Marked Draft(Bruce Tong reading T.Y. Li's draft)

Topic: Call for actions for children soldiers in Africa

(708 words)

Although we see and hear many countries have opposed to the use of child soldiers in armed conflicts, it is still happening, especially in Africa. Africa is known for poverty and the poor living condition for those who live there, most children also suffer too. They can be raped, harmed, killed, and they can be exploited as children soldiers. From a United Nations News report, it says “thousands of people in Central African Republic (CAR) are estimated to have been killed, nearly 1 million driven from their homes”. Nearly one-fourth of African population got involved with military conflicts. In other words, it is only a matter of time that it will involve more and more children’s life. Indeed, there is not really a social stability in Africa because of the inefficient leaderships and the people are always in cross-fire. In order to fight off the enemies, people train their children to increase their war power. However, can we all blame the leaderships there? We all live in the same world, instead of blaming someone or something, we should be the ones who maintain world’s peace, and it is our responsibility to protect the world’s children. Some may say it is hard to help the children soldiers in middle-east area or third world countries such as Africa because due to geography reason, and because of politics and culture differences. But as mentioned above, it is our responsibility to these children in the poor area. Apparently, the people who are exploiting these children are not going to stop and helping them instead; if we do not even give these children a hand, who will?

      So are there any suggestions or actions that can solve the issue of child soldiers? For public pressure, we have the Red Hang Day. On every February 12, it is the International Day against the use of child soldiers. And on this very day, Non-Government Organizations, interested parties and individuals usually create events to raise public awareness the problem of child soldiers. For law enforcement, we should have stricter persecution. African government needs to ensure the proper persecution of criminals who uses children as weapons and soldiers. For schooling, we should have more education to the children. Education is one big way to resolve this issue. Children are basically our future. If we give proper education to the children in Africa, they will have more knowledge and intelligence to improve and change the government and the system. Whether a child soldier is part of the military or apart from it, they need to find a safe place or a shelter. African government should build more shelters and agencies in order to help those escaped children soldiers, let them know they actually have a place to run off to; and agencies should track down the offenders and report it back to law enforcement. On the one hand *where is the other hand?*, in so little we control, there are things that we can still do to help the children in Africa. For example, we can support local human rights groups or those interested parties, and we can encourage the media to recognise their responsibility in the promotion of child rights. In that way, we can raise the public awareness and it might resulted as to urge African government to pass laws that remove the use of child soldiers.

In brief, there are so many organisations in the world trying to do these live-saving work ; however, a lot of child soldiers are still existing in Africa and they cannot do anything just because they were born there. Based on what UN, NGOs and other individuals did, the whole situation did improve tremendously, but just not enough to end the use of child soldiers. It is time for us to take a stand, put the media in good use, and put pressure on governments in order to see some changes. We should be committed to this, and we want to see Africa government’s commitment as well. According to UDHR, (article 1) “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” For we are equal and born free, everyone should have the right to live in peaceful and safe environment, so are these children soldiers in Africa.