Making and UnMaking of Child Soldier...

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I recently picked up a book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah, which lead me to read more about Ishmael Beah, once a boy solider in Africa.

I found this New York Time's - The Making, and Unmaking, of a Child Soldier kinda of summarize his book.

Child Solider, the life that I cannot think how worst it can be... Everywhere in the world where there are conflicts and wars. The children tend to be used as key factors in fighting. Countless numbers of these children are forced to join whilst others are determined and willing to join because of lack of parental care.

They are sometimes between the ages of 4-14 years old and trained up in the bush and become very dangerous like wild animals. These children are given a chemical substance that s their daily food during battle, it makes these children to be more and more dangerous like a bush fire in the harmattan.' Worst of all, they are armed with heavy artilleries and other big machine weapons like A.K.-47, RPG, and others. They use these weapons to launch a barrage of attacks on highways, towns and villages, seas and every corner of the country. They also use weapons like culasses and knives that they use to amputate and inject the stomachs of pregnant women. They challenge themselves over the pregnant woman's stomach by saying that the unborn baby is a boy or girl so by this, way they slit the stomach of the woman with crude knives and uproot the unborn baby.

Its no brainier to say, violence and involvement of children in armed conflicts must be stopped since this only means no peaceful atmosphere for the others growing up of tomorrow. The only thing that the governments and other local and international non-governmental organizations should do is to create disarmament, demobilization and resettlement programs in order to integrate these children into society again.

I Pray for those children.. and Wish my daughter or grand-daughter would read such stories in history museum and not in newspapers.