Abstract
The child soldier is a distinct and unique form of slavery, overlooked in each of the global, comparative studies (Patterson, Bales, and Kara). The horrors of children enslaved as soldiers are as severe and ghastly as anything one will encounter in the study of evil.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
Buying options
Notes
- 1.
Cited by Michael Wessells, Child Soldiers: From Violence to Protection (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2009), 9, from G. Machel, The Impact of Armed Conflict on Children (New York: UNICEF). Singer says “well over 300,000.” P. W. Singer, Children at War (New York: Pantheon Books, 2005), p. 29.
- 2.
Wessells, citing G. Machel, The Impact of War on Children (Cape Town: David Philip).
- 3.
I have combined Singer’s and Wessells’list. Europe: Russia, Northern Ireland, Albania, Serbia, Macedonia, Chechnya and break away countries from the Soviet bloc, Turkey; Middle East: Algeria, Lebanon, Sudan, Israel and Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Yemen; Asia and the Pacific: Afghanistan, Cambodia, East Timor, India, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Nepal, and Sri Lanka; Africa: Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Uganda; South America: Columbia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and Peru.
- 4.
The UN “Optional Protocol” allows children under 18 only if voluntary, the person is informed of his/her duties, has parental consent, and has proof of age. Cited in Singer, 216.
- 5.
Singer, 47–48.
- 6.
Phillip Killcoat, “Weaponomics: The Global Market for Assault Rifles.” siteresources.worldbank.org/INTCONFLICT/…/PCP3789Killicoat.pdf.
- 7.
Singer, 58.
- 8.
Ibid.
- 9.
Ibid.
- 10.
Wessells, Op. cit., 40–41. Citing Els De Temmerman, Aboke Girls: Children Abducted in Northern Uganda (Uganda: Fountain Publishers, 1995). The Burundi example is from Amnesty International, “Rape—The Hidden Human Rights Abuse,” 2004. web.amnesty.org/library.
- 11.
Ibid., 58.
- 12.
Singer, 105. Quoting from Physicians for Human Rights, “War-Related Sexual Violence in Sierra Leone,” June, 2002, 69. http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/reports/war-related-sexual-violence-sierra-leone-2002.html.
- 13.
Ibid.
- 14.
Ibid., 74.
- 15.
Wessells, 95. Wessells points out that some girls accept being a “wife” because the soldier may offer her protection. But this is acceptance is grounded in an abuse of power. And the “wife” may be subject to beatings and HIV/AIDS.
- 16.
Singer, 91.
- 17.
Wessells, 62 (Angola) and 75 (Columbia).
- 18.
Singer, 92. Citing Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), “Uganda: Horrors of LRA Child Captivity,” April 24, 2003; Reuters News Agency, “Army: Mourners Forced to Eat Corpse,” April 29, 2002. Web sites: http://www.irinnews.org/about and http://ipsnews2.wpengine.com/2002/04/politics-uganda-desperate-rebels-force-mourners-to-eat-corpse/. This has also been a practice in Colombia, Congo, Peru, and Mozambique. See Singer, 74.
- 19.
Recorded testimony from a 16 year old boy. Testimonies from “My Gun Was as Tall as Me,” Human Rights Watch, October 16, 2002.
- 20.
None other than Benjamin Franklin, who had printed ads in his newspaper for slave sellers, came to repudiate slavery and express a concern about negro rehabilitation. He saw slavery as “…an atrocious debasement of human nature,” but must be extirpated with caution, otherwise it would “open a source of serious evils.” We have a “serious duty” to “…advise, to qualify those…[‘emancipated black people’] for the exercise and enjoyment of civil liberty, to promote in them habits of industry, to furnish them with employments suited to their age, sex, talents…to procure their children an education calculated for their future situation in life.” Franklin’s 1789 address to the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, in The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. XII, edited by John Bigelow (New York and London: G. F. Putnam’s Sons, 1904).
- 21.
“The Road from Soldier Back to Child,” Africa Recovery, 15, #3, October, 2001.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
DeArmey, M.H. (2020). Slavery II, Child Soldiers. In: Cosmopolitanism and the Evils of the World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42978-2_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42978-2_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-42977-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-42978-2
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)