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Why use Child Soldiers?. Most child soldiers are aged between 14 and 18. While many enlist "voluntarily" research shows that such adolescents see few alternatives to involvement in armed conflict.
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Why use Child Soldiers? • Most child soldiers are aged between 14 and 18. While many enlist "voluntarily" research shows that such adolescents see few alternatives to involvement in armed conflict. • Some enlist as a means of survival in war-torn regions after family, social and economic structures collapse or after seeing family members tortured or killed by government forces or armed groups. • Others join up because of poverty and lack of work or educational opportunities. Many girls have reported enlisting to escape domestic servitude, violence and sexual abuse.
Genocide- the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group
Why is there violence? • About the size of Texas, the Darfur region is home to racially mixed tribes of settled farm peasants, who identify as African, and nomadic herders, who identify as Arab. The majority of people in both groups are Muslim.
History Over the past twenty years, drought and desertification have made water and arable land scarce in Darfur. As a result, the population of herders (primarily Arab Muslims) have come into increasing conflict with farmers (primarily black Muslims).
Leaders of a military coup in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, seized power just as a possible settlement of the land conflict seemed near. • The new leaders favored the Arab groups, denying the black African farmers their share of political representation and the country's resources.
Ethnic and racial hatred led to war, with a rebel black African army (SPLA), fighting Sudanese government troops (Janjaweed). • The SPLA is know for their abduction of minors for use as child soldiers.
Unable to defeat the rebels, the Sudanese government hired Arab militiamen known as Janjaweed, who have repeatedly swooped down on unarmed villagers like those at Khor Abeche.
This deliberate killing of civilians, combined with the creation of huge numbers of refugees suffering from malnutrition and disease, has so far killed some 400,000 people in Darfur. • Civilians in the region continue to die at the rate of 15,000 a month.
The Lost Boys • Orphaned as young boys in Sudan’s civil war, Peter Dut and Santino Chuor survived lion attacks and militia gunfire to reach a refugee camp in Kenya along with thousands of other children. • The name “Lost Boys” was given to 27,000 boys who were displaced by the war • Peter and Santino were part of a group of some of these “Lost Boys” who were relocated to the United States.
Uganda’s Invisible Children For the past 23 years, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Government of Uganda (GoU) have been waging a war that has left nearly two million innocent civilians caught in the middle. The GoU's attempt to protect its citizens from this rebel militia has largely failed, resulting in an entire generation of youth that has never known peace.
The DRC’s Child Soldiers • Congo's ethnic diversity and incredible potential wealth are two of the main driving forces behind the phenomenon of child soldiers. • With more than 200 ethnic groups, communities defend themselves by sending every able son into battle. • With almost endless mineral resources of tin, gold, diamonds, cobalt, and coltan (a key component in making cell phones and computer gadgets), the economic stakes are high to control access to those mineral resources – by force, if necessary.
