Child Soldiers: Recruitment, Treatment, and Impact

Thousands of children are used as soldiers around the world. The children are getting abducted and beaten into becoming a soldier, a part join military groups to escape poverty, to get some kind of “family”. Child soldiers are children under the age of 18, recruited by any military group. They are used as fighters, suicide bombs, spies, human shields and so on. Over the last ten years, two million children have been killed in conflict. The use of children as soldiers has become a common feature of armed conflicts in every region of the world. Child soldiers are mostly known to be from Africa, one of the countries with the child soldiers is Democratic Republic of Congo

War affects child’s development. Child soldiers can be killed, injured, sexual abused, separated from there parents, and almost everything will lead to some kind of mental injury. They will not get the food, shelter, medical care and the love every children needs to grow up properly. Even if they get saved from being a child soldier, they will still suffer some serious long-term psychological consequences. The military groups often force the recruits to kill their family, so they have no one to escape to. They convince the children that their parents are “unbelievers”, so they have make a end to their life. If the children refuse to kill their parents, they say that they will brake their legs. Again, the military groups use fear to make the children do, what they want them to do.