Child Soldier: Article Analysis

Improved Essays
Burke, Jason, and Phil Hatcher-Moore. “’If you are old enough to carry a gun, you are old enough to be a soldier’”. The Guardian, July 24, 2017. Accessed October 22, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/jul/24/south-sudan-child-soldiers

This article provides a qualitative narrative of the child soldier conflict in South Sudan and the experiences that they have. This article follows several child soldiers, such as David Zelu, a fifteen-year old from South Sudan, who is a senior officer of a rebel militia, and fifteen-year old, Baba, a soldier in the opposition militia of South Sudan, Cobra Fraction. With this exploratory narrative that captures various parties involved in the child soldier conflict – the child soldier themselves,

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Singer. Both of these articles speak on the use of underage children fighting in wars. However, Singer takes a more logical approach and uses almost predominantly logos to prove his message. He cites facts such as “Children now serve in 40% of the world’s armed forces, rebel groups, and terrorist organizations and fight in almost 75% of the world’s conflicts” to inform the audience. He also displays quotes to show how adults have corrupted the minds of children, including quotes like “Last night I fired a rocket-propelled grenade against a tank.…

    • 803 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A Long Way Gone Theme

    • 1221 Words
    • 5 Pages

    A Long Way Gone (2007) is a true story of Ishmael Beah, who unwillingly is forced to become a child soldier when a civil war breaks out in Sierra Leone. The story starts with Beah only 12 years old, who is away to perform along with his brother and friends when rebels attack his village. During all this chaos, confusion and ambiguity of war, all of them are left to wander from village to village in search of food and shelter and along the way commit to acts they had never thought of doing so otherwise. The book explores around a lot of different themes throughout the reading and for this paper I will talk about the methods of child recruitment, the role as child soldiers and lastly the rehabilitation provided to these child soldiers.…

    • 1221 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A Ugandan warlord abducts children and forces them to join the military. Invisible Children, a US organization, created a YouTube video called Kony 2012 opposing the actions of Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army. John Naughton wrote an editorial praising Kony 2012 in the Observer in March 2012. Children from other countries are compelled to enlist in the military as well. Ishmael Beah became a soldier when he was young.…

    • 681 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Getting everything you've ever wanted, never having to try hard, and never going through difficult times does absolutely nothing to help you grow. Therefore, hardships can influence a person’s life for the better, because hard times promote diligence. In the book “A Long Way Gone (Memoirs of a boy soldier), “ the main character (and author) was recruited into the army after rebels slaughtered his family. While in the army, he went through many terrible experiences that still haunt him today.…

    • 256 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Child soldiering has become a way of war. This horrendous practice of exploiting children is caused by the need to economically benefit one’s country by appropriating the efficiency of being able to condition children from an early age. The effects include post traumatic disorder, mental health issues, medical issues, the list goes on, and much about this experience can be observed in the book, “A Long Way Gone,” by Ishmael Beah. A child soldier is a person under eighteen years old serving in arms.…

    • 700 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A child soldier will join the army or rebel group because they have nowhere…

    • 871 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Images last week from an ISIS video appearing to show a child executing a hostage were horrific. The very idea of the "cubs of the caliphate," as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria dubs them, is stomach-churning.”) This statement and photos show that the children in the video are no more than 14 years old thus they would not have had enough experience in the world to make the right decision. (captaindarwin ) While some did this do to lack of experience while others did this because they were brainwashed by drugs and then threatened to kill or be killed.…

    • 718 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Jeffrey Gettleman writes, “Today, the Asian nation of Myanmar has one of the world’s highest rates of child-soldier recruitment. Thousands of boys, some as young as 10, are purchased, kidnapped, or terrorized into joining the country’s army.” This evidence shows that these child soldiers are being pulled away from their families and being forced into the armed services. Child soldiers are being split up from their families and being kidnapped and forced into war. Then, they end up following their commanders and if they don’t they won’t get food and shelter.…

    • 1523 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Most children have never been in a classroom or played in a park. Their growth has been stunted by conflict-induced famines, their psyches damaged by all the killings they have witnessed.” ( “Armed & Underage” by Jeffrey Gettleman) Living in a war-torn country denies children other, better options. These damaged boys face poverty and hunger and are eager to recieve even the smallest pay given for being a soldier, all reasonable judgement set aside. Additionally, many of these children have had major family complications, whether it be abuse, or their death.…

    • 729 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    A Long Way Gone Essay

    • 1824 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Having been a child soldier himself in Sierra Leone, this gives hope for those who have no choice but to endure the tragedies of warfare and to take up arms to protect their livelihood as early as five years old. Beah goes on to describe that the mentality of the child soldier is one of vengeance: that the severe losses inspire them to dedicate their lives into taking from their others and that trust for close neighbors is destroyed in all…

    • 1824 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    These perceptions work to highlight and further problematize the prevailing ideologies regarding child soldiers. The Article Stolen kids turned into terrifying killers, By Ann O'Neill CNN, further depersonalises these child soldiers by telling us that there very vulnerability makes them attractive to the men leading militias, manipulating them to do the unspeakable without question or protest, because their morals and value systems are not yet fully formed. This verifies western beliefs and ideologies relating to guerrilla military leaders exploiting children and their rights to an innocent childhood for their own self-centred political agendas. In additional, some children are kidnapped from their schools or their beds, some are recruited after seeing their parents slaughtered, and some may even choose to join the militias as their best hope for survival in war-torn countries. Once recruited, many are brainwashed, trained, given drugs and then sent into battle with orders to kill.…

    • 906 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Children come into this world in hopes of being the future of this world, but they never imagine themselves as stone cold killers. The dilemma of child soldiers has spread to hundreds of countries around the world and has no intention of slowing. Now, an estimated 300,000 children fight wars under the forceful hand of local militias that care none for the people they effect. They suffer the cruelest of things during their time as a child soldiers, the effects are frightening including all sorts of trauma that they may never recover from. Now these child soldiers have grown up and are looking for redemption in the new world but first are being prosecuted for their crimes as warlords.…

    • 1735 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Therefore, the crimes that the kids committed aren’t their own fault, but the people that put them in that position. The young adolescents that join armies do kill people and commit crimes, but this is not their choice. ”Armed and underage” by Jeffrey Gettleman states, “Thousands of boys, some as young as 10, are purchased, kidnapped, or terrorized into joining the country’s army.” This goes to show that the crimes the child soldiers commit are against their will so they should not get in trouble for doing things that they do not want to do.…

    • 863 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Child Soldiers In Syria

    • 1596 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Numerous social issues are spreading rapidly around the world, but the social issue of child soldiers has had a drastic increase in recent years. Currently, about 250,000 child soldiers exist worldwide (“Child Soldiers” World Vision). Although the recruitment of child soldiers has existed for several years, currently in various regions rebellious organizations along with military forces of countries have increased the recruitment of child soldiers. Specifically, children in the Middle East face a major threat of being recruited as child soldiers ("ISIS Increasingly Recruiting Children To Carry Out Terrorist Acts"). The organization children in the Middle East face the biggest threat from is ISIS.…

    • 1596 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In fact, the civil war occurring in South Sudan not only consists of battles between armed men and rebels, but the war also involves around the use of child soldiers ("Terrifying Lives of Child Soldiers [analysis]”). Child soldiers are forced out of their homes and are given a gun. They are taught how to pull a trigger and are sent to battle. Children are not adults, and the use of child soldiers must not be allowed. Instead of facing child labor, receiving trauma, experiencing abuse,…

    • 1842 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays