Why Are Child Soldiers Wrong

You sit in a trench and wait for your orders to come. You look left and right to see your comrades sitting with you, but they aren’t grown men and women, they are children. Your mind is unsteady and lightheaded from the drugs you were given. When you look out of the trench you see children only eight years of age marching into a village and burning everything down to a smoldering ash. Some children do it for protection others doing it for their religion. Hundreds of lives were taken when the village burned down, and it was all at the hands of children. Child soldiers have been in existence for years. People believe that child soldiers should be punished for their crimes and put into jail, but why? Why would you put a little one in jail when they were told what they were doing was right? These minors have not been given the proper chance to live a life to the fullest of their potential.

Although child soldiers have been programmed since birth, to be fair that just means they are more dangerous than anyone ever
could. Children learn the habits that their parents teach them, and these kids have learned abuse and kill on sight. “Two former interrogators testified that Khadr had bragged about killing a U.S. soldier” This evidence shows that these children have a problem with there mind and that believe that what they are doing is fun. Although some children, like Khadr, but others are not as far gone as Khadr is and they deserve to be saved. It is important to acknowledge that sometimes we all need a second chance given to us, and these child soldiers deserve the amnesty that we all have the chance of getting.
“Khadr’s father took him to visit al Qaeda leaders when he was 10 and to a military training camp when he was 15.” (Andrea Prasow, page 3) What this evidence suggests is that some of these children were, and are, influenced by family to join a military when they are younger than the age of 18. There are cruel man and women in this world and they will use anyone, even children, to get what they want. People have chances to take second chances that have been laid out in front of them, but they decide not to take the chance. “We only had two things to survive [an AK-47 and a big package of cocaine]” says a former child soldier named Ishmael. He knows what it’s like to get a second chance from the horrors that he had caused. The world today is a jungle and we as people get a second
chance.

Child soldiers have had few protections and our considered war criminals when they are brought in; They cannot be protected in the field of war, but they can be protected in the court of law. “International Criminal Court (ICC) Article 26 prevents the court from prosecuting anyone under the age of 18” (Teacher College Reading, 1) Kids and teens under the age of eighteen don’t have a fully developed brain to think right from wrong. They believe that whatever they do at this age is right and they do it for their own reasons. “We spread ourselves to other parts of the Middle East the use of child soldiers becomes evident.” (Teachers College Reading, 2) This evidence shows that most of these kids come from the most dangerous places in the world, and these kids have been abused and tortured by their parents.

Kids should be playing in the street and with squirt guns, not playing in a minefield with AK-47’s. Children are the future for this world, but when they are put out into the field of war it endangered our future on this earth. Some people believe that child soldiers are too dangerous to not be put in jail. The children of this world are a beautiful thing and should be given the benefit of the doubt.