Child Soldiers

When you think of war in Africa, or even conflicts, who do you imagine standing on the front line? You think of grown men, adults, standing tall and fighting for what they believe in. But in reality this is not the case. They are children. These child soldiers are used like pawns in a game of chest, moved around, manipulated and made to be the expendables. They are powerless, nameless and are the foot soldiers of these conflicts, which they have no real knowledge of.
A child soldier is a person under the age of 18 who most of the time, unwillingly participates in armed conflict as part of an armed force or group.   These children are usually taken from their villages and manipulated into becoming soldiers or slaves through the use of coercion, drugs and alcohol. A great example of this is in the 2006 feature film, “Blood Diamond” directed by Edward Zwick. The son of one of the main characters is taken as a result of the R.U.F taking over their village and massacring the majority of the people who live there. The son, Dia, is then taken to be trained as a child soldier where like many of the children that have been upducted, he is given a nickname such as “Baby Killer”, "Born Trouble" and "See Me No More". Giving nicknames to the newly recruited soldiers, is a way of giving the abducted children a sense of normality, even though it is everything but.
These Children are taken because they are seen as superfluous commodities that are impressionable. These child soldiers are usually taken at the young age of about seven, so they are robbed of their childhood, exposed to death, massacres and killing all before they develop the process of determining what’s right or wrong in certain situations. That fact alone shows that under extreme conditions, even the most warm hearted child could be manipulated into becoming a killer.
These child soldiers are the victims. They are exploited, violated, and engrossed into a world that authorizes killing. They are abducted from the...