Dear UNICEF,
My name is Shamma Al-Balushi and I'm 14 years old, I go to The American International School Of Muscat, I am writing to you because I have recently been learning and discussing in my Language arts class about child soldiers and what should be done to them after the war. In my class I learnt that there is an estimated 300,000 children under the age of eighteen who are serving as child soldiers. I searched up your website and read through it and found that you have a transit in Colombo, Sri Lanka for child soldiers. This organization could keep innocent lives safe and I think you should aim on making more organizations like this in other places to help the children.
By definition, a child soldier is any person below 18 years of age who are recruited or used by an armed force of in any capacity, including but not limited to children, boys and girls, used as fighters, cooks, porters, messengers, spies, or for sexual purposes. These children, some even as young as 8 years old fight in front lines and participate in suicide missions.
Perhaps you are not aware but in the past ten years , more than two million children have been killed, five million disabled, twelve million left homeless, and ten million psychologically traumatized. These children have witnessed things like physical violence, including executions, death squad killings, disappearances, torture, arrest, sexual abuse, bombings, and forced displacement.
These innocent children have either been forced to join the army, young kids by the age of 8-15/16 with no say to what's happening. Even if they have hurt, or even worse killed people, they are still very young and don’t think about what they are doing. Children who actually volunteer to be soldiers themselves is because they feel pressure and they are under the concept that volunteering will provide a form of income, food or keeping them safe, and willingly join the group.
Military organization that recruit children find them easier than adults to attract or force into service, in general children are easily manipulated into joining the army this is because they are not mature enough into making their own decisions and depend on their commander.
In places like the Democratic Republic of Congo lived Michel Chikwanine, he was just five years old when rebel militiamen kidnapped him from a soccer field near his school, “i was forced to literally kill my best friend as an initiation process into the army.” this is just one of the many stories of the 300,000 children who were forced to go through these atrocities
In conclusion, i think the person that should face the consequences for the actions are the people who forced, manipulated and drugged these kids into doing these horrible things. The things you do to help these children are incredible, what you are doing is making a huge difference in their lives. Your rehabilitation program saves lives and i reckon you should aim on making the programs international.
Sincerely,
Shamma Al-Balushi
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