The author is telling us that the reasons that child soldiers are vital in many wars, is because they can easily be brainwashed and trained to think and act in favor of their commanding officers orders. In another article, one of the officials training these children says “...if you tell them to kill, they kill.” Some may see this as a reason to treat these kids like criminals, but it just shows that many children don’t know any better. Many kids have joined the army in seek of a home, so once they find something, they trust them like their own family. This can mean they are in danger of not trusting their own judgement and following every order that is given without a second thought. So you may be still thinking that since child soldiers have committed crimes, that they should be prosecuted, but on the contrary, many of these children are just following the orders of the people who feed them and give them a sense of …show more content…
This is because of hunger and poverty driving many parents to sell their children into the army. Also, kids have been taken from their homes and brainwashed into thinking and acting in a violent way. Lastly, many children have been forced to join the army to seek safety from their homes terrorized by war. Although in some cases, child soldiers may need to be treated in a criminal manner, at the end of the day, most child soldiers should be treated as victims. These kids are very vulnerable and are easy to be taken advantage of, so even if the children are involved in violent situations, these kids are as much of victims as the people they are are forced to