Child soldiers

Marcos Álvarez

The child soldier is any person under 18 and is part of any armed movement. Thousand of children are involved in wars and armed conflicts. They are child soldiers in Latin America, Africa, Asia and Europe but most of them are in Africa. Actually they taking part in many conflicts armed in all over the world, but they do not fight with the international armies, they are with other armed groups. Recruiting child soldiers is a common thing in conflicts in these countries, after years and years of war have ended with adults aged of fight and use young people to fight with other soldiers.

These children have been abducted in the street, removed from the classrooms of their schools or refugee camps, although many are forced by guns and others while walking down the street or are playing near their homes. Other children join voluntarily as a result of conflicts, families are broken or there is much violence in the house. Others, they want to going out or don’t see other alternatives to survive because his extreme poverty, or even same because a friend or a member of his family has died in a war or in a conflict armed.

The lives of child soldiers are extremely hard and dangerous: they are used as messengers, porters and spies. They are forced to put explosives and learn to use dangerous guns. Girls are often forced to satisfy the sexual needs of soldiers in military camps. The child soldiers are victims not only in situations of armed conflict, were also transformed into victims.

During his military training, to harden them they often are forced under threat of death to kill friends and members of his own family. Another reason for the forced recruitment of children is because they are more docile than adults and can be better instruction to kill. All this happens often under the influence of drugs and alcohol. The children who survive over a lifetime have to fight with the consequences of these physical and psychological actions. Today they are 300.000 children soldiers in the world. In ^AMNISTIA INTERNACIONAL^ the countries that recruit children are Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, Cambodia, Colombia, Guatemala, Guinea Bissau, Honduras, Northern Ireland, Liberia, Mozambique, Nepal, Nicaragua, Congo, El salvador, Somalia, Sierra Leona, Sudan and Uganda.

Graça Machel, former Education Minister of Mozambique and Nelson Mandela made partner in 1996 a report on the impact of armed conflict on children. It was a document that reveals the subject of international control. One of the biggest problems is that many child soldiers have spent all its childhood in the battlefield. African conflicts in recent years have continued for decades and this means that many children have known no other world than war.

There are different types of tasks for children in war. The youngest are often the age of seven years, are messengers or spies. Rebel commanders appreciate that the kids do a great job in getting information on the enemy because "cross the line and no one suspects them because they are too young." When they are ten years, using guns or rifles. They start as mere assistants and eventually end up on the battlefield.