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The Pros And Cons Of Child Soldiers

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Imagine being taken away from your home, forced to leave all you know and love, and put in charge of killing, torturing, making innocent people suffer. Now imagine doing all of that as a young kid. Try to envision how mentally unstable someone would be after seeing all of that happen. Unfortunately, there are about 300,000 child soldiers all around the world that are being used to fight and take part in conflicts, right now in the year of 2015. Child soldiers are taken from their homes forced to fight, and do such inhumane things that no child should ever have to do. When the suffering of the war eventually ends, the mental state of the child soldiers is dramatically unstable. Adolescent soldiers are used all around the world, it is an issue …show more content…

A rebel someone who is ordered to attack people of their own kind. The children would have to kill the people who were once their friends. The kids were unwillingly doing such cruel things that nobody, especially, adolescents should never have to take part in or witness. The kids who were used in civil war in Sierra Leone were normally used for things such as human shields, sex slaves, diamond mine slaves, and soldiers used for fighting and killing the lives of innocent civilians. The children were used during the war for several years, struggling from emotional and physical pain, and after the war was over they were put back into their regular lives and sometimes even reunited with family. However, the children were never healed from the mental complications they were once put through. In the article “Verdict against former Liberian warlord serves as warning" it states, “After the civil war ended in Sierra Leone, an estimated 7,000 children were released and reintegrated into society, with a 98 percent reunited with their families. While another 7,000 children were assisted with reintegration into their communities ”. That quote shows that most children after the war ended were returned to their families. Being rebounded to their families is a crucial part to the rehabilitation of the poor adolescents, being put into their past lives and seeing their …show more content…

With that in mind, the child soldiers after being shoved into the brutalness of the Civil War in Sierra Leone were messed up in head. The kids would have to witness people being shot, stabbed, stoned, and abused, all without being able to do anything about it other than watch and participate in the ferocious events. In the article “A Brutal Upbringing” it states in paragraph two, "They're traumatised but we don't have the means to counsel these children, to ensure these children are engaged in productive activities…”. That quote shows that some people are aware that the children are traumatised and scared, but that people still aren't doing much to try to heal the broken hearts of these poor children. There are a few organization in which are trying to help rehabilitate the broken down kids, who were once child soldiers. Unfortunately, many of the kids who aren't mentally stable or correctly healed after their experiences in the war, grow up and become criminals or cruel people who promote more violence. If the world binded together and tried to organize more ways to help alleviate some of the pain that is left in the children's hearts, The number of unhappy, and sorrowful people who were at once child soldiers, would dramatically

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