Child+Soldiers

The use of child soldiers for military use has been going on for a very long time. The most talked about are the children in Southern Africa, the LRA (or Lord's resistance army) was formed in 1987 against the Ugandan government. The government of Uganda claims the LRA has only 500 or 1,000 soldiers in total, but other sources estimate that there could be as many as 3,000 soldiers, along with about 1,500 women and children Details of the warrants were sent to the three countries where the LRA is active: Uganda, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo(DRC). The LRA leadership has long stated that they would never surrender unless they were granted immunity from prosecution; so the ICC order to arrest them raised concerns that the insurgency would not have a negotiated end. On 2 June 2006, Interpol issued five wanted person r ed notices to 184 countries on behalf of the ICC, which has no police of its own.

Children routinely face other violence - at school, in institutions meant for their protection, in juvenile detention centres and too often in their own homes. Worldwide, hundreds of thousands of children under 18 have been affected by armed conflict. They are recruited into government armed forces, paramilitaries, civil militia and a variety of other armed groups. Often they are abducted at school, on the streets or at home. Others enlist “voluntarily”, usually because they see few alternatives. Yet international law prohibits the participation in armed conflict of children aged under 18.

 [|Check out this video] about how a child sees the abductions and how they routinely spend their days fighting against the government.

Child soldiering is a unique and severe manifestation of trafficking in persons that involves the recruitment of children through force, fraud, or coercion to be exploited for their labor or to be abused as sex slaves in conflict areas. Government forces, paramilitary organizations, and rebel groups all recruit and utilize child soldiers. UNICEF estimates that more than 300,000 children under 18 are currently being exploited in over 30 armed conflicts worldwide. While the majori ty of child soldiers are between the ages of 15 and 18, some are as young as 7 or 8 years of age.

Look at what former child soldiers drew about what they did to their victims.

//If you want to// help a child get his or her life back on track then visit these supporting organizations websites. there are programs out there right now that are trying to help these kids but need your support.  http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/fs/2005/50941.htm to find out more about the conflict of these children's rights. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_use_of_children to learn about how these children are feeling after they get saved form the camps. http://www.amnestyusa.org/children/child-soldiers/page.do?id=1051047 where most of the information on this page was recovered from. Groups that help. -[|Schools for schools]-by having a school form the US adopt a school in northern Uganda. -[|Bracelet program]-allows for a person to support a child that has been effected by the war in northern Uganda the bracelet is made in Uganda and sold in the US. -[|The visible child scholarship program]-Once accepted into the program each student is assigned a mentor—an employed community leader whose purpose is to build a personal relationship with the student and provide professional follow up for each child. If you want to help visit these websites. Please help these kids they have nothing and are going down a path that no child should ever have to follow. 