Child Soldiers: A Global Crisis

The use of child soldiers is one of the most horrific tragedies of modern warfare and one of the most ignored. Today, over 250,000 children are still being used to fight wars across the globe, most prominently in Asia and Africa. This staggering statistic has been solely a figure for more than three decades; however, as we are now living in a world that is increasingly shrinking because of the pervasiveness of technology, it is time that the world recognized this genocide against our youth. While globalization has played a role in getting these stories out to the world, it actually acts as a double-edged sword. On the one side, it has contributed enormously to the rise of children in warfare, but at the same time, it has also made the crisis global in reach and enabled international society to unite and combat the malice.

Child soldiers have been used in an increasing number of conflicts for the last half-century at such drastic rates because globalization and technology have proliferated the availability of arms and weaponry. Small governments and resistance groups in third world countries who previously had no access to modern weapons, now can have them imported for a small sum, legally and illegally, with little difficulty. The devastation of modern warfare has spread over great distances and to greater numbers of people as we are progressively more able to reach remote areas of the world that were once impenetrable. Not only has technology increased the availability and lowered the cost of arms, it has also created weapons light and simple enough that children as young as five years old can carry and fire them. One hundred fifty years ago soldiers had to be able to maneuver cannons and bayonets effectively, a task impossible for anyone not of significant size; now with a gun like the AK-47 and other automatic weapons, strength no longer matters.

The other "edge" of globalization's sword is that it has enabled the issue to be publicized en masse to the world's population. The internet and home video cameras make it possible for average people to witness the human rights atrocities being committed in countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Rwanda and Sierra Leone to name a few. One well known example is the Invisible Children story; because of new technology and mass media, three college students were able to create a documentary that has turned into an international movement to stop child soldiering in The Sudan. Other recent movies like Blood Diamond and The Last King of Scotland have also helped to draw public attention to the international crises taking place. Hundreds of thousands of people are now getting involved and donating to international organizations like UNICEF and Amnesty International to help actively end the atrocities of these children that would otherwise be unknown, unnoticed, and forgotten. Because people have access to these stories, they are helping to bring about change in the lives of children half way across the globe.

Now that the international public on a large scale has taken notice of this international crisis and demanded change, the U.N. has been able to take steps to eliminate the use of child soldiering throughout the world. In 2000, a majority of the members ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention of Rights of the Child in the Involvement in Armed Conflict. This regulation outlaws conscripting any person under the age of 18 into an armed force group. Not only does this apply to rebel groups, but governments are also forbidden from drafting underaged people. The protocol was the first monumental legislation implemented that acknowledged the problem even existed; however, it did little beyond that because punishments were vague and thus not enforced. The United Nations has intervened in a few wars where children were involved, like Sudan, but only after massive international public attention was drawn to the crisis. In the last few months, the U.N. General Secretary has been trying to persuade the Security Council to place trade, travel and arms sales sanctions on countries that are still using child soldiers in combat zones. As shown on this map, the countries where there are child soldiers being used in conflicts include Afghanistan, Colombia, Nepal, the Philippines and several African nations; coincidentally, all of them are members of the UN and have all ratified the Optional Protocol on the Rights of the Child. If these new sanctions are achieved and enforced, they could be yet another key piece in halting the international child soldiering crisis.

Even as international bodies are able to make progress in removing children from war fronts, an entirely new set of monumental issues arises with reintroducing former soldiers into society. When the children are captured from their homes, they are put through a horrifying "indoctrination" process that ties them to the army. Because of the total brain-washing the children receive at such a young age, the reintegration process is a daunting task that needs to be completely effective in every case in order to guarantee first, that the children do not reenter the armed forces and second that the child soldier phenomenon does not repeat itself. The reintegration process used by international organizations is called "D.D.R"; thus far it has been the most effective way of helping former child soldiers become successful, productive members of their society. The first step to the process is 'Disarmament'- stripping the child of the only safety he or she has had since being forcibly conscripted. In most cases, the children have to be forcibly recaptured and taken to rehabilitation centers because their fighting units are the only family they have known, and their leaders constantly instill fear that the world outside the unit is an enemy. The second step, 'Demobilization', is more crucial, complicated, and time consuming because the brain-washing and indoctrination need to be reversed; this is achieved through psychological healing, teaching basic social skills, providing basic education, and breaking physiological addictions to brown-brown, a highly addictive substance given to child soldiers. The last step in the process is 'Reintegration' into society which is just as convoluted as the two preceding parts because many children do not remember their real names nor where they came from, and in many cases, the families have already been killed or moved to Internally-Displaced People (IDP) camps.

While this process is extremely complex and not entirely uplifting, it has been successful in the reintegration of many former child soldiers back into their societies. However, the most crucial issue that is yet to be addressed entails massive global mobilization; doctors, teachers, psychologists, lawyers, resources and funding are extremely low in supply, thus their success is limited to helping only a small number of the children who need to reintegrated. The story of child soldiers is bereft with tragedy and to date the ending has not been much different because as an international society, not enough has been done to help save the current children in warfare and few preventative methods have been implemented. However, we are living in an increasingly globalized world that gives each of us more power to gt involved to end this human rights atrocity.