EndingtheUseofChildSoldiersinArmedConflict.docVIP

Ending the Use of Child Soldiers in Armed Conflict By Runa Reta While touring with his New York Best-selling book “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier” Ishmael Beah stopped in at McGill University to discuss his experiences as a child soldier in Sierra Leone. Speaking alongside the renowned Senator Romeo Dallaire (former commander to the UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda), the two addressed some of the greatest challenges posed by the use of child soldiers around the world. With an estimated 300,000 children under the age of 18 currently employed in some of the most insidious internal wars across the globe, much time was spent discussing the growth of the child soldier phenomenon, its destructive impact on youth and society, and various avenues for helping to stem the use of the young in armed conflict. Moving back and forth between Beah’s direct accounts of the grim realities of war, and Dallaire’s emotionally-charged pleas for action, the packed gallery sat enthralled, united in its abhorrence to the practice of child soldiering. However, despite demonstrating a clear disdain for those who willingly send children, as young as 8 or 9, to the frontlines there was far less consensus on how to curb its pernicious growth. With a laundry-list of suggestions at hand, there is little doubt that a highly concerted, multi-faceted approach will be required to reverse a trend that has become disturbingly more prevalent in recent decades. Root Cuases of the use of Children in War Of today’s ongoing or recently ended conflicts, 68% have children under the age of eighteen serving as combatants, while 80% of those conflicts using children are in fact younger than fifteen. (Singer:28) With children making up nearly 10% of all combatants worldwide (Singer:29), what makes this startling statistic even more significant is that this percentage stood close to zero only a few decades ago. So why are children being recruited at such a high rate? Though the reasons are complex and