Social+Impact-CS



Thousands of child soldiers have been left wondering after the war: Where is their family? What could their future possibly hold? Many former child soldiers are unable to return to their families because many of those families have died during the war, and there is no immediate family left for them to go back to. In addition, many families will not accept their son or daughter back after they have been a child solider, since they've lived a childhood full of killing. Lastly, other families discourage their child from returning home, due to the fact that there are people in the community that are strictly against child soldiers and blame the killings and many of their other problems on them.

Most child soldiers are taken very early in life, and once they are taken there are a lot that keeps them from returning to normal life. They are used in combat for many different reasons. Child soldiers don't need as much food as adult soldiers, and child soldiers are much easier to brainwash into doing evil things. Their superiors force them to use drugs like meth, marijuana, and tranquilizers. They use these drugs to numb the children's pain and make them fearless, which just leads them to make bad decisions in the fighting. When the kids get addicted to these drugs it makes them stay with the group because they can'd do without that drug after they are addicted, and their fighting for their warlord is the easiest and cheapest way to get a fix. They are usually addicted very early and very quickly to make them more violent and less likely resists orders from the higher ups. If they don’t have the drugs that they are addicted to they will have serious complications like anxiety, social isolation, and depression, along with physical withdrawal symptoms. And since they are so young, the addictions are usually harder to get rid of and last even longer than normal. Child soldiers are often forced to sexually assault women by their superiors. This kind of pressure from violent people is hard to resist, most child soldiers cannot say no. This widespread disrespect to women will be rooted in these children's minds forever, affecting what they will do when (if) they get out their conflict. And even those who have survived and won the fight against drug addiction, and gotten over what they have done to others, still usually cannot return to their former homes. They are usually forced out of the community, because of the recruiting requirement, which in some cases is shooting a family member or someone in the village. So, even if they were to return, they would not be allowed to return because of what they were forced to do. They are also completely desensitized to violence, and the negative actions toward women, which makes returning to society very difficult, due to the psychological change that occurred during combat. Children are forced to brutalize, murder, rape, and pillage villages and people they once knew, which is done by the warlords to ensure that the child soldiers will not return home. But there are those who are lucky enough return to their homes, and to get the education that they were denied during their time in the army.

In Africa, it is estimated that half of the kids who should be in school (K-12) have never actually been to school. That’s 46 million children. In 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaiming an education as a right. Now, 73 years later, that right still is not fulfilled. There are numerous reasons why these children have not been educated, and one of these reasons is that they are being used as child soldiers. In the conflicts in the Darfur region of Sudan, it is known that many child soldiers were used, on both sides of the conflict. Both the Janjaweed and the rebel groups (the SLA and JEM namely) have been caught recruiting and using child soldiers. It is estimated that there are 120,000 child soldiers in active duty right now in Africa. That’s 120,000 children that, instead of getting an education, are out killing and hurting other human beings, and more often than not, being hurt or killed themselves. The lack of education these kids receive is detrimental to their own future, and certainly to the future of Africa. It is a fact that most (if not all) of these child soldiers are illiterate.They are given deadly weapons with which they could kill dozens of people, but they aren’t given education. After they come back home from being child soldiers, these kids often find out that they are behind their peers. Instead of being able to do multiplication, child soldiers have to be taught how to add when they return from fighting. This not only hinders their ability to be competitive in the workplace with their peers, it restricts how much their peers can learn because the teacher has to spend extra time with this former child soldier, time which could have been used helping the class as a whole instead of just this one student. While individualized teaching is a good method, in Africa they barely have enough money to provide education at all, so teachers have to try to teach these kids as much as they can.

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In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, there is a working education system. While it is not free, there are teachers and schools where people can pay enrollment fees to send their children. The enrollment rate in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is about 50%. This is better than many other countries in Africa, but the other 50% represents over 5 million children not in school. There are many reasons these 5 million kids can’t go to school, one of which is the fighting going on in the DRC between the Tutsis and the Hutus. Many children are orphaned as a result of this conflict, and so they often cannot pay for food, let alone enrollment costs in a school. Some of these 5 million children are also child soldiers. Instead of getting an education, they go and work for warlords who give them weapons and commands, and in return they get food, and sometimes (but not always) a small wage. The only thing being a child soldier teaches anyone is hate and violence, things that are only going to hinder Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo as it tries to move forward. We need to take kids off the battlefield and into the classroom. ======