Sierra Leone: Child Soldiers - 0 views
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Shaian R on 25 Apr 10this page is like a bibliography
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"While in Sierra Leone a couple of summers ago, I visited Grafton Camp, a facility for recently demobilized child soldiers operated by UNICEF and local partners. Many of the boys, ranging from nine to 16 years of age, had killed people as they fought in a civil war that paused with a fragile cease-fire in 1995. The camp director said that when the youths had been given drugs-most likely, amphetamines-while soldiering, they "would do just about anything that was ordered." Some, he added, were proud of having been effective killers. These boys, who had shortly before been willing to kill and who had never received an adequate foundation of moral development, danced with enormous energy and played cooperative games under the supervision of the camp's counselors. As I watched, it was sobering to think that under certain conditions, practically any child could be changed into a killer. But today, it is even more sobering to see once again how easily children who have been denied education and trained for fighting are manipulated by local political leaders. Fighting has resumed in Sierra Leone following a May coup, and many of the combatants are under 18. They have become part of a continuing cycle of violence. A soldier at seven The nature of armed conflict has changed greatly in recent years. The end of the Cold War ushered in an era of ethnopolitical conflicts that are seldom fought on well-defined battlefields. Conflicts are increasingly internal, and they are characterized by butchery; violence against women, and atrocities sometimes committed by former neighbors. More than 80 percent of the victims are noncombatants, mostly women and children. Increasingly children serve as combatants or as cooks, informants, porters, bodyguards, sentries, and spies. Many child soldiers belong to organized military units, wear uniforms, and receive explicit training, their lethality enhanced by the widespread availability of lightweight assault weapons. Other children participa
