CHILD SOLDIER

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Child Soldier: A rising question to Human Dignity Yet how many children are neither loved, nor welcomed nor respected! How many of them suffer violence and every kind of exploitation by the unscrupulous! May children always be accorded the respect and attention that are due to them: they are the future and the hope of humanity! ~ Pope Benedict XVI, Greeting at Visit to the Holy Infant of Prague, Thousands of children in todays so-called modern world are abused physically and dragged to be a vicious person to commit sinful activities against the will of God. Among those activities, one of the hot and rising issues is of child soldier, who are exploited inhumanely to support the chaos and revenge in wars. Exploitation of children for the purpose of war is not only inhumane, but completely barbaric in itself. God has created human being to make the world a better place to live and uplift peace and sanctity. How justifiable is it to turn the kids, who are seen as the future of this world, to killers? How should we address this issue? How has Catholic Church addressed this issue? There are thousands of such questions that arouse every day about the human dignity of these children. What is a child soldier? He was just a child, but forced to use a gun... (O'Leary, Dermot) People under the age of 18 are considered as children. A child soldier is someone who is under 18 and is strictly involved in military actions. They are recruited by the rebelling liberation army of different countries and are forced to carry the gun. Most, but not all, soldiers under 15 years of age are taken as a part of non-state armed forces. These children who are actively

involved in the armed forces are not only fighters, but some are also runners or scouts, porters, sex slaves, cooks or spies. We can say that child soldier does not only refer to a child who is taking or has taken a direct part in hostilities. According to the data found by most of the researches made under this issue and vividly seen by us, it is believed that most child soldiers are between the ages of 15 and 18 years, but some are also as young as seven. These children, seen as the bright future of the world, are robbed of their childhood and are put into this sinful act of inhumanity and violence. Transformation of Innocent Kid to A violent ruthless Killer: Child soldiers are more obedient, do not question orders and are easier to manipulate than adult soldiers. Machel Graca, a reporter on Child Soldiers from UNICEF, says that children are those groups who are impressed easily and can be easily attracted to the cults of martyrdom by the rebel groups. Why children then? Why not other older age group people? There is an answer for that too. Machel Grace says children are chosen as a soldier because they are easily kidnapped; they require little food; they are often considered unessential; they are able to carry the lightweight rifles; they are strong enough to pull the trigger, and are heavy enough to clear mine fields with their own bodies. In addition to their so-called capabilities, the recruitment and use of children is very easy for these army forces because rebel groups can pay and feed them, and we cannot deny that these children are extremely poor. Not only these rebel groups, but also the government groups are involved in this barbaric ill-treatment of children. According to an Amnesty International report, both governments and armed groups use children because they are easier to condition into fearless killing and unthinking obedience (Hidden Scandal, Secret

Shame: Torture and Ill-Treatment of Children, 2000). Military commanders put these children to war when there is need of a secure troop supply because children are found everywhere and are easy to impress and purchase. When they are motivated in an evil manner by these strong troops commanders, these children cannot think like other rationally developed adults do. This lack of capability to not think properly and judge what is ordered to them to do lead them to assess danger, and they are often willing to take risks and difficult assignments, which adults or older teenagers will refuse. However, there are some cases when these children enter into the rebel groups or armed forces voluntarily. Perhaps this happens because they relate to the groups ideology and are strongly motivated for the nationalism of their country or are against certain behaviors of government. However, out of many children, most are compelled because of their socioeconomic background and they feel that they simply have no choice. Their abject poverty and social classicism might be such factor that drags them to hold the gun. Overall, there are ongoing global trends towards the exploitation of children in such military conflicts. Machel Graca further reports that children have been heavily used for suicide bombings too. In countries like Lebanon and Sri Lanka, for example, some adults have used young people's immaturity to their own advantage, recruiting and training adolescents for suicide bombings. In addition, in many countries, like Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Mozambique, and Colombia, children have even been forced to commit killing against their own families or communities. The theory is simply that children are too young to understand and analyze what is right and what is wrong. They are incapable of judging what they are forced to do. Child combatants are subjected to a cycle of violence that they are often too young to understand, or resist. Many of these young children used as child soldier may start out as porters or messengers, but they eventually are

forced to join the front lines of combat. Amnesty International reports that the increase in smaller, lighter weapons has made it easier for children to go into combat and fight alongside adults. Many others are not actual combatants but are used to plant or clear mines, as bearers and suppliers to the front line or as general ancillary workers, cooking, cleaning, keeping guard or delivering food. He notes from the letter written by different organizations like UNICEF, National Council of Churches, Amnesty International USA, and other organizations for the support of the children, to the president Clinton in 1998 that: .some are used for particularly hazardous duty, such as entering mine fields ahead of older troops, or undertaking suicide missions. Some have been forced to commit atrocities against family members or relatives. Inexperienced and immature, these children suffer far higher casualty rates than their adult counterparts. Those who survive are often physically or psychologically scarred. Typically lacking an education or civilian job skills, their futures are often bleak. (Religioustolerance) Reporters on this issue have mainly revealed that military commanders use different strategies and tactics to turn the children to killers. These children are forced to kill their family members or the people they know from their village because this act of violence will discourage them to escape from their force as they will not be taken back by the society where they actually belong. This tactics produces unquestioning obedience in these homesick children. These military commanders force children not to react seeing people dying or getting killed. These acts

indeed demolish their sense of the sanctity of life and their tendency to show respect for the dead. Another factor that turns these children to soldier is revenge. Military commanders tell these children to grow the feeling of revenge inside them while killing the people. They motivate them to see the enemy and visualize them as the rebels who killed their parents, their family, and those who are responsible for everything that has happened to them. Then it is definitely true that these children will grow an immense hatred and revenge against the enemy, which makes these army forces to achieve their goal. How would a child mind be able to see through these factors? They are very immature to think that what they are being told is not true. Of course, for them these things will be true when they are told on a realistic basis by these military combats. Issues related to child soldier: There is a question of human dignity when we talk about child soldier. Children are prematurely exposed to the harshest and most brutal experiences imaginable, including murder, mutilation and rape. In addition these there are other emerging issues related to child soldier present not only in under-developed countries, but also in developed countries like the US. Gang culture in America: A form of Child Soldier Children running with drugs supply in streets. Kids are found with guns in Brooklyn, Chicago, and Baltimore.(Hirschfield) What is a gang culture? Street gangs are organized groups that are often involved in drugs, weapons trafficking, and violence. How do these gangs evolve? It is said that gang involvement can begin as early as elementary school. Gangs take root in schools for many

reasons, but the primary attraction of gangs is their ability to respond to student needs that are not otherwise being met; they often provide youth with a sense of family and acceptance otherwise lacking in their lives. In addition, gangs may form among groups of recent immigrants as a way of maintaining a strong ethnic identity. The other main factors why these gangs form are that gang membership gives the youth a sense of belonging and becomes a major source of identity for its members. While in turn, gang membership affords youth a sense of power and control, and these violent gang activities become an outlet for their anger. How is gang culture a form of child soldier then? The answer is the kids involved in these kinds of gangs are drug suppliers and gun holders, motivated for violence. They carry guns and involve in fight. The light weight guns have incredibly increased the number of children involved in gang. Children under age of eighteen are carrying guns, using and selling drugs, killing their enemies cruelly and brutally. A child soldier is also same who are forced to do the same. However, the difference is that majority of children get involved in gang voluntarily, as opposed to those who are forced to join the rebel groups in case of child soldier. However, one can truly say that this gang culture is also an act of child soldier because children are involved in the gang activities where there is murdering, bombing, and supply of drugs. Another one of the main issue related to child soldier is: Sexual exploitation of females: Female children that get involved as a child soldier are exploited sexually by the group leaders. Girls not only fight but also provide domestic labor and serve as wives. Girls, especially orphans or unaccompanied girls, are especially vulnerable because they are often sexually exploited, raped or otherwise abused, subjected to human trafficking and prostitution,

and forced to be wives by other combatants. They are given from the age of 13 to boy soldiers or adult commanders to fulfill their sexual desire and serve them as a slave. They have no choice! Those who refuse are killed or raped. To save their life they have to sell themselves. And the main thing, not to forget, is many of them soon become mothers who must take on the added responsibility of providing food for their children. This sexual exploitation of girls results in physical and psychological trauma, unwanted pregnancies, and sexually transmitted diseases. For example, the girls who joined Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka did so for the protection from Sri Lankan army. Tamil Tigers consists mostly of young women. The leader thinks that they make the best fighters, fiercest fighters. The boys were the fighters, the girls the wives of the LRA leaders. (Among the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, he came across the opposite situation: girls who joined the Tiger army for protection against the sexual abuses of the Sri Lankan military.) (Hirschfield, Robert) Psychological effect and aftermath: The bitter plight of child soldier continues after war Many child soldiers face psychological and social disturbances from nightmares of their activities during their involvement in war and after their return to civilian life. Many analysts and organizations that have been working for the rehabilitation of these children have found that these children experience a mixture of disgust, guilt and self-contempt at first, which reflects their innate moral and social responsibilities. These feelings also suggest us that they were forced to hurt their society and murder the so-called enemies of the rebels. Working organizations have found that these children try to rationalize their actions by telling themselves, I didnt want to do it. I had to follow orders or I would be killed.

Some other children are found psychologically affected in such sense that they tend to see such acts as surreal, as if they occurred in a dream world. Overall these organizations like Christian Children Fund, UNICEF, and others have found that the childrens former values are not lost so much as suspended. However, the bitter part of the child soldier is that these children are not easily accepted back by the society. Many books have been written where the return of child soldier is presented. All of them report that they are not perceived as the moral human being. Documentaries are made where the hatred of the society is vividly seen against these children. They are then seen as a wild animal, which can be very dangerous for the rational development of these children. Once the society does not accept them back, they are forced back again to go to war; they are forced back to feel the hatred, which their commander once generated on them, against the society. Then how will this whole process of ending the violence will end? It will continue again and again! Thus, instead of reacting, the society should act for them to bring their innocence back; to bring their childhood back. How does Bible address this issue? ..But Jesus said, Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 19:14) This whole issue of children being forced to join the armed groups; being tortured or either being subjected to ill treatment raises a challenging question. The question is how does the Bible and our Catholic Church address this issue? The bible mentions that the deprivation of liberty and enforced arms bearing and soldiering are a violation of an individual- especially a child who cannot defend themselves. All

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humans are made in the image of God, and therefore have an individual dignity. Child soldier is a violation of a childs freedom and their dignity as image bearers of God. Exploitation of children, and forcing them to sin by killing people would certainly be condemned by Jesus. God has always been concerned about the weakest. God has particular compassion for them. Child soldier will definitely fall into His category of the weakest. God is always concerned with protection of the weakest, and liberation of the slave. Pope John Paul II said in a message for the XIII World Communications Day, on 23 may 1979: Like soft wax on which every tiniest pressure leaves a mark, so the child is responsive to every stimulus that plays upon his imagination, his emotions, his instincts and his ideas. Yet the impressions received at this age are the ones which are destined to penetrate most deeply into the psychology of the human being and to condition, often in a lasting way, the successive relationship with himself, with others and with his environment. It was precisely out of an intuition regarding the extreme delicacy of this phase of life that pagan wisdom enunciated the well-known pedagogical guideline which direct that "maxima debetur puero reverentia"; and it is in this same light that we must regard Christ's warning, with its reasoned severity: "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea" (Matthew 18:6). And certainly among the "little ones" meant by the Gospel, the children especially are included

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So the bible clearly states through this Jesus saying that enforcing children to be soldiers and violating their right to live and prosper is in major violation of God's character and law, and is a symptom of radical evil in the world. Regarding the childrens issue, the U.S. Catholic Bishops have also spoken out on behalf of children, especially immigrant and refugee children. Under the Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio stated that there should be legislation to improve the treatment of children. Thus, from the perspective of the Catholic Church, all children around the world deserve special care and consideration and that care is preferably provided within a family setting. (USCCB) This implies the churchs appeal to all to adopt and accept those children who are vulnerable and are tortured. Catechism of Catholic Church teaches the Christian social conscience about how a child should be treated and how dignity of a person should be respected. It specifies the moral issue involved in respecting the human dignity that is bestowed upon by God. Social justice can be obtained only in respecting the transcendent dignity of man. The person represents the ultimate end of society, which is ordered to him. What is at stake is the dignity of the human person, whose defense and promotion have been entrusted to us by the Creator, and to whom the men and women at every moment of history are strictly and responsibly in debt. --Catechism of the Catholic Church Children are human too, and they do have human dignity; and disrespecting their human dignity is against the will of God. Furthermore, the Gospels in the Bible call for rehabilitation,

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reconciliation, and restoration and teach us to respect the dignity of all human beings, even those guilty of committing horrendous crimes. Respect for the human person entails respect for the rights that flow from his dignity as a creature. These rights are prior to society and must be recognized by it. They are the basis of the moral legitimacy of every authority: by flouting them, or refusing to recognize them in its positive legislation, a society undermines its own moral legitimacy. If it does not respect them, authority can rely only on force or violence to obtain obedience from its subjects. It is the Church's role to remind men of good will of these rights and to distinguish them from unwarranted or false claims. (Catechism of Catholic Church) Furthermore, the Catechism of Catholic Church mentions that kidnapping and hostage taking brings terror and threats. The threats bring forth more unbearable pressure to victims. Terrorism threatens, wounds, and kills indiscriminately; it is gravely against justice and charity. Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfies hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity. (Fifth commandment of Catechism) This is very self-explanatory. Children who are tortured by the rebels, kidnapped by the rebels forcibly to join their group falls under this scenario mentioned by the Catechism. Christian social teaching is against this issue- children should never be tortured or violated by any group or any member of the society. As Jesus said they belong to the kingdom of heaven, we all should provide beautiful environment to let them grow and blossom.

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The Bible provides hope as the great solution to this issue. It provides hope in a sense that someday there will be an end of war; there will be peace; and with the end of war and beginning of peace, there will not be anymore Child Soldier. Hope is a very strong word which furthers human life and human existence. Bible, with the words of God, furthers the importance of living and letting other live. What should be done? Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God (Mt 5:9) We want a society where people are more important than things, where children are precious; a world where people can be more human, caring and gentle. Archbishop Desmond Tutu speaking at the Eminent Persons Group meeting for the United Nations Study on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children, Tarrytown, New York, 1995-MAY-9. How can we save the children from turning into a killer, a soldier, or a rebellion? The first thing that needs to be addressed is that there should be end of poverty. Poverty is the main factor that has enforced these children to be a combatant. It has been a luring factor. Ending poverty will eventually bring peace and end of war, thereby end of child soldier. People have to put pressure on gun lobby, small weapon manufacturers and against those countries where child soldier is used. Children are not expendable. They belong in schools and in their families. It is our responsibility to ensure that they are protected from the horrors of warfare. The foundation of all catholic social teaching is the belief in the inherent dignity of the human person. Our human life is sacred. For a society to be moral and lead towards the way God has showed us the dignity of the human person should be valued and respected. Every person is made in the image of God and the person is the clearest reflection of God among us. The

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Challenge of Peace # 15 further suggests that the human person is the clearest reflection of God's presence in the world; all of the Church's work in pursuit of both justice and peace is designed to protect and promote the dignity of every person. For each person not only reflects God, but is the expression of God's creative work and the meaning of Christ's redemptive ministry. There have been an active churchs involvements in many countries where child soldiers are vividly present. Countries like South Africa, Sierra Leones, Sri Lanka, are all appealed by their local churches to end the violation of child. Zenit.org has many pastoral letters and pleas from the local churches which have urged the government to act on this major issue. Different cardinals, bishops and the local priests have been actively involved to put an end to this issue. In order to follow what God has asked us to do, some steps are already been furthered. Church in Sierra Leones has decided to open a Catholic university. One good thing from the war is that everyone wants education, Bishop George Biguzzi of Makeni has addressed. (Zenit.org) As Jesus said that peacemakers are the blessed people who can put an end to the worlds violence. Thus: Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. -Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Bibliography A call to Solidarity with Africa by Committee on International Policy of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Amnesty International, Hidden Scandal, Secret Shame: Torture and Ill-Treatment of Children (2000) Graa Machel, "Impact of Armed Conflict on Children," (report review) at: http://www.unicef.org/graca/ Hirschfield, Robert. "Jimmie Briggs: America's voice for the child soldier." National Catholic Reporter 42.32 (2006): 13. Catholic Periodical and Literature Index. EBSCO. Web. 1 May 2010. Rivers, Eugene F., and George M. Anderson. "Addressing youth crime." America 183.(2000): 21-23. Catholic Periodical and Literature Index. EBSCO. Web. 1 May 2010. http://zenit.org/article-4415?l=english http://www.vision.org/visionmedia/article.aspx?id=6684 http://www.usccb.org/mrs/duncantestimony.shtml http://www.usccb.org/mrs/william_wilberforce.shtml http://www.worldbank.org/afr/wps/wp23.pdf http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p3s1c2a3.htm

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