September / October 2009 Issue

Is This Our World

We live in a world where the rat race is everything. People strive daily to be ahead of the other person, get an
education, find a job, make money and fit into a routine that we constantly want to get out of. Have we ever stopped to think about the other side of the picture - the bleaker side? There are people who wake up not nowing whether they will live to see the end of the day; whether they will ever find love or compassion in this world. To them, every single day of their lives is a fierce battle against suffering, war and poverty and they literally have to fight to stay alive.

literally have to fight to stay alive. Many countries in Africa and South Asia suffer from bloody wars that rage ithin
them. Usually, armed insurgents rise up against the government and run their own de facto territories. These guerrillas make their own rules and enforce them ruthlessly. Many of these organisations recruit or conscript child soldiers (A child soldier is anyone below the age of 18 involved in armed conflict) in their ‘armies.’

These children found their way into the terror organisations in many different ways. Some were orphaned by the conflict and since they had nowhere else to go, they decided that they wanted to join the terrorists. Some others, who had seen the gruesome killings of their parents, friends and relatives made the decision to take up arms in order to avenge their deaths. There are groups of youngsters who join hoping to get a piece of the action, heroism and the glory. The idea of strutting around with a gun or riding a motorcycle is appealing to them and they think that it is the best they can get in their lives. A large group of them however are forcibly recruited, forced to shoot their own parents or siblings and fight for the cause. Escape is impossible, and any attempt made will be
punished without hesitation. Child soldiers who see their comrades being shot dead or have their limbs cut off are amply warned C h i l d Soldiers that anyone who even plans on escaping will be dealt with as brutally.

About half the world’s child soldiers are in Africa. The tasks of these children who are termed soldiers does not always encompass combat. They are used as messengers, porters, spies and sex slaves. As long as un-policed states keep fighting their wars, the recruitment of child soldiers is going to continue – and that is the sad truth, however harsh it may seem. The pertinent question is what can be done to stop the use and recruitment of children in conflict related activities.

The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, a non governmental alliance that includes Amnesty International
and Human Rights Watch is actively involved in trying to develop a feasible solution to the world’s growing child
soldier problem.

Traditional demobilisation programmes are the process of releasing child soldiers from military camps and
rehabilitating them. Even this is not practicable according to experts who say that almost all child soldiers who were rehabilitated this way eventually found themselves back where they started simply to survive. Agencies that have studied the issue have reported that if the children had the opportunity to integrate themselves into an educational system then they would be less susceptible to be absorbed into the conflict. The statement, however, in reality is almost impossible to achieve in a lawless war zone where all traces of normalcy are absent.

For many such children the transitions are not easy. The scars that war can make on young minds keep haunting
them and they are extremely violent. The sudden change and the fact that they have nothing to do makes them
restless. A rehabilitation programme in Sierra Leone started off with the children initially refusing remedial classes. They took sides according to who was with the rebels and who was with the army and started fighting each other, some children getting stabbed and seriously beaten in the process. It was hard to imagine that most of these children with murderous skills were just fifteen years old.

The children were then provided with school supplies, but most of these were quickly sold by them in exchange for cigarettes.

The children who eventually get through the rehabilitation process are sent to the nearest traceable relatives and
if there aren’t any, sent to foster homes. Reintegration into society is more than challenging. These children don’t know what it’s like to live on the outside, and don’t know how to handle everything that they see, hear and observe. People are afraid of these ‘soldiers’ and sometimes looked down upon as a result of their past.

The order of the day is to provide these children with a suitable regimen of educational, vocational and sychosocial
support.

It’s hard to believe that there are people whose greed can cloud their vision and make them blind even to the very basic sentiments of humanity. The cycle is deadly, and some individuals who are commanders in their militant groups, first started as child soldiers. To them, that is all that life has to offer. A system thrust upon them leaving no
other option but death.

This Issue