In honor of Africa’s children, this article is about child soldiers. Although the stories are not always easy to hear, there is a necessity for them to be told. The children who suffer at the hands of adult soldiers, officers and government leaders deserve for us to hear their stories. As Mama often says "If they can live it; we can listen to their stories. God knows its easier."

Child Soldiers in Africa

We have all heard of human rights abuses which occur on African soil. Many wonder how it is that such things as Apartheid, the continuing genocide in Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda, and other such tragedies occur in Africa without anyone speaking out against it for so long. Or, how such voices crying out the pain of entire nations can so simply and casually be ignored or even muffled.

Much is due to fear and the rest is lack of interest. Many actually believe that Africa is a wasteland where there will never be peace. It also seems that Africa’s children are doomed to live a different existence on this planet because in some simple minds, they aren’t important enough to fight for. The fact that children are forced into labor instead of playing and going to school or that they are living in abject poverty, homeless due to AIDS, prostituting themselves to survive, or being abused, tortured or murdered for refusing to be child soldiers is acceptable. Especially as long as the problem is isolated to the African continent and doesn’t affect “us and our children”.

Globally, there are as many as 300,000 child soldiers currently serving in militaries or rebel forces, nearly all of them being held against their will. Many of these children are abducted at ages as young as 10 or 11 years old. Although they serve in different militaries or militias and some of the details of their experiences may change; we can rather easily describe their common experiences.

In far too many countries mothers are left powerless as soldiers enter their villages and simply knock on doors telling families to give over their children or be shot. Some rebel groups like the Lord’s Resistance Army of Uganda even go to schools and snatch children from their classes. Other children are simply taken from the street never to be seen again by their families.

After capturing them, the soldiers take the children to training camps where they are immediately told that if they ever try to escape, not only will they be tortured and murdered; but so will members of their family and their village. This alone is usually enough to dissuade those children who might consider fleeing. The soldiers are sure to show their captives that they are no people to consider crossing.

Very often, children report having been forced to kill someone just after coming into the training camp. They recount their feeling of powerlessness and the horrible sensations which filled them and some even talk of already feeling detached from their bodies during the events. And they tell of the guilt which filled them even though they were told clearly that anyone who refused to participate in the killings would also be tortured then murdered.

These young children realize quickly that if they want to survive, they must act as they are expected to and learn to detach their emotions from reality. They understand early that escape is not an option as they have heard the stories of others like them who wanted to escape and were murdered for trying. Or worse, of those who managed to make their way home and were either tracked down afterwards and made to kill their own family members before being hauled back into battle. And there is of course the case of those children who manage to escape and are simply rejected by their families or villages because of fear of acts of vengeance being taken upon the whole community.

Why is it that millions of people all over the world don’t even know of their existence, of their suffering and of their pain? In Africa alone, there are at least 14 countries in which children carry M-16s and AK-47s instead of toys and school books. In these 14 African countries children are forced to spend their early years fighting wars which are the causes of others.

For example, in the case of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda is almost ENTIRELY comprised of children soldiers. And the leader of this group is a man who has been getting support in the form of arms and training camps from his neighbor to the north, Sudan (no surprise as Sudan too uses children to fight its wars). The leader of the LRA is known to all to be mentally instable. He wears women’s dresses and claims to be possessed by an Italian missionary and a Chinese general has passed laws in the areas he rules such as forbidding bicycles. The few children soldiers interviewed by human rights organizations have spoken of people having had their feet amputated before being killed because they were found riding a bike!

When will we stop ignoring the cries of Africa’s children as they beg us to help? How long will governments pretend not to know what is happening to our children, then act surprised when these same children are unable to build a future for themselves and their nations? Can we really be surprised that these same children learn to hate, find violence a solution to all things and feel completely abandoned by the rest of the world?

I challenge those in positions to force change to remember this: One day not only will these children who we are abandoning today be adults who continue the cycle; but, by leaving them to suffer alone we are allowing the future warmongers and terrorists of tomorrow to be trained. Isn’t it in everyone’s interest to instead allow them to attend school, grow up as all children have the right to and become the healthy, educated, innovative and peace-loving adults that Africa needs in order to rebuild itself?