Many nations around the world are using children in warfare. Some of these children become child soldiers voluntarily and some are abducted. Most child soldiers, who join of their own free will; join because they are trying to escape poverty, starvation, and physical or sexual abuse. They also join because they are separated from their families, lack of education, and they don’t have any where to go. Others join voluntarily because they relate to the groups ideology. Once these children become child soldiers, some are coerced into killing members of their own families, other child soldiers, and civilians. Others serve as porters, cooks, guards, messengers, spies, and sex slaves. In order to make the child soldiers follow orders and not resist, they are given drugs. They are given "amphetamines, crack cocaine, palm wine, brown-brown (cocaine mixed with gun powder), marijuana and tranquilizers." These drugs affect the child soldier's sense of reality.The problem of child soldiers is most critical in Africa, where children as young as nine have been involved in armed conflicts. These armies use child soldiers because they are cheap, and easy to manipulate. "Their underdeveloped ability to assess danger means they are often willing to take risks and difficult assignments that adults or older teenagers will refuse." These children are forced to commit unthinkable crimes, and once they are rescued or escape, "face an enormous challenge in trying to return to normal civilian life."
Whether these children are abducted or become soldiers of their on free will, should we view them as victims even though they have committed so many horrible crimes? Should they receive mercy? Should the reasons behind them joining grant them mercy or make them a victim? These children should be viewed as victims and given mercy. "Child-soldier expert Michael Wessells told Vision that no choice is a “free choice” because it is typically grounded in dire circumstances, including poverty, starvation, separation from their families, physical or sexual abuse, or lack of livelihood or education." These children join because they have no other choice. In A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier an autobiography by Ishmael Beah, he tells us how he was "separated from his family when their village was attacked by rebel forces, for a while he avoided abduction into the armed conflict that enveloped his country. Eventually, however, hunger and insecurity led him to join the government forces, who compelled him not only to fight against the rebel opposition but to perpetrate acts of extreme violence against innocent civilians along the way."
These children should not be at fault for what they have done because it was out of their control. Organizations such as, Amnesty International, The Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and UNICEF, draw attention to this problem and help children who become child soldiers. No child should have to become a child soldier, or be kidnapped from their families and forced to become one. These children should have a normal childhood but instead it is tainted with blood, and the horrible crimes that they must live with for the rest of their lives.
