Many countries destroy the innocence of a child by forcing them to fight in violence they are not aware of. Children are recruited to be soldiers because they are easy to manipulate and do not need much food or pay. The effects of being a child soldier can make what use to be a sweet child turn to violence in hard times. Child soldiers should not be held responsible for the people they have killed and are often times only a child soldier out of force or because they do not know what they are getting into.
It is not often that you come across a child that volunteers to be a soldier. Most children are either drugged, kidnapped or forced in some way to become a soldier. Forced recruitment is a very common way of recruiting children and it is carefully planned. Usually recruiters abduct children that are the most vulnerable and are gathered at large numbers. Some recruiters will even rape, beat or kill family members to get to the children (Child Soldiers Humanium). Child soldiers do not choose to commit the crimes they commit. Children at that age are too young to know of that scale of violence. “Children are especially vulnerable to military recruitment because they may be easily manipulated and can be drawn into violence when they are too young to resist or understand what is happening”(Child Soldiers Geneva). Children all around the world are being forced to fight for the very wrong reasons. Since children are too young to know of violence and do not need money they are abducted from their families and are forced to commit crimes in order to stay alive.
Many children that commit crimes do not know what they have done and are forced to live with the guilt for the rest of their lives. “If a child under the age of 15 is considered too young to fight, then he or she must also be considered too young to be held criminally responsible for serious violations of IHL while associated with armed forces or armed groups” (Analysis: Should Child Soldiers Be Prosecuted for Their Crimes?). If a child is not old enough to fight in the first place, then how is a child old enough to take the responsibilities of a crime they were unaware could cause so much damage. “No child shall be alleged as, be accused of, or recognized as having infringed the penal law by reason of acts or omissions that were not prohibited by national or international law at the time they were committed” (Rikhof). Children are not aware of the consequences that come with war crimes and often only commit them because it was either their lives or the other persons.
Some people think that if child soldiers are not punished they are more likely to conduct worse crimes. Many think that there were many cases where the child soldiers had control. “But there are cases of child soldiers clearly in control of their actions, who were not coerced, drugged or forced into committing atrocities” (Leahy). This may be true but even if the children were not drugged or forced to commit a crime they were still in a very dangerous situation. Some people think that the child soldiers should be punished because if they are not they will continue to do worse crimes and will know they will not be punished (Leahy). This could also happen but I think the children that were put into that dangerous situation would rather be put into a safe environment than continue to do violent crimes.
Child soldiers should not be punished for the crimes they commit because they were out of force or innocence. Children under eighteen should not be punished for any crimes they committed and should be moved to a safe environment. Children over eighteen should be minorly punished because they were more in control of their actions, but they were most likely also a young child when they were recruited. The number of child soldiers in other countries has grown throughout the years and that number needs to be stopped.
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