They have been deprived of a carefree childhood.
Childhood and war are incompatible concepts. Most children appear in the list of the innocent victims of wars and conflicts, which, unfortunately, is so rich and the past and present of the planet. However, children take up arms and become full participants in armed conflict.
During the Civil war, the great Patriotic war, teenage soldiers and partisans fought on both sides. In the postwar period, the practice of receiving children for military service gradually ceased. In accordance with the Additional Protocol to the Geneva conventions of 12 August 1949, adopted in 1977, was prohibited from participation in armed conflict of persons under the age of fifteen.
But child soldiers remain an integral part of armed conflicts in modern times, especially in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Often children and adolescents as soldiers used by the insurgency as government troops of the African, Asian and Latin American States in this regard is somewhat limited applicable legislation.
Children and adolescents — a fearless, due to age features and easy to manage soldiers. They are the easiest way to dial with them least problems, often the war for them was not bound by the terrible content that is for adults, who already know the joys and sorrows of life, people.
In almost all countries of Tropical Africa, where for years, even decades, armed conflicts, usually on ethnic grounds, in opposition rebel groups involved children as soldiers or servants.
Young fighters of the Tamil Tigers, the rebel army of Sri Lanka. The organization is accused of that they recruited minors against their will and the will of the parents.
According to researchers, almost one in ten children in Central and Western Africa involved in the fighting on the side of any rebel armies or gangs.
Another African country, according to the UN leading the list of States in which the largest number of child soldiers, is Somalia. Unhappy with the government for over twenty years, torn apart by ongoing civil war between various Somali clans, as well as religious fundamentalists. In Somalia, children and adolescents are encouraged to participate actively in the armed forces of the fundamentalist group “al-Shabab”, whose name translated from Arabic means “the Youth”, “Al-Shabab” is, in fact, the Somali branch of “al-Qaeda” and fighting for the establishment in Somalia of the Islamic Sharia state.
Human rights activists stress that only Somalia and the United States has not signed the international Convention on the rights of the child, which prohibits the participation in armed conflict of children and adolescents under the age of fifteen years.
A serious problem associated with the use of children as soldiers, is “replanting” of young men for drugs. With drugs it is much easier to control the armed children at the same time destroying their psyche. In Sierra Leone, and other African, Asian and Latin American countries, the commanders of rebel groups has spread especially among children and adolescents, which consisted in armed groups, drugs, to teach them and turn them into even more obedient executors of their orders.
Serious problems cause the rehabilitation of former child soldiers, and to the conditions of life in peacetime. Most of them people with tarnished psyche, drug addiction, HIV-positive.
In Asia the most active child soldiers are used in its southeastern part. Here, in Indo-China, Malay archipelago and the Philippines, children and adolescents also often abducted or recruited by rebel groups.
Myanmar is one of the most secretive States South-East Asia and the world in General. Child soldiers and fighters recruited primarily in the poorest peasant families, and many poor children do not mind to go on service in the army or in a rebel group as it gives a certain status of “man with a gun”, and a daily guaranteed sustenance, and even some no money.
Child soldiers of the Federation of Shan, the self-proclaimed and is still not recognized States on the territory of modern Burma.
In Afghanistan children at war already with 8 years.
The majority of juveniles involved in the creation of weapons and explosive devices, as well as in the delivery of military cargo.
Syrian children are widely used as messengers, spies, soldiers and in the production of arms, and often with the use of machines and complex industrial equipment in the occupied factories.
With each new conflict situation with child soldiers is more complicated. However, even in those regions where active hostilities ended, the children who fought with weapons in their hands or Takasu heavy gun blanks can’t go back to normal. Nurtured in the face of constant fighting, the first toy which was the machine gun, child soldiers are losing the concept of the value of human life, they are alien and incomprehensible to the values of peaceful life.
This phenomenon is ineradicable. War is a brutal time, and for the sake of winning, some people will do anything. Even the sacrifice of a child. It is worth considering, for whom they are fighting? Really for the sake of the future children who are sent to die?
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