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"The army was a nightmare. We suffered greatly from the cruel treatment we received. We were constantly beaten, mostly for no reason at all, just to keep us in a state of terror. I still have a scar on my lip and sharp pains in my stomach from being brutally kicked by the older soldiers. The food was scarce, and they made us walk with heavy loads, much too heavy for our small and malnourished bodies. They forced me to learn how to fight the enemy, in a war that I didn't understand why was being fought." 

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"The army was a nightmare. We suffered greatly from the cruel treatment we received. We were constantly beaten, mostly for no reason at all, just to keep us in a state of terror. I still have a scar on my lip and sharp pains in my stomach from being brutally kicked by the older soldiers. The food was scarce, and they made us walk with heavy loads, much too heavy for our small and malnourished bodies. They forced me to learn how to fight the enemy, in a war that I didn't understand why was being fought." 

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- Emilio, recruited by the Guatemalan army at age 14

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"They gave me pills that made me crazy. When the craziness got in my head, I beat people on their heads and hurt them until they bled. When the craziness got out of my head I felt guilty. If I remembered the person I went to them and apologized. If they did not accept my apology, I felt bad."

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"They gave me pills that made me crazy. When the craziness got in my head, I beat people on their heads and hurt them until they bled. When the craziness got out of my head I felt guilty. If I remembered the person I went to them and apologized. If they did not accept my apology, I felt bad."

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- a 13-year old former child soldier from Liberia

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Compelled to become instruments of war, to kill and be killed, child soldiers are forced to give violent expression to the hatreds of adults- 

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Compelled to become instruments of war, to kill and be killed, child soldiers are forced to give violent expression to the hatreds of adults- 

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Olara Otunnu

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child soldiers: the role of children in armed conflict

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public international law: humanitarian law

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public international law: humanitarian law

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Child Soldiers: The Role of Children in Armed Conflict

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1994 is the International Year of the Family, and debates about the rights of the child are once again at the top of the national and international legal and political agenda. Yet in places of armed conflict all over the world tens of thousands of children are recruited to fight in bloody conflic...

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My new friends have begun to suspect I haven't told them the full story of my life.
"Why did you leave Sierra Leone?"
"Because there is a war."
"You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?"
"Yes, all the time."
"Cool."
I smile a little.
"You should tell us about it sometime."
"Yes, sometime."

This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.

What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived.

In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts.

This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.

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a long way gone: memoirs of a boy soldier

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A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

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My new friends have begun to suspect I haven''t told them the full story of my life. "Why did you leave Sierra Leone?" "Because there is a war." "You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?" "Yes, all the time." "Cool." I smile a little.

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www.youtube.com/kony2012

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Mack Dueck and Kayla Mehling founded this organization.

Hundreds of organizations such as War Child and Child Soldiers International pitch in to help us run :).

Our goal for this organization is to stop child solider wars, and to bring a smile to children's faces when we bring them back home. We hope that from all the money we get, we can pay for transportation fees for these children.

How we are funded: Many different schools across Canada raise money to help us pay for the fees of transportation for child soldiers. They run many different kind of events, such as penny drives, chocolate sales, sobeys gift card sales.

Our strategies: are to target schools and educate kids about this issue, so when they grow up they can help stop this tragedy from growing even more. We strongly think that this strategy is effective because kids are pumped about helping out and making a difference in the world for kids like them.

Are mission: Everyone wants a safe, worry free place with no violence to call home. And that's what we want for these kids.

You can get involved by getting your school involved, so more and more people can help us! You can also make personal donations if you want. and be sure to follow us on twitter and hashtag us at #:)

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By Monica Mark

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When he was 13 Edward was kidnapped by Ugandan rebels and forced to become a soldier in the Lord's Resistance Army. He survived the longest-running guerrilla war in modern history by being a trusted confidante of Joseph Kony, the chief architect of the brutal insurgency.

When he was 13 Edward was kidnapped by Ugandan rebels and forced to become a soldier in the Lord's Resistance Army. He survived the longest-running guerrilla war in modern history by being a trusted confidante of Joseph Kony, the chief architect of the brutal insurgency.

Fourteen years later, with Kony on the run, Edward is returning to his childhood village, nervous about the reception he will receive after his role in terrorising his own people.

For more than two decades about 30,000 children abducted from northern Uganda provided the fuel for Kony's cult-like LRA. A self-styled mystic who claimed to channel a host of spirits, his hazy aims of seizing power and ruling Uganda according to the biblical 10 commandments collapsed after his forces were chased across the Nile and out of the country in 2006. Since then he has roamed east central Africa's forests with a band of a few hundred children kidnapped from neighbouring countries.

While all but a handful of abducted Ugandans have now escaped, a generation of children is traumatised by war.

Edward, now a wiry 27-year-old, was one who got away. By the time he fled Kony in April he had spent so long in the bush that he had forgotten what a bank was. Because he became so close to the LRA chief, his story provides a rare first-hand glimpse into the spiral of paranoia one of the world's most wanted war criminals.

"In the middle of the night the rebels came, and surrounded our homes," Edward said, recalling how the LRA rampaged down the same pot-holed red dust road now leading him back to his village. "Until then I had never heard the sound of a gunshot."

Jeering rebels rounded up dozens of boys whose mud huts were within shouting distance; the youngest was eight. Most died during the forced five-day march to neighbouring Sudan. There the LRA trained the remaining boys to kill, using trees for target practice.

Speaking softly, fingers knotted on his lap, Edward said fear made his first kill easier. "If we had done a bad job, [our commander] might have killed us instead." Then, his voice barely a whisper, Edward explained how the abducted were repeatedly forced to kill other children who attempted to escape, and warned they would face the same fate if they tried it. "So many times it happened," he said.

For a quarter of a million child soldiers globally, the disorientating experience of returning home is exacerbated by deep stigmas and missed education opportunities. Girls kidnapped as "wives" often return with children born in captivity, or remain with the men they were forcibly given to even after liberation. In Liberia, unable to find jobs, some former child soldiers from Charles Taylor's notorious "small boys unit" have resorted to raiding graveyards to survive. After the genocide in Rwanda one study found more than 60% of children, many of whom were child soldiers, said they did not care if they ever grew up.

"I know [going home] won't be easy. Some people may think ..." Edward left the sentence unfinished and looked at the passing scenery. Coming home means coming to terms with a decade spent in a child army fighting against his own people. A neighbour kidnapped alongside him was forced to kill his parents.

A balmy breeze ushered in the morning on which Edward was returning to live in his village after 14 years. In Gulu, the district capital, a group of former LRA child soldiers gathered in the courtyard of the World Vision centre, a charity that helps resettle the children, and clasped hands. They prayed for Edward.

Outside traffic was already flowing around an oversize monument of a boy and girl with a waist-high pile of books. Barely a decade ago daybreak in Gulu would have seen thousands of children streaming into the surrounding countryside after spending the night sleeping on the city's streets in order to escape roving LRA soldiers who descended into villages mainly at night-time.

For his homecoming World Vision provided Edward with new clothes (he shyly showed off a pair of shiny new shoes) and a mattress to take home. "In an ideal world returnees really need five to seven years of follow-up support," said Susan Alal, who heads the last remaining rehabilitation centre in Gulu. They are operating in a far from ideal world, and with funding shortages. About 15,000 former child soldiers have passed through its six-month programme since 1995.

In Edward's language, Acholi, people call post-traumatic stress disorder ajiji. It means something that enters your spirit and makes you behave strangely. A former choirboy, Kony's horrific genius was the ability to manipulate people's spirituality. "We have to tell the community, if a [returnee] wakes up shouting in the middle of the night, they have not been bewitched by Kony, they are just remembering battle," said Charles Onekalit, one of World Vision's counsellors.

Mudfish, also known as lungfish, Kony decreed, could not be eaten because they had lazy spirits that would make the soldiers lazy too. Entire units were assigned to fetch Kony's "holy water" from a special location. LRA taboos included whispering - a potential sign of plotting escape - and anything that bound the children to the communities they had been wrenched from. The calabash, played as a musical accompaniment to every important ceremony in Acholiland, was banned.

"If you didn't want to kill, the commanders would say, are you not one of us? Please, come forward and kill. Then they would force you to lick the blood, and tell you if run away, your victim's spirit will kill you," one rescued soldier told Onekalit, explaining why most are captured in battle rather than willingly escape. "They treated killing as something very, very normal. You could only be promoted when you killed continuously."

Edward, who earned the rank of sergeant by 16, said in order to stay alive he "learned to keep my head down and do as I was told". While he despised most of the commanders, he believed Kony was "a godly person", he said. "They made us believe that."

The more child soldiers are forced to perpetrate atrocities, the more they identify with their captors, said Verena Ertl, a clinical psychologist who has researched conflict trauma among children in Uganda. Many develop so-called appetitive aggression - an active thrill from being aggressive - as a survival mechanism. "When the children are absorbed into the rebels' moral value system, being rewarded for cruelty becomes one way to make sense of what they are doing," Ertl said.

Signs of trauma are evident. One ex-child soldier rolled into a whimpering ball whenever a helicopter passed over the centre. Three in four children nonetheless make full recoveries, with the help of therapy. Edward said he knew when it was time to leave.

So sure was Kony of the web he had woven around his inner circle that he encouraged his top representatives to meet their families during a round of doomed peace talks in 2006 in South Sudan. When his distressed mother and sister pleaded with him to return home, Edward refused, saying it would violate army codes.

"It was when we were leaving he whispered to me, very quickly, 'I will come home one day,'" said his sister Esther, whose husband was killed by the LRA. "I told our mother she had not lost her son forever."

The final straw came when an increasingly paranoid Kony accused his closest adviser, Edward's direct commander, of sleeping with women reserved for him. He ordered Edward and others to hack their own commander to death with machetes, and hang the body up as a warning.

"I knew then that if Kony could kill someone even closer to him than me, it would be me one day," Edward said. He and a friend escaped that night. Edward took one of the guns from Kony's collection for additional protection as they fled the rainforests of Congo, where they had been plundering goldmines and poaching elephants.

Now, as the bus pulled into Edward's village, ululations of joy rang out. Women stepped through the long elephant grass waving leafy branches. Edward turned his face away and pressed his thumbs to wet eyes. "I never knew so many people loved me," he said, struggling to compose himself. "I want to tell all those still fighting in the bush it's OK to come back home."

After prayers and songs beneath the shade of a neem tree, each villager lined up before Edward, dipped a branch into a calabash, and sprinkled him with water - symbolising the community cleansing his past.

Lord's Resistance Army rise and fall

In the 1980s Alice Lakwena founded the Holy Spirit Movement, claiming the Holy Spirit had ordered her to overthrow Uganda's government, which frequently marginalised the northern Acholi people. Her nephew, Joseph Kony, formed the splinter group Lord's Resistance Army in 1986. Originally welcomed by the Acholi people, the LRA rapidly lost local support as it swelled its ranks through abducting children. Around 20,000 were kidnapped from northern Uganda as soldiers or sex slaves, and 1.8 million displaced at the conflict's peak.

The group's bloody trail stretched to Congo, Central Africa Republic (CAR) and South Sudan, where it acted as a proxy army for the northern Sudan government. Militarily weakened after losing backing from Khartoum, the LRA has roamed CAR and Congo since 2006.

The controversial Kony2012 campaign by Invisible Children renewed attention on Kony as over 100 million internet users clicked in. Kony and three generals are wanted by the international criminal court, though an amnesty has been declared for all child soldiers. In Gulu, the former centre of the insurgency, few are fans of Kony2012. "It scared a lot of people, we thought maybe Kony had come back to Uganda," said Donald Muwanga, pushing his bicycle through heavy evening traffic in the town centre. "All we want to do is forget him."
Topics

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Joseph Kony child soldier returns to terrorised boyhood village

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When he was 13 Edward was kidnapped by Ugandan rebels and forced to become a soldier in the Lord's Resistance Army. He survived the longest-running guerrilla war in modern history by being a trusted confidante of Joseph Kony, the chief architect of the brutal insurgency.

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The generosity of our donors allows War Child to continue protecting children and providing war-affected communities with educational, vocational and legal resources. We thank you in advance for your support.

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War Child's mission: is to work with war-affected communities to help children reclaim their childhood through access to education, opportunity and justice. War Child takes an active role in raising public awareness around the impact of war on communities and the shared responsibility to act.

Founder: Dr. Samantha Nutt is medical doctor and the founder/executive director of war child canada. she is constantly on the front lines of many of the worlds crisises.

board members: some of the board members who run this organization are; Jeffrey Orridge,Kali Galanis,
Martha McCarthy.

Strategies: war child flies out to the countries that need help and build schools and hospitals and other things to help these kids leave a life of war. These strategies are effective because War Child has been working successfully for decades.

Funding: War Child is funded by donations and you can get invlolved and donate at www.warchild.ca/donate

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War Child | Helping War-Affected Children Reclaim Their Childhood.

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War Child is helping children in war-affected communities reclaim their childhood through education, opportunity and justice. Learn how you can help today.

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www.planusa.org

www. warchild.ca

www.child-soldiers.org

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Founder and workers:This organization was established by many humanitarian organizations. Such as Amnesty International; Defence for Children International; Human Rights Watch; International Save the Children Alliance, and many others.

Mission: Works to prevent Children being recruted to the military and Their involvment with armed conflict.

Strategies: They use these strategies to target country Work: Thematic research and Global monitoring. Through Thematic research  they are improving this situation by their actions through enhancing knowledge and understanding the causes of child recruitment. The Board of Trustees governed this charity.

Funded: This ogranization is found by some governments, charitable trusts and foundations, and individual donations.

This organization is effective because they have been running for over a couple years already and a lot of people our pitching in to make this organization succesful.

Get involved: If you would like to help you can always donate.  Also do spread the awarness of this chairty you can like it on facebook and follow this on twitter. This will allow you to spread this issue to the whole media world.

Contact information: To donate go to info@child-soldiers.org or www.clothesforcharity.org.uk

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A Child Soldier is anyone under the age of 18 who takes part in any type of irregular or regular armed force or group.