Terrorists use children to attack several places. The most common one here in Nigeria is d idea of using little girls as suicide bombers.
Sometimes they use little boys. They pretend as if they are stranded and the moment some soldiers who have human sympathy see them, they take them as their errand boys in camps and these boys most times end up as spies.
I have seen many children all over the north east playing around military camps. Some of these children mostly boys are innocent while some are dangerous. When you ask some soldiers what a strange boy is doing in the camp, they say “He is a boy. A boy is nothing.”
I ask myself. “A boy is harmless?”
Let me ask this question.
Does the boy have two eyes to see?
The boy has two hands to strangle and fingers to pull a trigger?
If your answers to these questions is “Yes”
Then you agree with me that a boy is very dangerous.
Boys are more dangerous than weapons.
It is impossible to accurately calculate the number of children involved in armed conflicts in the world today.
According to the United Nations there are about 280,000 children under the age of 18 serving in government forces or armed rebel groups. Most child soldiers are aged between 14 and 18. However, in some countries, children as young as seven have been involved in armed conflicts.
Child soldiers are often associated with armed conflicts in African countries such as Burundi, Chad, Somalia, Sudan, DR Congo, Nigeria and Uganda.
The UN estimates that at least 200,000 of today’s child soldiers operate on the African continent. However, the fact is that this is not solely an African problem, but a universal one. Child soldiers are used in all regions of the world, and on the list of countries using child soldiers today you will find countries like Afghanistan, Colombia, Burma, Nepal, Iraq, Thailand and Indonesia.
Since 2001, the participation of child soldiers has been reported in 21 on-going or recent armed conflicts in almost every region of the world.
How Are They Recruited?
Children are recruited in different ways. Some enlist as a result of poverty and lack of work, and often it is the last alternative to surviving in war-torn regions after family, social and economic structures have collapsed. Children are most vulnerable if they are poor, separated from their families, displaced from their homes and living in combat zones.
A military/rebel unit can in fact be something of a refuge, serving as a kind of surrogate family for a child who has no family. The military/rebel group may seem a secure place for a child and they may join if they believe that this is the only way to guarantee regular meals, clothing or medical attention.
A child was arrested recently and he said he was 10 years old when he joined the rebel group.
He said “I remember the day I decided to join them. It was after an attack on my village. My parents, and also my grand-father were killed and I was running. I was so scared. I lost everyone; I had nowhere to go and no food to eat. In their hands I thought I would be protected, but it was hard. I would see others die in front of me. I was hungry very often, and I was scared.
Sometimes they would whip me, sometimes very hard. They used to say that it would make me a better fighter. One day, they whipped my friend to death because he could not slaughter the enemy. Also, what we did was to kidnap girls and rape them.”
Some have witnessed family members tortured or killed by government forces or armed groups, and join up as a result of this, while others are brutally abducted by armed groups and forcibly recruited. There are many examples of recruits who are arbitrarily seized from their homes, the streets, or even from schools and orphanages, when armed militia or army cadres roam the streets, picking up anyone they encounter. Sometimes children are even forced to kill their parents or commit other atrocities against their family or neighbors. Such practices help ensure that the child is “stigmatized” and unable to return to his or her home community; in this way the military group will have a loyal soldier for years to come.
We all have to pray for our country. This terrorism must stop. Credits: http://www.thecapitalng.ng/child-soldiers-fear-the-boy-child/ |
