Child Soldiers: Recruiting Children

The use of child soldiers is one of the most blatant abuses of international human rights. There have been a number of treaties that have tried to prohibit these practices, but the use of child soldiers has become more prominent and occurs in approximately 75% of conflicts around the world. Primary causal factors of recruiting children are: social disruptions due to globalization, disease and war which has resulted in further global conflict and generation disconnection which has created a pool of possible recruits and technological improvements with fire arms becoming smaller and lighter allowing children to be more effective. With low draft turnout, conflict leaders see the recruitment and use of children to be a economic benefit. It is low …show more content…
Without this factor, recruiting children would be useless if they were unable to actually fight with the machinery. When one thinks of war, the first things that come to mind are missiles, tankers, aircraft carriers, etc. However this is inaccurate as on a more fundamental level, the weapons that shape warfare are simple and less expensive. These sorts of arms are grenades, rifles, machine guns, land mines, etc. Effectively allowing them to be easily portable. These technological advances have allowed warlords and rebel leaders to transform children into fighters and make them as lethal as adults once a weapon is in their hand. In earlier times, some machinery required years of training while other machinery required the man operating it to be extremely strong. This clearly made the use of children useless and prohibited. A physically weak child would not be able to endure the physical burdens of soldiers in ancient times. Even in WWII, weapons were heavy and bulky making it near impossible for children to participate and be …show more content…
This makes weapons so light that young children can use them just as easily and successfully as adults. Besides being light, the weapons have also become so simple to strip, reassemble and fired that even a 10 year old can do it. These small firearms are far more lethal than that of spears or single bolt rifles. Since WWII, small firearms have increased in lethality. Basically, young children have firearms as lethal as that of a whole contingent of Napoleonic infantry. Not only are the weapons more basic and simplified, they have also increased in number so much that there is an excess on the market. There is approximately one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. This excess has caused prices of primary weapons to drop once again making it easier for any organization to buy them and make these children soldiers at a small