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Explain Why Children Should Not Be Prosecuted Essay

1252 Words6 Pages

What if you were kidnapped as a child, forced into doing crimes that you didn’t know you were committing, then you got arrested for them? That will be the life of a child soldier if they are prosecuted for their actions. Children are combatants in nearly three-quarters of the world's conflicts and have posed difficult dilemmas for the professional governments they confront, including the United States, such as whether or not choosing to prosecute them or not. Children should not be prosecuted for their actions because they were forced to join and commit their crimes, and because children do not know the difference between right and wrong.
One reason child soldiers should not be prosecuted is because they were forced into violence and had no choice, it was a life or death situation. Child soldiers were given no choice about whether to fight or not. These children were abducted and if …show more content…

Some people believe that if children were prosecuted, this could give their commanders a bigger incentive to delegate them to the dirtiest of orders, aiming at impunity. I disagree with this and do not believe that prosecuting a child could give commanders an incentive to order children to dirtier crimes. These children are already doing some of the dirtiest crimes you could think of. One example of this is from the book A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah.. “The boys and the other soldiers who were the audience clapped as if I had just fulfilled one of life’s greatest achievements.” (pg. 125, Ishmael Beah). Ishmael has just won a grisly contest arranged by the army corporal. Each soldier is to kill a prisoner by slicing his throat, and the soldier whose prisoner dies quickest wins the contest. Ishmael wins and is given the rank of Junior Lieutenant as a reward. This proves that children are already imposed the dirtiest of crimes. Commanders cannot drive these children farther than they already

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