Another Kind Of Childhood Slavery

In our discussions of slavery, we have only mentioned bonded labor and forced prostitution. There is another kind of slavery that is estimated to have affected some 300,000 children and teens worldwide. They are called child soldier, boys and girls who are forced or abducted into a rebel army and forced to fight in armed conflict. The following is a brief story about a girl in Uganda, Africa. It is from http://www.child-soldiers.org/childsoldiers/child-soldiers

"I would like you to give a message. Please do your best to tell the world what is happening to us, the children. So that other children don't have to pass through this violence."

The 15-year-old girl who ended an interview to Amnesty International with this plea was forcibly abducted at night from her home by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), an armed opposition movement fighting the Ugandan Government. She was made to kill a boy who tried to escape. She saw another boy being hacked to death for not raising the alarm when a friend ran away. She was beaten when she dropped a water container and ran for cover under gunfire. She received 35 days of military training and was sent to fight the government army.

The use of children as soldiers has been universally condemned as abhorrent and unacceptable. Yet over the last ten years hundreds of thousands of children have fought and died in conflicts around the world.

Children involved in armed conflict are frequently killed or injured during combat or while carrying out other tasks. They are forced to engage in hazardous activities such as laying mines or explosives, as well as using weapons. Child soldiers are usually forced to live under harsh conditions with insufficient food and little or no access to healthcare. They are almost always treated brutally, subjected to beatings and humiliating treatment. Punishments for mistakes or desertion are often very severe. Girl soldiers are particularly at risk of rape, sexual harassment and abuse as well as being involved in combat and other tasks.

The Lord's Resistance Army is certainly not Christian, but they have taken elements of Christianity and replaced the substance with a violent agenda. I wanted to say that so you wouldn't be confused. To find out more the Wikipedia page is accurate. Wikipedia Link

Be sure to spend some time browsing the War Child Website this week and learning about the plight of teens in war torn countries. War Child