Statistically there are 250,000 child soldiers currently fighting today. Child Soldiers are being dragged out of their homes and or threatened with death to serve in battle. For that reason child soldiers are being exposed to dangerous situations that can cause death or other problems. In the book, “A Long Way Gone” the main character, Ishmael, was a child soldier for 2 months in Sierra Leone. Ishmael was taken from his family and fellow friends. This young boy was manipulated by the two rebels to either serve or death would come upon them. These child soldiers served while encountering major effects on fellow soldiers as well as Ishmael had. In A Long Way Gone Ishmael encountered PTSD, and other tragic events. History has proven that the …show more content…
Our findings suggest that many former child soldiers may need more than interventions to reduce the mental health problems associated with surviving bombings and torture.Typically children aren’t faced with dangerous events in their everyday lives, when they are it can take a toll on their mental health. Most child soldiers suffered from traumatic events and often found it hard to normalize society after the war. Soldiers were threatened and tortured into serving, after seeing death in front of their eyes most children were traumatized. Children need advanced interventions and support after serving to “normalize” everyday life with the effects of physiological trauma.Child soldiers need to be banned from making children's mental health worse and unstable. Children are faced with life threatening situations everyday, but not like these situations. Child soldiers are faced with life or death situations every day. Former children can be put into wars and battles without knowing ahead of time. These children can suffer from abuse and other cruelties from serving.Often referred to as “child soldiers,” these boys and girls suffer extensive forms of exploitation and abuse that are not fully captured by that term” …show more content…
Child soldiers are captured by abuse, and life threatening situations. These situations can lead to a high population of death and withdrawals of fear. Child soldiers are forced into these situations with the threat of death due to denying serving.Life threatening situations are everyday events that happen while you are a child soldier and cause effects on children that should not be acceptable in everyday life. History has proven that the use of child soldiers should be banned internationally because soldiers are around drugs and drug abuse. While in battle children are made to take drugs to absence their emotions and pain due to the effects of war and coping with pain. Drugs are enhanced in the children's everyday routine but affected the children badly where they craved the drugs and thought of emotionlessness. I craved cocaine and marijuana so badly that I would roll a plain sheet of paper and smoke it.Drug abuse is a habit of coping but can become deadly.Drugs are often exposed during battle to decrease fear and feelings from killing individuals and feeling fear yourself. Most soldiers were used to the idea of taking drugs that at a point that is all they craved to stay “sane”. Drugs helped with the main idea of pain and emotion while in battle. Child soldiers are abused with drugs to cope which should be banned internationally. Children experience drug abuse, life threatening situations and
There is a problem in the world and something needs to be done of it. There are children, primarily in Africa, that are forced to massacre innocent men and women. These kids are called child soldiers. Child soldiers are kids who are associated in war. A popular book about child soldier is an autobiography by Ishmael Beah called A Long Way Gone.
The Effects On Child Soldiers In the book, A Long Way Gone, it said, “‘Bullet wounds,’ I casually replied” (Beah 154). In the book, Beah is so mentally changed that getting shot is not even a big deal to him anymore. Most child soldiers just like him have been desensitized to these kinds of problems. Using children in war can cause them a countless amount of mental and physical pain as Beah describes in his book
Ishmael and other soldiers weren’t normal boys and “a change of environment wouldn’t immediately make us normal boys.”(164). The withdrawal period was very tough, Ishmael “craved cocaine and marijuana so badly”(167) that he had started to fight for no reason. Ishmael and his friends “beat up people from the neighborhood”(168) and sometimes even “threw stones at them.”(168). Ever since the war, Ishmael had lost his innocence and though he was in rehab, he was getting worse before getting better. The child soldiers have been ruthless and hate the civilians, who have no idea how bad the war has been and though innocent, the boys “kicked him relentlessly and left him lying on the floor bleeding and unconscious.”(169).
Many of the child soldiers who were able to leave the war had a tremendous amount of problems. “But at night some of us would wake up from nightmares, sweating, screaming, and punching our own heads to drive out the images that continued to torment us even when we were no longer asleep.” (148) The child soldiers who were rescued and sent to one of the rehabilitation centers still had the same mentality. They were still addicted to drugs, and to killing.
Child soldiers have been a major issue in countries all over the world for a very long time. For example, Afghanistan is recruiting children to become a part of the Taliban, one of the largest terrorist groups in the country. A theme presented by Ishmael Beah in the book A Long Way Gone: memoirs of a boy soldier is that when all is lost, there is always hope. He went through brutal drugs and a dark childhood while he was in a civil war but he still was able to push through it and find happiness.
Many of these children passed away while being in the war but the ones that didn’t could be suffering from PTSD, Drug addiction, and more. Child soldiers are used around the world, from ages seven and up. Many child soldiers after being in war suffer from psychological trauma like PTSD, drug addiction, and physical trauma. History has proven that the use of
In the book, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, Ishmael becomes a child soldier at the age of 12 for the governmental team the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, in order to fight the Revolutionary United Front. Ishmael goes from being a regular kid who liked to spend time with his friends
An estimated 300,000 children are forced to become soldiers every day all around the world and will be forced to grow up in a war environment. Many teens in African countries have been fighting in the war since the 90s. These children were forced to fight in the war to survive not being killed by a higher power. An estimated 40% of child soldiers are active in Africa. There is a big risk involved with a post-conflict society.
In the memoir, A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah the child soldiers are being mentally and physically abused at too young of an age. Ishmael Beah describes this by saying “We walked for long hours and stopped only to eat sardines and corned beef with gari, sniff cocaine, brown brown, and take some white capsules. The combination of these drugs gave us a lot of energy and made us fierce.” (Beah 122). Generally, young kids should not be exposed to drugs and forced to do them.
“While the number of conflicts involving child soldiers has dropped since 2004 from [age] 27 to 15, human-rights experts estimate that more than 200,000 children worldwide are still being used as combatants, usually against their will.” (Gettleman, Jeffrey). This is a large number of children worldwide who are forced into fighting in these dangerous and treacherous wars. Child soldier commanders are using these children against their will to fight wars and commit war crimes these children wouldn’t even imagine of committing. “The recruiters of child soldiers also use drugs and alcohol to make children more compliant and to enable them to commit acts they would not ordinarily commit.”
For example, according to the DebateWise article “Child Soldiers Should Be Prosecuted”, “The recruiters of child soldiers also use drugs and alcohol to make children more compliant and to enable them to commit acts they would not ordinarily commit.”. This explains that children were under the influence of drugs and alcohol making them easier to control and force to do things, so they are not fully aware of what they are doing. Also according to Human Rights Watch article “Coercion and Intimidation of Child Soldiers to Participate in Violence”, it is stated, “Often under the influence of drugs, they were known and feared for their impetuosity, lack of control, and brutality.”. This goes to show that the children were not fully there and could not make rational decisions due to the drugs that were administered to them daily and that they could not think clearly when they were on the battlefield. Finally, a child’s brother was abducted into the Varc, and he explains that the soldiers got his brother drunk and easily persuaded him to go with them.
You are surely aware that child soldiers have been used for centuries. Today, they fight mainly throughout Africa, South America, and the Middle East in countries such as Pakistan, Iraq, Israel, Columbia, Syria, Libya, and more. Experts believe thousands
Today there are thousands of child soldiers around the world. In these conflicts they are not only as a soldier but they are also used as suicide bombers for religion causes, spies, lookout and many more tasks where children are
Have you ever mentioned the subject of child soldiers in a standard conversation? Most likely not. Child soldiers are not an everyday discussion topic, but recently they have grown more and more popular. While in the past, “children were not particularly effective as front-line fighters since most of the lethal hardware was too heavy and cumbersome for them to manipulate” (unicef.org), weapons have become lighter, and younger infantries have followed suit. While childhoods usually don’t consist of shooting people, taking villages, and other awful acts of war, they can, and this physiologically impacts a child.
Assignment page Video Where many children all over the world merrily and freely live under the protection of the law, for others, this is a distant reality, they live in a world where they’re battling poverty, stripped of their childhood and basic human rights are expunged, they’re the innocent victims of conflict, and war is made to seem their one and only duty, not to mention that these are children no more than 10 years of age. They are put into a situation where it’s to kill or be killed. The United Nations defines a child soldier as, “Any person under 18 years of age who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity.” Since the past 15 years, child soldiers are being used in almost every region of the world. Unlike most children, who go to school, they’re abducted from their families and forced into becoming a child soldier, where living conditions are beyond imaginable.