Posts Tagged ‘Recruitment of child soldiers’

The issue of war is always complex to figure out when it comes to the use of children as soldiers, because war in general always based on the struggle for socio-economic and political power world wide from which children are not interested. But war lord always used children to fulfill their selfish aim at the detriment of the innocent children. There are basically two ways in which children are being recruited as a soldier to fight.    

The recruitment of child soldiers is done in two different ways. To begin with, children are mandated or would be ask  by a particular country through national legislation in order to take part in a war or to take part in the armed forces. This particular phenomenon  is not common in Africa Sierra Leone in particular.

Forced
Forced is one of the most common form of recruiting children to fight, about 20% of children are forced to fight.  This means that children are forced to fight against their will, but this particular form has to do with so many factors, such as lack of proper care at home, street children and children that are abducted by family members (child trafficking) to another location. These are the children that are vulnerable to be abducted. Example of how such children can be abducted are, if you ask a child to go out to sell on the street if captured would like to stay without attempting to escape, most time school pupils waiting at the school will fall in the hands of fighting forces, but most of these children will find ways to escape if they are coming from good home, where they are properly taken care of, (in general, 80% of children that are fighting war voluntarily choose and 20% are forced to fight)   children that are easily plucked from the street will also find it interesting to take part in arm conflict.

‘Voluntary’
Another form of recruitment which is the most unique and interesting ways is the voluntary, about 80% of child soldiers are volunteers, but less attention are paid to this particular form based on the ways most organizations would like to present these children internationally. The reasons for a child to volunteer to fight war  are to many, but has to do with the type socio-economic back ground, such as Poverty, lack of schooling and work, abuse by the society in which they found themselves, if family members being murdered during the course of the war and if a child is found in an unsafe environment where abuse is the order of the day (a violent culture).