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Stolen childhood By: Lucía Noboa Herrera
“When they came to my village, they asked my older brother whether he was ready to join the militia. He was just 17 and he said no; they shot him in the head. Then they asked me if I was ready to sign, so what could I do - I didn’t want to die.” A former child soldier taken when he was 13. (Source: BBC report.)
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ince the capture of the Congolese rebel militia leader Thomas Lubanga in March 2005 and his subsequent charges of enlistment, recruitment, and use of child soldiers, many people have wondered why Lubanga was only charged with these crimes when he was clearly involved in other serious war crimes, including murder and sexual violence. The answer to this question, albeit complex, is easy to understand: the use of child soldiers not only fuels armed conflict, but turns children into killers and breaks down the fabric of society. In other words, they have no childhood, no hope and no future. What’s left for a nation whose future generation has no future? The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is a country located in Central Africa. It is the second largest country in Africa and the nineteenth most populous nation in the world. A vast country with grand economic resources, the DRC has been at the centre of the Second Congo War, sometimes named “Africa’s world war”. The conflict, which began in 1998, officially ceased with the signing of peace accords in 2003. However, the fighting continued in the east of the country where the ethnic divisions collided with the abundance of rich natural resources many of the factions wanted to monopolize.