially motivated, as one of purification." The death march of that "purification" runs through among the hottest, driest territory on Earth. Last summer, Power and Prendergast crossed the desert with 60 Minutes into Darfur. We saw just how difficult a journey that can be. When it's dry, the sand gives way like water. When the rains come, riverbeds called Wadis fill with immoveable mud. A lot of people are coming down through this way, and a lot of people don’t make it this far. "There are untold numbers of Darfurians who are stuck," Power says. "We encountered some of them as we drove eastward, and they said, 'If we had the means, we would get to Chad. We’re too sick. We’re too old. Please tell people to send help.'" About 500 of those people used to live in the village of Hengala. But in January 2004, everything that could burn there did. Men, women and children were driven out, dead or alive, by the Janjaweed. Sudan’s military government is telling the world that it has reined in the Janjaweed. But outside a town called Fariwiya, 60 Minutes found bodies of evidence that suggest otherwise. In July 2004, anti-government rebels showed what they say is proof of continuing mass murder. "The first thing that greeted us was decomposing flesh. And then, as we walked further up the hill, we saw, almost blending into the sand, the bodies of men who appeared to have been executed," says Power. "Most of the bullet holes seemed to have entered from the back of the head or the back itself. But the thing that I found the most haunting was that one of them had clearly made a run for it. And he almost looked like he was pleading for mercy." And the living are still pleading. In a landscape dominated by desolation, 60 Minutes found refugees still on the journey to the camps. A tree is home for 14-year-old Nasir and 16-year-old Mohammad. They crossed into Chad the night before. They told 60 Minutes that their father, uncles, and brothers were killed, and their mother is missing. They had been in hiding and walking for eight months, living on rainwater and whatever else they could find in the foothills. The shade of the noor tree was their last stop before the refugee camp. With survivors swelling the camps, the threat of cholera or hepatitis rises with each new refugee. Infants are at most risk if disease begins to finish off what the government of Sudan and Janjaweed have started. So, Pelley posits, a million people could die by natural causes when the cause isn’t natural at all. "Exactly," Power says. "This won’t look like Rwanda. If a million people die in Darfur, we’ll all sigh and say, 'Isn’t it a shame we couldn’t get medicine to those poor, sick, Darfurians?' As if they were poor and sick to begin with. "Fifty thousand people have died so far. That’s 50,000 too many. But when we know there are between a million and two million who can yet be saved, what is our excuse for watching this happen in slow motion?" The African Union now has monitors in Darfur, trying to police an area the size of Texas. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization estimates another 7,000 people die every month in Darfur.
60 Minutes traveled to the middle of Africa. There are refugee camps up and down the Chad-Sudan border. Some are larger; others smaller. One camp has about 19,000 refugees, but in the entire region, there are 189,000 refugees, and the United Nations is planning for another 100,000 on top of that. One camp is the farthest north, which means it’s in the driest part of the Sahara. Walking around it, you are struck by one thing. If this is better than where they came from, imagine what they are fleeing. Pelley visits one of the villages burning in Sudan. The Sudanese government has unleashed African Arabs, called the Janjaweed, to wipe out tribal blacks. The name "Sudan," ironically, is Arabic, meaning "land of the blacks." But the Janjaweed is rewriting that history in blood. Janjaweed, by the way, has a translation, too. It means "evil on horseback." John Prendergast, who was director of African Affairs at the National Security Council for the Clinton White House, says that these tribal blacks have "been subjected to one of the most brutal campaigns of ethnic cleansing that Africa has ever seen." Prendergast is now with the International Crisis Group, a human rights organization documenting the disaster in Sudan and neighboring Chad. "A government-made hurricane hit Darfur ... using these Janjaweed militias," Prendergast says. "And the human debris has washed up on the shores of Chad." The refugees are from Sudan’s western province, Darfur, which is about the size of Texas. Prendergast says the survivors lucky — many of them were chased across the desert border into Chad by the Janjaweed. "The Janjaweed are like a grotesque mixture of the mafia and the Ku Klux Klan," says Prendergast. "These guys have a racist ideology that sees the Arab population as the supreme population that would like to see the subjugation of non-Arab peoples. They’re criminal racketeers that have been supported very directly by the government to wage the war against the people of Darfur." Survivors say the attacks usually start at dawn, with bombs falling from planes of the Sudanese Air Force. "And then here come the Janjaweed on camel or on horseback," Prendergast says. "They come rolling into the town, shooting and torching the village, often bringing women to the side and raping women indiscriminately. And in order to ensure that the destruction is complete, the government either sends ground forces to oversee the operation, or the attack helicopters, which often are the most deadly things." "They arrived on horseback, killed my husband and took my son," says Toona, who still didn't know what happened to her son eight months later. She left Sudan with five surviving children after the Janjaweed burned her village. "They never gave me a chance to talk to my child," Toona says. "Some of them dragged my son away, others slaughtered my husband, and some others took me to the side, and tortured me and left me there. My newborn was snatched off my back, and was left lying on the ground. I found him in that situation when they let me go."
Zara lost eight members of her family. "They attacked us very early in the morning, some militiamen on horseback and camels and some soldiers in military vehicles. There was an airplane above," she says. "They burned the village, they killed some people, they slashed their throats and captured others." Zara's husband was killed, along with two of her children, two sisters and three of her brothers. To reach Chad, Zara walked 10 days carrying a 1-year-old boy, now her only child. They found refuge in the sprawling camps that are an emergency response by the International Rescue Committee and the United Nations. They are holding the desert back with nothing more than tarps and trucks. Tents that go up white are soon painted by the Sahara. Food comes from hundreds of miles away. Water flows in, one tanker at a time. 60 Minutes found a 4-month-old refugee and orphan in a shelter for severely malnourished children. His mother died in childbirth. His father was murdered in Sudan. All he has is a grandmother and five brothers. His grandmother pours formula past his lips all day to wash away the hunger that nearly killed him. Many of the children bear the look of the hunted and the haunted. They are people holding on in the midst of a genocide that aims to exterminate them. One of the things you notice is just how many kids there are. Because most of the men are missing or dead, 90 percent of the refugees are women and children. "These guys have been through hell and back," says Prendergast. "And it’s just amazing. Look at the smiles and the resilience ... The Zagawa people: these are the people that ... are legendary within Sudan for their survival skill." One woman told Pelley she carried her 1-year-old child for 12 days just to get to a camp. "These are the survivors. For many of those people, that was a death march," says Prendergast. "I mean, there were people they had to bury along the way. "These are the lucky ones," he continues. "That tells you something about what’s going on in Sudan today, if these are the lucky ones." The refugees are telling their stories to another American, Samantha Power. She has investigated ethnic cleansing in Sudan, Rwanda and Kosovo. In 2003, she won a Pulitzer Prize for her book "A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide." What is the evidence that this is ethnic cleansing, or genocide? "When the Janjaweed come in, and there is interaction between the Janjaweed and the local people, the Janjaweed are shouting ethnic slogans. They are saying, 'You blacks, you Zurga,' sort of like an equivalent of 'nigger.' 'Get out. You’re slaves. You’re hyena. Never come back,'" says Power. "When rape is committed, often the same epithets are issued. 'You’re gonna give birth to a light-skinned child now.' They see their task, those who are racially motivated, as one of purification." The death march of that "purification" runs through among the hottest, driest territory on Earth. Last summer, Power and Prendergast crossed the desert with 60 Minutes into Darfur. We saw just how difficult a journey that can be. When it's dry, the sand gives way like water. When the rains come, riverbeds called Wadis fill with immoveable mud. A lot of people are coming down through this way, and a lot of people don’t make it this far. "There are untold numbers of Darfurians who are stuck," Power says. "We encountered some of them as we drove eastward, and they said, 'If we had the means, we would get to Chad. We’re too sick. We’re too old. Please tell people to send help.'" About 500 of those people used to live in the village of Hengala. But in January 2004, everything that could burn there did. Men, women and children were driven out, dead or alive, by the Janjaweed. Sudan’s military government is telling the world that it has reined in the Janjaweed. But outside a town called Fariwiya, 60 Minutes found bodies of evidence that suggest otherwise. In July 2004, anti-government rebels showed what they say is proof of continuing mass murder. "The first thing that greeted us was decomposing flesh. And then, as we walked further up the hill, we saw, almost blending into the sand, the bodies of men who appeared to have been executed," says Power. "Most of the bullet holes seemed to have entered from the back of the head or the back itself. But the thing that I found the most haunting was that one of them had clearly made a run for it. And he almost looked like he was pleading for mercy." And the living are still pleading. In a landscape dominated by desolation, 60 Minutes found refugees still on the journey to the camps. A tree is home for 14-year-old Nasir and 16-year-old Mohammad. They crossed into Chad the night before. They told 60 Minutes that their father, uncles, and brothers were killed, and their mother is missing. They had been in hiding and walking for eight months, living on rainwater and whatever else they could find in the foothills. The shade of the noor tree was their last stop before the refugee camp. With survivors swelling the camps, the threat of cholera or hepatitis rises with each new refugee. Infants are at most risk if disease begins to finish off what the government of Sudan and Janjaweed have started. So, Pelley posits, a million people could die by natural causes when the cause isn’t natural at all. "Exactly," Power says. "This won’t look like Rwanda. If a million people die in Darfur, we’ll all sigh and say, 'Isn’t it a shame we couldn’t get medicine to those poor, sick, Darfurians?' As if they were poor and sick to begin with. "Fifty thousand people have died so far. That’s 50,000 too many. But when we know there are between a million and two million who can yet be saved, what is our excuse for watching this happen in slow motion?" The African Union now has monitors in Darfur, trying to police an area the size of Texas. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization estimates another 7,000 people die every month in Darfur.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
What does education mean to you?
I feel that there is a huge difference between the education I recieved when I was in elementary to highschool than where I am now in college. Before college education was kind of a joke and I can honestly say I learned very little. The only thing that was pounded into your brain was how to behave and how to respect your teachers and other students. During that time you didn't have to depend on yourself for anything because your teachers and family would do things for you and carry you along the way. There was always extra credit and teachers were more than willing to help you after class. I feel like education in higschool was just cramming as much information in our brains as possible and then judge our intelligence with one standardized test at the end of the year. There were never any discussions and nothing was ever explained, and most of the teachers just read from the books. Everything you learned you would be tested on once and all that material would never be used again so you would forget about it as soon as the test was over. Im so glad to be in college now because I feel like what I'm being taught is actually being processed through my brain and I'm taking classes that I will actually benefit from in the future. Don't get me wrong not all of my teachers in highschool were horrible there were a couple of really good teachers but in college most of my professors are really experienced in the field they are teaching so they are really informed on the subject. The education I recieve now requires a lot of independent study which gets me a lot more involved in what I'm learning and I become more and more engaged with what I'm learning.
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Children are meant to have fun... not carry a gun!
Katie Campofelice
Child soldiers
The use of children as soldiers is seen as appalling and in today’s society it is completely unacceptable, yet all over the world hundreds of thousands of children are being forced to carry weapons and fight in combat. I find it absolutely embarrassing to our society that these children are constantly enduring brutal conditions and dealing with both the physical and psychological effects that consequently follow. As this problem begins to grow so does its awareness and people’s efforts to end it, but why is the use of child soldiers still so prevalent in today’s society?
The use of children as soldiers is an intolerable problem and is prominent in places all over the world such as Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East but it has become most crucial in Africa where it is estimated that more than 200,000 children are being forced to join these armed militia groups. These armed militia groups move into communities and pick and choose children like cattle. A 15 year old boy P.K who was abducted in Liberia in 2002 recounts “Government soldiers came and forced me and my father to join them. My father refused so they cut his throat. They beat me and tied me and forced me to join the fighters”. (Amnesty) The estimated number of children soldiers is approximately 300,000 but some argue that it is in fact much greater because it is extremely difficult to collect this type of data. Impoverished and underdeveloped countries like Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Liberia and many more are using children as young as five years old to carry out acts of violence. All together there are children actively involved in combat in more than 85 nations all over the world. These children are ripped away from their families at a young age and are raised in these sadistic environments. While some children are kidnapped or forced to become part of these groups, many children join voluntarily because there is little to no other opportunity for a better life and because of the social, political or economic pressures surrounding them.
In many areas these children soldiers undergo brutal conditions and endure a great deal of pain and suffering. In numerous cases children receive very little food, suffer from beatings and sexual abuse, and are forced into using illicit drugs. In Africa these government armed forces, paramilitaries, and civil militia feed these young children drugs in order to condition them into believing that the acts they are committing against their own people and community are acceptable. Boys in captivity are forced to ransack and burn villages and torture and even kill their own neighbors. At age 15 Albert was he was recruited by an armed opposition group in the Democratic Republic of Congo recounts “They would give us ‘chanvre’ [cannabis] and force us to kill people to toughen us up. Sometimes they brought us women and girls to rape…They would beat us if we refused.” (Amnesty) Both boys and girls participate in combat and some are even used for sexual purposes, messengers, spies, servants or to lay or clear landmines for the older soldiers. Although life for a boy soldier is ruthless, young girls are also treated inhumanely by having to deal with rape and they are often forced into sexual slavery or are used as “comforters” for the male soldiers. The discrimination brought upon young girls in astonishing and these male soldiers rather refer to them as sexual possessions rather than human beings. Many armed forces believe children soldiers are very vital to their societies because they are seen as cheap and expendable and are very obedient to authority. In addition they feel that these young, impressionable children can be turned into the fiercest fighters through brutal instruction and training. Involving children as soldiers has been made easier by the production of inexpensive light weapons.
The goal of these forces and groups is to inhibit fear and guilt into the minds of these children, which later leads to many psychological and physical problems later on in their lives. The involvement of children in war desensitizes them to suffering and emotions, and in some cases children are deliberately exposed to horrific scenes in order to “harden” their psyche. (Child Soldier) The most severe consequence of having children serve as soldiers is on their moral and psychological development because their moral system is being dominated by fear and violence. After the war has ended it becomes almost impossible for these children to be a functioning member of society when their entire experience of that society is organized around fear and violence. These children also suffer physical injuries like loss of hearing, loss of sight, and loss of limbs. Most children lose limbs because the leaders of these forces cut off limbs as a form of punishment for being disobedient.
The first international regulation dealing with the issue of children in armed conflict was the 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva conventions which established a minimum age for recruitment. The world finally reacted to this issue and in 1989 The UN Declaration of the Rights of Child was adopted. To date, a basic agreement among states seems to have been reached on raising to 18 the minimum age for participation in hostilities, for compulsory recruitment into government armed forces, and for any kind of recruitment into nongovernmental armed groups. Although laws have been passed it is a very difficult task to end this trend completely because most of the children are being kidnapped by armed forces that have no connections to the government. Charity organizations also exist that are working to prevent the recruitment and use of children such as the Child Soldiers Coalition Trust and The Child Soldiers Project.
A child should ever have to witness the violence that these children endure everyday, and no child should be forced to murder and rape innocent people, it is disturbing to even think about. But everyday more and more children are being rescued from these armed forces and put back into society
1. Amnesty International, http://web.amnesty.org/pages/childsoldiers-index-eng
2. Child Soldiers, http://www.childsoldiers.org/home/
3. Tooshi, Nahal, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.
Child soldiers
The use of children as soldiers is seen as appalling and in today’s society it is completely unacceptable, yet all over the world hundreds of thousands of children are being forced to carry weapons and fight in combat. I find it absolutely embarrassing to our society that these children are constantly enduring brutal conditions and dealing with both the physical and psychological effects that consequently follow. As this problem begins to grow so does its awareness and people’s efforts to end it, but why is the use of child soldiers still so prevalent in today’s society?
The use of children as soldiers is an intolerable problem and is prominent in places all over the world such as Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East but it has become most crucial in Africa where it is estimated that more than 200,000 children are being forced to join these armed militia groups. These armed militia groups move into communities and pick and choose children like cattle. A 15 year old boy P.K who was abducted in Liberia in 2002 recounts “Government soldiers came and forced me and my father to join them. My father refused so they cut his throat. They beat me and tied me and forced me to join the fighters”. (Amnesty) The estimated number of children soldiers is approximately 300,000 but some argue that it is in fact much greater because it is extremely difficult to collect this type of data. Impoverished and underdeveloped countries like Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Liberia and many more are using children as young as five years old to carry out acts of violence. All together there are children actively involved in combat in more than 85 nations all over the world. These children are ripped away from their families at a young age and are raised in these sadistic environments. While some children are kidnapped or forced to become part of these groups, many children join voluntarily because there is little to no other opportunity for a better life and because of the social, political or economic pressures surrounding them.
In many areas these children soldiers undergo brutal conditions and endure a great deal of pain and suffering. In numerous cases children receive very little food, suffer from beatings and sexual abuse, and are forced into using illicit drugs. In Africa these government armed forces, paramilitaries, and civil militia feed these young children drugs in order to condition them into believing that the acts they are committing against their own people and community are acceptable. Boys in captivity are forced to ransack and burn villages and torture and even kill their own neighbors. At age 15 Albert was he was recruited by an armed opposition group in the Democratic Republic of Congo recounts “They would give us ‘chanvre’ [cannabis] and force us to kill people to toughen us up. Sometimes they brought us women and girls to rape…They would beat us if we refused.” (Amnesty) Both boys and girls participate in combat and some are even used for sexual purposes, messengers, spies, servants or to lay or clear landmines for the older soldiers. Although life for a boy soldier is ruthless, young girls are also treated inhumanely by having to deal with rape and they are often forced into sexual slavery or are used as “comforters” for the male soldiers. The discrimination brought upon young girls in astonishing and these male soldiers rather refer to them as sexual possessions rather than human beings. Many armed forces believe children soldiers are very vital to their societies because they are seen as cheap and expendable and are very obedient to authority. In addition they feel that these young, impressionable children can be turned into the fiercest fighters through brutal instruction and training. Involving children as soldiers has been made easier by the production of inexpensive light weapons.
The goal of these forces and groups is to inhibit fear and guilt into the minds of these children, which later leads to many psychological and physical problems later on in their lives. The involvement of children in war desensitizes them to suffering and emotions, and in some cases children are deliberately exposed to horrific scenes in order to “harden” their psyche. (Child Soldier) The most severe consequence of having children serve as soldiers is on their moral and psychological development because their moral system is being dominated by fear and violence. After the war has ended it becomes almost impossible for these children to be a functioning member of society when their entire experience of that society is organized around fear and violence. These children also suffer physical injuries like loss of hearing, loss of sight, and loss of limbs. Most children lose limbs because the leaders of these forces cut off limbs as a form of punishment for being disobedient.
The first international regulation dealing with the issue of children in armed conflict was the 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva conventions which established a minimum age for recruitment. The world finally reacted to this issue and in 1989 The UN Declaration of the Rights of Child was adopted. To date, a basic agreement among states seems to have been reached on raising to 18 the minimum age for participation in hostilities, for compulsory recruitment into government armed forces, and for any kind of recruitment into nongovernmental armed groups. Although laws have been passed it is a very difficult task to end this trend completely because most of the children are being kidnapped by armed forces that have no connections to the government. Charity organizations also exist that are working to prevent the recruitment and use of children such as the Child Soldiers Coalition Trust and The Child Soldiers Project.
A child should ever have to witness the violence that these children endure everyday, and no child should be forced to murder and rape innocent people, it is disturbing to even think about. But everyday more and more children are being rescued from these armed forces and put back into society
1. Amnesty International, http://web.amnesty.org/pages/childsoldiers-index-eng
2. Child Soldiers, http://www.childsoldiers.org/home/
3. Tooshi, Nahal, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.
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