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Ukraine: Children train with guns amid fears of Russian invasion

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At the 2013 Youth Peace Conference at UCLA, a Soledad Enrichment Action Charter student asked Ishmael Beah the question, "Who do you consider to be the hero in your life?" http://www.seacharter.net Video produced by: http://www.1nessmedia.com

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unicef kids children human rights charity not for profit non-profit development earth

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The moment South Sudanese children are reunited with family | UNICEF

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"I actually stopped believing that I'd ever go home and be reunited." Nyaneada, 10, is one of over 3,800 children reunited with their families since the conflict in South Sudan broke out. She and her siblings hadn't seen their parents in nearly two years.

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Songs for kids. Africa with one note accompaniment

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A simple accompaniment on the note of G is suitable for beginner violinist , guitarists etc.It offers a rhythmic part to play with their first note. Class teachers can use this chime bar note in the instrumental part too.. Additional teaching materials can be purchased at https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/africa-an-evocative-song-with-simple-chime-bar-accompaniment-11395369

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Many children are born into war zones and end up fighting when they are very young.

Sometimes they are raised by gangs or 'militia' in areas where there is a civil war. They often have no choice but to fight.

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CBBC Newsround | CHILD SOLDIERS | How do kids become soldiers?

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Many children are born into war zones and end up fighting when they are very young. Sometimes they are raised by gangs or 'militia' in areas where there is a civil war. They often have no choice but to fight.

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"Children of ISIS" was featured in the premiere episode of "CBSN: On Assignment" -- a new primetime documentary series which first aired Monday, July 31 on the CBS Television Network and on CBSN, the network's 24/7 streaming news service.
As the war in Mosul comes to an end and ISIS retreats, legions of young victims are being left behind. Without help, they may pose a long-term threat to the security of the region and the world at large.

Children were uniquely victimized by ISIS. First, as bystanders caught in a brutal war, but more shockingly, as soldiers who were recruited, indoctrinated with a deadly ideology, then trained to kill and fight on the battlefield. As they are freed from ISIS, traumatized and untreated, they're now melting back into society -- still heavily influenced by their experience.

Sherri Talabany is one of the loudest voices calling for help. A former U.S. diplomat now living in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, Talabany is president and founder of SEED, an NGO helping victims of ISIS. She fears that many recent arrivals desperately need help, or risk posing a danger not only to themselves and their families, but to the country and the world.

She observes, "the boys that were in DAESH training camp ... were taught nothing but violence against their own families. Hatred and violence. they've been involved in murder, they've been involved in torture."

Sherri says, "The terrible thing about the experience is, nobody knows what is going to happen next."

Thousands of teens, even kids as young as 6 years old that were caught in the battlefield, are held in jails across Iraq -- suspected of being ISIS fighters. Many former child soldiers have slipped back into their homes undetected. Perhaps the most insidious of all of ISIS' war tactics was implanting a dangerous mentality into ISIS cubs, to help endure their ideology lives on for generations -- effectively planting time bombs throughout the region and the world.

That's what worries Talabany, who is working to ensure those who are coming out of captivity get a healthy transition before they can be reintegrated. Her group, SEED, operates facilities and offers mobile services for traumatized victims of ISIS.

"We're a safe place. We can be trusted and we're there to help," she said.

Sherri Talabany warns that without the proper, comprehensive approach to treating trauma, there is a danger of losing an entire generation. SEED offers psychological help, including case officers who visit patients in IDP (internally displaced people) camps. For the youngest set, simply offering safe places to play -- where kids can be kids -- is most effective.

"What we're learning about this youth is that we need a very long term engagement and it needs to be very consistent, and it needs to be very intensive."

"If we have this whole generation untreated and suffering from these traumatic events ... We're just going to be prone to another wave and cycle of ISIS or Al Qaeda 3.0."

Adiba Qasam witnessed the ISIS threat up first hand. A 23-year-old Yazidi, Qasam narrowly escaped being captured by ISIS -- twice -- and lost countless friends and family when ISIS took large swaths of Iraq.

Though granted asylum abroad, she returned to Iraq to help identify, and help the children of ISIS recover from their trauma. Qasam is deeply troubled by ISIS youth training videos but she's watched them closely to try and understand what she's up against.

"Those kids are victims. They're under their control," she says, watching these children shoot and kill captives.

Islamic State propaganda videos showing the cubs of ISIS are perhaps the most shocking legacies this war will leave. ISIS textbooks reveal their methods to indoctrinate kids as young as five.

Kids learn to tell time by reading clocks attached to timebombs. Arithmetic books teach kids addition and subtraction using pictures of bombs and AK-47s, alongside the traditional bananas and apples -- making weapons of war seem like inane daily objects.

Across Iraq, women and children are resettling in camps, with heart-wrenching stories of lives lost, and childhoods interrupted.

One woman now living outside Dohuk, Iraq recalls her children being much less aggressive before suffering what she describes as mental and psychological torture at the hands of ISIS fighters. She was kidnapped by ISIS along with her boys, then aged 1, 3 and 5. In their three years of captivity, she was violently raped, while the boys were indoctrinated and forced to convert to the group's interpretation of Islam.

She once saw her children practicing beheadings by cutting the heads off dolls. She feared her own children as they'd become attached to their captors and would report back to them that their own mother was trying to escape.

"I spoke to my kids like I was talking to ISIS," she says.

In a nondescript apartment complex nearby is Zikran who, two years ago at age 16, was taken by ISIS and forced into the training camps.

He recalls how eager the kids were to wage jihad. "The teacher would come in the class and ask who would want to go and explode themselves? And those kids would. All them are screaming, 'We want to, we want to.'"

Zikran, after being indoctrinated, believed everything his captors said. He lost friends who became suicide bombers, and concedes that he too would have seen the same fate, had he not been rescued by Yazidis who ferried women and children out of ISIS captivity.

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How ISIS-trained child soldiers are a ticking time bomb

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"Children of ISIS" was featured in the premiere episode of "CBSN: On Assignment" -- a new primetime documentary series which first aired Monday, July 31 on the CBS Television Network and on CBSN, the network's 24/7 streaming news service. As the war in Mosul comes to an end and ISIS retreats, legions of young victims are being left behind.

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http://www.ted.com For five years, young Emmanuel Jal fought as a child soldier in the Sudan. Rescued by an aid worker, he's become an international hip-hop star and an activist for kids in war zones. In words and lyrics, he tells the story of his amazing life.

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"Nothing is scarier than a twelve-year-old with a Kalashnikov."

They depend on us to defend them, but either we're forcing them to defend us or they're all alone and forced to defend themselves in the face of imminent danger. Sometimes they have a talent to help them get through the war, which unfortunately may be the reason they were drafted to begin with, but often it's just tough luck. While the notion of innocent childhood dates to the early modern era (thank the Victorians and their contemporaries), even the ancients felt fairly queasy about the idea - and with good reason: warfare screws with kids' heads, and they're rarely good for much else afterwards. Since the use of child soldiers forces the enemy to gun down children in self-defense, it's a very strong contender for the most morally reprehensible war crime in existence. On a somewhat lighter side, there are also many stories, in fiction and real life, concerning boys ( and girls) who lied about their ages in order to serve their country in its hour of need - but those are only slightly under age, much more mature psychologically.

This trope is great for an angsty backstory while at the same time excusing Improbable Age with prior experience. A staple of the shows which focus on violence but broadcast to kids, such as the more serious Mecha Shows. It's a good way to avoid Children Are Innocent, particularly if a kid creepily sees it as a game, but sometimes the loss of innocence is played for as much drama as can be.

In fiction, this also has the convenience of explaining why Persons Of Mass Destruction are obeying their weaker bosses and not running things, or at least not demanding wages and better job conditions. It simply doesn't occur to them; and even if they do rebel, they don't know how to do it properly.

This trope blends imperceptibly with New Meat. Since even legal adults can be teenagers, old soldiers in particular may regard them as no more than children.

This trope is Truth in Television; many armies in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa have underaged troops. Furthermore, even Western countries such as Germany, Russia, and the United States have overlooked recruitment ages in major conflicts such as World War II. This was likely to happen before the late 20th century, because births were not as well documented and the recruiters took them at their word if they looked about the right age. Though it's frowned on by Western culture, there is a certain brutal logic to conscripting youth - everyone is under threat, so everyone fights. Sometimes the children are better off on the front lines than enduring what would happen to them if the enemy takes their village. As a more pragmatic and ethical solution, many countries that feature soldiers in the 16-19 age range often utilize them in noncombat or support roles, and/or continue to train them until they're older, resulting in far better psychological health, effectiveness of personnel, and morale overall.

Child soldiers can be divided into two types: Those who fight and kill humans, and those who either don't because they fight a nonhuman entity (Strike Witches, Stellvia of the Universe) or avoid lethal means (Lyrical Nanoha). The former usually carry a heavy trauma, while the latter tend to avoid it.

Some Super Soldiers probably started out early enough to be counted as this. The Tykebomb ( of all varieties) is what happens when this trope backfires.

Compare Little Miss Badass, Creepy Child, Cute Bruiser, Enfante Terrible, Kid Samurai, New Meat, Young Gun, Recruit Teenagers with Attitude. The Shell-Shocked Veteran may actually be a high-school senior.

Contrast Falling into the Cockpit, which usually implies no former military experience. See Plucky Middie for the naval version. See also Raised by Orcs for cultures that use their enemies' children this way.

If only children get to be soldiers, then you have a Competence Zone on your hands. If it's because they're the only ones left, then you have a Teenage Wasteland on your hands.

Precociously Talented Type:

Really this is what Captain America's sidekick Bucky was.

And let's not forget, the eponymous BOY wonder, Robin and his successors. (Especially in Frank Miller's All-Star Batman & Robin.)

Cassandra Cain may not have ever been a Robin, but before becoming Batgirl, she spent the first eight years of her life training as an assassin and the next eight on the run.

And then there's the original Batwing, the Batman of Africa, who was a child soldier in the Army of the Dawn before managing to escape.

Xavin the Super Skrull in training from thinks of themselves like this, but based on the flashbacks to their training on their homeworld it seems like Xavin has never really seen combat and only undergone Super Skrull basic training.
In the Runaways/Young Avengers Civil War arc, Xavin tells a Mad Scientist that when they were five, they were forced to first watch their father slaughter a "screaming family" and then was made to spend three days with the bodies as a punishment for crying during it.

Hit Girl from is a strange case, because not only is she aware of her status as this, but she's far more capable than the 16 year old title character. Also, in a realistic twist on the trope, the bad guys have absolutely no problem with trying to kill her. The two most heinous examples are when they shoot her in the back with "a hundred bullets" (which she recovered from) and whacking her in the head with a meat hammer. To be fair, however, she had already done much, much worse to them. After her father gets killed, Kick-Ass helps her track down her mother, and she goes back to a normal life like nothing bad ever happened. The first issue of Volume 2 shows her continuing to train Kick-Ass, keeping a small army's worth of firepower hidden in her bedroom, and being thoroughly bored with civilian life. So her normal life is probably going to just be a temporary blip.
In the movie, her mother is really dead, so she returns to a normal life - probably devoid of bullies, but that's a detail - with just Dave as a guardian.

X-23 from the X-Men was artificially created to be a perfect killing machine, this meant learning to kill from birth on and being send on messy assassinations by the age of 12. The nature of her training qualifies her as an example of the tragic sort as well.

Metaphorically Marrow was also a child soldier. Being forced to kill fellow Morlocks in order to survive and being indoctrinated to hate normal humans for no apparent reason.

Cyclops, along with the other original X-men, were trained from around their mid-teens to fight to protect "a world that feared and hated" them.

Hope Summers was trained from birth to fight.

This is the source of Captain America's opposition to Peter Parker as Spider-Man in the Ultimate universe.
And even moreso with Miles Morales as the new Spider-Man, who is even younger.

The story "Arrested Development" is about an African boy who is kidnapped by a Joseph Kony expy named the Reverend and forced to become a child soldier. The stress of this triggers the development of his mutant ability to manipulate time, which he ultimately employs to get his revenge on the Reverend.

Judge Dredd was in his early teens when he first hit the streets, including killing lawbreakers.

Daisy Johnson and the Secret Warriors both have shades of this. Daisy was still high school age when Nick Fury approached her and had her trained to be his secret weapon, and its often noted by most of the people she encounters how young she is. Her teammates all vary on how much they fit this, with Hellfire being explicitly older than her while Yoyo and Alex being several years younger (Alex being a tween, though he's the reincarnation of the God Phobos, and is technically an immortal as it is). Explicitly, the team was formed using the illegitimate children of supervillains that Nick Fury had kept off of any other list, making them perfect secret weapons because nobody knew they existed.

In the New 52 universe, The Ravagers were originally trained to serve as elite soldiers in Harvest's private army, but decided to rebel instead.

In The Book of Life, Joaquin becomes a part of General Posada's army at the age of 10. Somewhat justified given how the other recruits weren't exactly strong and Joaquin showed promise (mostly due to the Medal of Everlasting Life).

:

The Clone Troopers are considered combat ready at age ten, though they go through accelerated aging and look twenty.

You also have the Jedi. Who are sent out into the field at fourteen or younger, looking, fourteen or younger, to chop people's arms off with unstoppable laser swords.

The Italian-produced World War II film Hornets' Nest involves a group of Italian children taking up arms against the Nazis after their parents are massacred by the SS. A little on the unrealistic side, with untrained kids mowing down countless Nazis left and right, it can't quite seem to decide if it wants to show war as an adventure or as a grim reality with tragic psychological tolls that come with children becoming killers, and its efforts to have it both ways leave it feeling a bit disjointed.

: Seen during a standoff between the cadets at a military school for boys and the Army. All of the cadets are teenagers or younger and are handling live weapons.

The main characters in Barely Lethal are girls trained since they are little kids to be badass assassins, but apparently don't go into the field until they're teenagers.

"The Kid" from the second and third movies enlists in Zion's defense forces despite being too young. After bluffing about his age and getting busted, he argues that "the machines don't care how old I am" and the officer reluctantly agrees to let him join up.
While at deaths door, said officer admits that he did the same thing when he first enlisted, as he give The Kid the encouragement he needs to carry the rest of the mission without him.

Battlestar Galactica (1978): "The Young Lords".

At the bridge the youngest daughter-drops tin cans into the water

: Frasier and Niles' Greek aunt Zora.

Niles: Have you forgotten that when Hitler invaded Greece, she joined the partisans so she could strangle Nazis?

Frasier: I have never believed that. She would have been five at the time.

Niles: That's why the legend says they were strangled with jump ropes.

Power Rangers Turbo: Justin Stewart, the Blue Ranger.

The franchise's source material, the core five Super Sentai is not without its own preteen Rangers. In fact, one predates Justin by about 4 years, Tommy's White Ranger counterpart, the bratty 9-year old KibaRanger, Kou. Other examples include the physically preteen Riki, the V-Cinema only successor to the late Shurikenger, Tenkai ToQgers, and especially, given the setting of the Rangers being La Résistance to a galactic empire, Kotaro Sakuma/Koguma Skyblue.

However, when one thinks about it, the original teens and their initial successors can all count as these, by virtue of the oldest among them being Jason at 17. It's just not as obvious as with Justin and the Sentai kid Rangers because of all the Dawson Casting involved. Hell, any Ranger from either side of the Pacific that are in their teens count.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:

Nog is a sci-fi version of Plucky Middie.

The Jem'hadar are a race engineered to fight for the Dominion, and to grow to adult size very rapidly. One seasoned veteran spoke with pride of how he'd attained the ripe old age of eight. Being 20 means you're an Honored Elder.

: River is adorable, despite being a solider. Luckily, Simon was able to save her from the ominous Academy so she has a chance to be helped, and he would never let The Academy threaten her safety. Ever.

American Odyssey: A teenage boy named Aslam is given a gun and told to guard Odelle, the prisoner. It's implied he already knows how to use the weapon.

The citizens of the planet Cadia in Warhammer 40,000 are trained from birth for combat, mainly because their planet is parked right outside a Negative Space Wedgie that leads straight to hell, and frequently spews forth the Legions of Hell. The birth rate and recruitment rate is the same thing. Their soldiers enter combat as part of the youth army, the "Whiteshields," at age 13. They only get promoted to the full army by earning a medal. And they are badass. A common saying is that any Cadian who can't field-strip his own lasgun by the age of ten was born on the wrong planet.

Stormtroopers, Commissars and Sisters of Battle are trained in military orphanages from very early age. While they usually don't see combat until graduation, their training includes shooting at live targets, usually at convicts.

Space Marines, due to the requirements of their implants, are inducted into the chapter at around the onset of puberty, and the entry requirements make sure they must be well-versed in the act of war before they're even considered. Their transformation into full-fledged Space Marines isn't complete by the time they're seeing battle as part of the chapter's Scout Company. That said, said Scouts are usually in their early thirties by then.
As in so many other things, Space Wolves are the exception. They take in valorous young men on the brink of death, usually in their twenties (leading the population of their planet Fenris to see their order as a Warrior Heaven in itself, but that is neither here nor there). Although we're never given figures on the success rate, the wisdom of this is uncertain; when Leman Russ was found by the Emperor, his associates all volunteered to become Space Marines, and over half died from implant rejection. On the other hand, few of them were young in any way, and several were downright elderly.

This crops up in Psionics: The Next Stage in Human Evolution. Psionic powers often manifest in adolescence and young adulthood, but can occur in childhood. Just because you're 7, it doesn't mean you're too young to join, be press-ganged, or sold into a conspiracy.

The premise of Bliss Stage is that the only people left who can fight the Alien Invasion are teenagers.

A number of races in Warhammer Fantasy do this as well. Dark Elves begin training the moment they are strong enough to pick up a sword or spear. All Bretonian knights start off as a Knight Errant. Once the young knights have proven their worth in the field of battle, they are knighted and receive a small plot of land to rule.

In the d20 Modern Sourcebook D20 Apocalypse, kids as young as 12 can be adventurers (explorers, scavengers, and other people who constantly brave the post apocalypse world). While they are not soldiers, given how hostile the post apocalypse world is, they might as well be. And the minimum age for law enforcement (vigilante, town militia...) is 15. Justified by the post apocalyptic setting, where people have to learn fast or die at the hand of raiders/mutated monsters/other.

Benjamin Soderer in Lost Cause joins the Confederate Army at 16 years old, thinking it will prove his own bravery at such a young age. However, it only proves how unready he is to face the Hells of war.

The title character in Terinu was raised by Space Pirate Mavra Chan to be an assassin, starting at the tender age of nine. His best friend Matt was sold by his own father to Chan to serve as a cook's mate on the same ship at the age of eleven. It's a sufficiently Crapsack World that in Matt's case this was distinct improvement over his previous situation.

Karcharoth of Cry Havoc was conscripted at the age of six, and has been fighting in one army or another for fifteen years. Understandably he has a rather distorted view of life. He was recruited due to his minor, but growing, psychic powers.

Cloud's mother in Sandra and Woo, Ye Thuza Williams, was a child soldier in Burma. As a result, she tends to teach her children how to employ violence as necessary with mixed results.

In Stand Still, Stay Silent, the army age recruitment standards seem to have greatly dropped:

First are the Hotakainens, who moved to Keuruu military base and joined the army eleven years before the start of the story. At the time, eldest Onni would have had to be sixteen, his younger sister Tuuri ten and their cousin Lalli eight.

A flashback involving Lalli confirms he was already scouting a horribly mutated Plague Zombie ridden wilderness at night at thirteen. The flashback relates an incident during which Lalli improperly filling out an anonymous scout report caused another group of soldiers to venture into a dangerous area and four of them to get killed, which the doctor considers a low number given the attack's violence. Looking at the report causes some authority figure to decide that "all scouts younger than fifteen" are getting a lecture on proper report filling. A fifteen year old Tuuri is seen among the desk workers.

The Cleansers, a Demolitions Expert unit working with high grade explosives, has two fine print elements on their recruitment poster: one telling people they need to be at least thirteen to join, the other saying that joining voids all life insurance. It can be seen here .

Sirene from the forum RP is a highly militarised country that drafts children as young as 12 for a four-year service, with the exception of children qualified for technical schooling instead. Not even royals are exempt.

Zero Takaishi of Tasakeru joined with the Daigundan and became a samurai at age 13, as is the custom for males of his species.

The youngest Protectors of the Plot Continuum are about thirteen years old when they start in the field. The youngest agent ever, Ella Darcy, was ten when she joined, but she wasn't a field agent.

Welcome to Night Vale has thirteen-year-old Tamika Flynn, leading a child militia against Strex Corp. She's already a veteran at this, having taking down the librarians at twelve.

The training of a Medieval knight was usually begun at the age of seven (7), and it was claimed after twelve, the boy is fit only for a priest. When a young nobleboy made 13, he was expected to serve his master on battlefield as a valet. 17, he would serve as a fully armed man-at-arms.
Most feudal systems with a warrior-aristocrat caste such as Japan's samurai and India's rajput were raised in a similar manner.

Calvin Graham, one of the many underage enlistees who served in World War II and became a bit of a celebrity figure in his time (and underage enlistees were often made to run extra miles and lug extra loads in the Training from Hell). Unfortunately, due to the US government policy he was not able to get veteran benfefits. Despite that, his ship, the South Dakota, was one of the most feared ships in the Pacific Front.

Galusha Pennypacker of Pennsylvania was a sixteen-year-old sergeant in 1861, a seventeen-year-old major months later - and twenty when promoted to Brigadier General in 1865 (he was instrumental in the capture of Fort Fisher and was also awarded the Medal of Honor). He was still too young to vote at the time.

John Lincoln Clem (born John Joseph Klem) ran away from home to join the Union army at age nine. Both recruiters he saw rejected him for obvious reasons but he tagged along with the 22nd Michigan anyway and made himself useful so the 22nd eventually sort of adopted him as a mascot and drummer boy, with officers chipping in to pay him a soldier's wage of $13 per month. He was allowed to enlist officially two years later. He served at the Battle of Chickamauga, where he is said to have ridden an artillery caisson to the front and wielded a musket trimmed to his size. In the course of a Union retreat, he shot a Confederate colonel who had demanded his surrender (although there is some debate as to the accuracy of this story), and was later promoted to sergeant, making him the youngest non-commissioned officer in the US army. In October 1863, Clem was captured in Georgia by Confederate cavalry while detailed as a train guard. The Confederate soldiers confiscated his uniform which reportedly upset him terribly—including his cap which had three bullet holes in it. He was included in a prisoner exchange a short time later, but the Confederate newspapers used his age and celebrity status to show "what sore straits the Yankees are driven, when they have to send their babes out to fight us." After participating with the Army of the Cumberland in many other battles, serving as a mounted orderly, he was discharged in September 1864. Clem was wounded in combat twice during the war. After his discharge he went back to school, graduated high school in 1870, and re-joined the army the following year. He stayed in the army until he retired at the age of sixty-four.

Several conquering kings (or wannabe conquerors/kings) were merely boys when they led their armies into war. Examples include Alexander the Great of Macedonia, Charles XII of Sweden, Edward, the Black Prince, of England, and many others.

Just Plain Tragic Type

Mariane Satrapi's Persepolis featured a portrayal of the real life Iranian unit of children, who were walked into the minefields to detonate them ahead of the troops.

The Vertigo reboot of Unknown Soldier is set in Acholiland, the base of operations of the Lord's Resistance Army, one of the most infamous Real Life users of child soldiers. Therefore, they're all over the place.

When the X-Men were up against Storm's uncle, a ruthless African dictator, he had a whole unit of child soldiers, trained to be extremely sadistic. Storm had no choice but to kill a squad before they could to the same to her.
While not as explicit, Cyclops is an example of a child soldier grown-up. Traumatized as a child (kidnapped father, orphaned with his brother), trained in military tactics from age 14, and sent on paramilitary actions until he was a full adult. Recent X-Men author Kieron Gillen even cited this trope as his central motivation for the character.

Batwing, "the Batman of Africa," has a back story where he was forced into service as a child soldier in the Democratic Republic of Congo. His parents also died of AIDS, completing a truly African backstory.

Transformers: More than Meets the Eye has the Warborn, Cybertronians born during the war. When one of them undergoes a psychotic break, the fact that he's spent his entire life a soldier isn't even raised as a reason for why he's snapped. Not even the ship psychiatrist, the sanest and most empathetic of the cast, is unnerved by the concept.

A later issue reveals that whole platoons of Cybertronians were brought online solely to fight, and taught the necessary skills required only to fight. They're labelled the Made To Order. And all the MTOs we've met so far? All Autobots.

Said issue also reveals the MTOs are made so quickly they tend to suffer from all manner of neurological impairments. And no-one blinks an eye at this, either.

"In the end, High Command decided they wanted their new troops to fight, not study, so they reduced the steps from ten to eight to three. Three steps, Nautica: 'From thaw to war in under an hour.' Because who cares whether or not a warborn knockoff with a three-minute life expectancy can quote Dominus Ambus or notate the Grand Celestial Melody? So long as he can assemble a path-blaster with his brand-new eyes closed, everyone's happy. That's sarcasm, by the way. I dabble."

The song "Little Weapon" by Lupe Fiasco is about child soldiers, but also video games.

Rasputina's "Child Soldier Rebellion".

Nightwish's "Planet Hell" is about the hellish lives child soldiers live.

Billy Connolly's "Sergeant, Where's Mine?" has the line "Whit dae ye dae wi' a gun in your hand, when ye're facin' a hundred-odd weans?"

Turns up several times in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, particularly in the supporting materials. The defence of Hive Hellsreach during the Second Battle for Armageddon is one of the more poignant examples.

Evacuees will be restricted to those below the age of seven (plus one parent/guardian) and those above the age of ninety. Regrettably, there are not enough places for everyone, so each person eligible for evacuation will be assigned a number. [...] If you are not eligible for evacuation you will be immediately assigned to a hive defence unit - details of where to report will follow this announcement.

The RPG Grey Ranks depicts child soldiers (aged 15-17) during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.

The game "Broken Rooms" has a world called 'The Unvisible' which has been invaded by monsters that are invisible- and cause severe psychic trauma- to adults. Only certain adults can see the monsters, so the average age for soldiers is 8-12. Big Science has designed assault weapons with low kickback and painted them in neon colors to appeal to the children, who are trained in combat tactics from the time they can walk.

The Wole Soyinka play Travel Club and Boy Soldier is about a military coup in an unspecified third-world nation, and the "Commandant" who's leading the whole thing is, well, the titular boy soldier. He's a teenager when the takeover happens, but he's been in the army for years by that point.

Les Misérables features Gavroche, who tags along with the student revolutionaries (who are themselves implied in several songs to be at most in their early 20s) and manages to take 2 bullets while collecting ammunition for the students before he is fatally shot in the head.

Ruby's World uses this as the base of the conflict; the villains regularly use third world children as material for their cybernetic super-soldiers, and several of the young heroes have this blood-stained technology in their bodies.

In El Goonish Shive, after a monster attacked Susan in Paris, two Immortals empowered her and Nanase, and instructed how to kill it. Later, in the Hammerchlorians storyline, it was revealed that these Immortals could have very easily gone to an experienced local magic-user instead. Susan... didn't take it well.

In Katusha, Girl Soldier of the Great Patriotic War, the title character is a 16-year old Ukrainian girl in Kiev and has just graduated high school in 1941 when Germany launches Operation Barbarossa. After the Germans roll through Kiev, she ends up joining a band of partisans, along with her classmate Zhenya (also 16), her foster sister Milla (age uncertain), and her younger brother Vadim (age 15). Within a few months, all of them become quite handy with weapons and adept at killing. By 1945, Katusha is serving in the Soviet Army, commanding a T-34 tank.

In Madgie, what did you? XIX , the children aren't given much of a choice in whether or not they want to but it is put that they have to fight. That, and their guardians, the ones that lead them, have would't put them up to it if they didn't have to.

While Welcome to Night Vale's Tamika Flynn is also justifiably listed under the 'ridiculously talented' heading, she and her fellow soldiers also come under 'tragic' in episode 46, "Parade Day", where they rebel against Strexcorp but get exactly no help from the adults, leading to them all being captured.

In Brave New World Universe the fact that the Chosen, many of whom are young teens, were picked by strange forces to fight a war they don't understand hasn't really been brought up yet.
In the side story Ride The Whirlwind, the main character Ricki, and her former boyfriend Al, who are both fifteen years old, are working with a group that defends the Chosen against any threat frequently using murder to get their way. Ricki has had a mental breakdown trying to get another character to kill her in a fight. Al has begun self harm, scraping his tongue until it bleeds trying to get the taste of other peoples blood out of his mouth.

who ends up having a Avatar: The Last Airbender: Aang-the only character who knows what it is to live in a time of peace (other than Bumi, who is at this point over 100 years old)-is the last survivor of a genocide. Then you have Jet, Sokka (who is put in charge of the defence of a village and an invasion), Zuko (the poster child for emotionally/physically scarred Child Soldiers), Katara (her childhood ended at nine)... One of the main villains is a fourteen year old girl Villainous Breakdown. It's even lampshaded a few times.

Katara: I haven't done this since I was a kid!
Aang: You are a kid!

Zuko: You're just a child!
Aang: Well, you're just a teenager.

Back to the Future had a story where Doc Brown's son Verne go to The American Civil War and find themselves recruited as a Confederate Army drummer boy. As he is being trained by another boy, Jimmy, he is told that they are positioned in the front lines in the line of fire:

Jules: But we're just kids!
Jimmy: [Bleakly] War makes you go up fast.

In Star Wars Rebels, the Empire has a training program that recruits teenagers to be trained into new Stormtroopers, and subjected to a harsh training regiment. The dark part however is that the trainers report any recruits who are suspected as force sensitive to the Inquisitors, and whatever happens to them is unknown.

In the season 5 finale of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, of all shows, the Crystal Empire Bad Future has foals being recruited for the war against Sombra.

is a satirical animated short, based on a story by Jules Feiffer, about a four-year-old boy who receives a draft notice and gets inducted into the U.S. Army, much to his distress.

The Daughters of Aku from Samurai Jack absolutely qualify; at the age of 17 to 18, approximately, they're sent out to kill the title character, having learned from their mother and her cult literally nothing but athletics, stealth, combat skills, and presumably the worship of Aku. Being Aku's actual daughters also puts them into the "precocious" category.

Played straight, then parodied in , when Peter and his father-in-law Carter visit Africa (due to Carter attempting to retrieve the money he lost in a Nigerian Prince Scam). They come across a village that's being held hostage by a brutal warlord, who says he's going to pressgang all the boy children as child soldiers. Peter is understandably horrified, until the warlord starts using "hamburger" as a punchline after everything he says, like standup comedian Alonzo "Hamburger" Jones, which makes Peter forget the monstrousness of what he's witnessing.

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They depend on us to defend them, but either we're forcing them to defend us or they're all alone and forced to defend themselves in the face of imminent danger. Sometimes they have a talent to help them get through the war, which unfortunately ...

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Today, there are between 250,000 and 300,000 children fighting in the world. Their recruitment begins from the age of 10. Child soldiers are used as instruments in war machines that execute even parents and friends.

"Children, my dear brother, are the best fighters of the century. They have more energy than older people. They resist without feeling physical pain."

Lucien, 12, ex child soldier from the Democratic Republic of Congo (1)

"At our age, , it's more complicated for the rebels. So they use stronger stuff, like drugs or money, to bait us and to make us march...I remember the attack on Njola-Kombouya village, in the south of Sierra Leone. They made us wake up at 1 in the morning and we marched until 7. A doctor came. He had a small bowl of cold water, and, every two injections, he rinsed his needle in the water. It was always a small vial with red liquid. At first, I constantly felt weak and then after, I had a sense of overwhelming power, I felt myself capable of anything...I had rage, hate, I wanted to destroy everything. You can't understand, we were placed in such a state that we laughed in face of all that violence, we found it exciting, we had no limits."
Moussa, 15 , ex child soldier from Sierra Leone (2).

Definition of Child Soldier

A child soldier is a human being less than 18 years old, recruited by an army or simply participating in an armed conflict.

In certain societies, children are considered adults from the age of 14 or 15. A young person of 15 who joins an armed group can therefore be considered as an adult soldier according to his own culture. Current international law in force fixes 15 years as the minimum age for recruitment in the army and participation in conflicts. However, the International Convention on the Rights of the Child fixes 18 as the age of adulthood.

The role of child soldiers

A child soldier is not only a member of an armed group who actively participates in hostilities. A child soldier does not necessarily wear a uniform or carry a weapon: he can be recruited into an armed group as a cook, carrier, guard, spy, messenger, bodyguard, sex slave, mine "detector"...

Reasons child soldiers are recruited

Children are recruited because they are more manageable, more obedient, and more easily manipulated than adults. Children are also less conscious of danger, and it is harder for them to see the difference between "absence" and "death".

Combined with questions of poverty, the lack of access to education or training, discrimination, and vulnerability, children are easy targets for recruitment by armed groups. Children who are orphaned, unaccompanied or living in a difficult family environment, see it as a solution to their problems, and taking part in an armed group seems safer than confronting these problems. Revenge, community identity, and ideology can also influence children.

Armed groups often target children because they "cost less": the necessary investments for recruiting, training, and arming children are less than for adults.

What's more, today children are generally recruited in civil war environments, which are long and cause heavy casualties. As a result, children replace adults dead in combat.

Recruitment of child soldiers

Recruitment of child soldiers is mostly voluntary, due to a combination of the multiple motivational factors mentioned above.

However, forced recruitment is a common and carefully planned process in which children are abducted and tortured. In cases of forced recruitment, the recruiters typically target places where children are most vulnerable and gathered in large numbers: in particular, children are abducted from schools, orphanages, refugee camps, stadiums, and churches. Children are gauged according to their height and physical condition. To subdue them, recruiters don't hesitate to rape, beat, and torture them, and even to kill members of their family...when they aren't required to do it themselves.

"They give you a firearm, and you have to slaughter your best friend. They do that to see if they can trust you. If you don't kill, your friend is ordered to kill you. I had to do it, otherwise I would have been killed. That's why I left. I couldn't handle all that any more ."
Colombie, boy recruited at 7 by a paramilitary group when he was a child in the streets. (3)

Child soldiers: victims or volunteers?

Child soldiers are usually presented as victims of adults, and forced recruitment is more readily emphasized than voluntary engagement. However, the majority of children choose to become soldiers and are real players of the conflicts.

The taboo of child soldiers for armies and the simplistic vision of the phenomenon in public opinion is a major challenge in resolving the problem, because it tends to want to grant a certain immunity to child soldiers, without accounting for the complexity of the problem and the conscious will of the child soldiers.

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Child Soldiers Today, there are between 250,000 and 300,000 children fighting in the world. Their recruitment begins from the age of 10. Child soldiers are used as instruments in war machines that execute even parents and friends. "Children, my dear brother, are the best fighters of the century. They have more [...]

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2014 ALA Midwinter Meeting - Ishmael Beah on Books and Libraries