Modern Slavery: Part 2

by Ashli Arispe in Issues, July 16, 2009

Second installment of the modern slavery series. Describes the “invisible soldiers” who are forced to be child combatants.

Children in America spend their days in school- learning, playing, and making social connections. They frolic around and are allowed an actual childhood. This is not the same for many around the world in countries such as Cambodia, Burma,Sierra Leone,Guatemala, Sudan, and Peru-amongst others. Rather than spending their days in school, they are given AK 47s and surrounded by death-some from their very own hands. Rather than playing at school they are recruited there. Schools aren’t the only place from where they are taken-they are taken from orphanages and from their homes.Many families offer their own children for the small wages that many recruiters pay.

Children soldiers are treated the same as adult soldiers. They deal with explosives and guns just the same.They lose limbs and their lives just the same. Some are as young as seven.Actually I would like to say that they are treated worst than the adults, they are the ones who are being put in the front lines and given the most dangerous jobs. They are often beaten, humiliated and raped(and this is by their own military-not by those they are fighting).The UN estimates that over 300,000 children around the world are fighting at this very moment. The militaries use children because they are cheap and plenty. They are easy to manipulate and don’t have full cognitive development to hold them back from taking risks. They are easier to be brainwashed. They prey on their naivety,pains,hunger, and poverty.One of the tactics they use is having the new recruits kill others including those within their very own communities to insure that they will have no where else to go but to stay in the military.

Read more in Issues

« Modern Slavery: Part 3

Progress: Has It Cost Us Our Children? »

Image via Wikipedia

There are both girl and boy soldiers. Many of the girls have said that they have joined in hopes of getting out of domestic servitude-although they only joined another form of it. Boys are not the only victims, 1/3 of the child soldiers are girls. This however, is not a new trend. During WWII. the Japanese abducted 200,000 young girls to be what they call “military comfort women”.Which is just a polite euphemism for the use of sex. Some are forced to be “wives” to the commanders; if they refuse they are beaten,raped, and even murdered. These young girls are often infected with HIV and AIDS. Pregnancy is also not unrare.

As you can imagine physical outcomes aren’t the only effects these children face. Most develop depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Some become heavily addicted to narcotics which are routinely used and distributed to them by the military.

Those who try to escape are severely beaten if not worst. Those who are finally rescued must usually undergo a rehabilitation center to reverse the brainwashing that they have encountered from such a young age. They must go through sincere debriefing. The United Nations put together a $30 million program to help more than 45000 children in 2003 for the debriefings they have to go through in order to be able to rebuild their lives. However, the battle is still far from over. While our children are being surrounded with thoughts of the new Barbie doll or school project;children around the world are being surrounded by thoughts of death-those they see as well as their very own.