Perpetrator or Victim. The problem with Child Soldiers

Child Soldiers weak mentally and physically. And the torture they have to endure is not right. Also the fact that they get controlled from a young age is very wrong. With many having their parents taken away as well as killed, even you would have felt some sympathy. As a child soldier things are different. Your life is controlled, and you can’t do anything about it. Being fed drugs, being manipulated at a young age. It is very scary stuff, and yet people still do it.

On the other hand, some of them were teenagers. And as some might argue, they still had a choice. They chose to fight others. They chose to kill. They believe they were not influenced, and actually fought off of their own rage. They were used. But people didn’t know. And we still refuse to understand this.


The first reason why Child Soldiers should not be prosecuted is that they were too young to understand. For one, they are young. When you were a young child, you did a lot of different things. Of which I'm sure not all of them were the best decisions, and I’m sure you didn’t understand why someone got mad at you. Well this is the same thing. Those kids were young and had their parents either killed or taken away from them. So now they listen to the person who killed them as they were too young to understand, and just needed someone to go to. Now they praise their war leaders as they grow up in this new and dangerous world and at the same time, they take pride in their actions. A good example of this is Khadr. He was child soldier who ended up killing Sergeant 1st Class Christopher Speer as well as wounding five others. He has pleaded guilty to five criminal charges including murder in the violation of war for the killing of Speer. He is the first Child Soldier in Western countries to be prosecuted for War violations


Their brains are very undeveloped as we know that they get fully developed only by the age of 25. Not only that but they are fed drugs. Making them even more unaware of what goes on. The mentality they have, is kill or get killed. As they have seen many of their close friends from the camp lose their lives. It is catastrophic what happens to these children at such a young age, and it is up to us to fix it. Although this is the case, there of course are many reasons why they should be prosecuted.


These mostly revolve around the fact that they still had a choice. And that they chose wrongly. Well of course they could choose. We can all choose but not all of us make the best decisions. When given the position of power, and wanting revenge on what happened at a young age, as well as being manipulated, people can do insane things. Like kill others. Most actions are caused from their leaders as they praise them.