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Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Dark realities

My eyes were opened this week to the existence of child soldiers. There are estimates of 300,000 children world wide that are "recruited"; kidnapped, threatened, and tortured until the participate. 100,000 of these children are in Africa and 30,000 of them are in the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo).


http://maps.maplecroft.com/loadmap?template=map&issueID=80


http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/people/features/childrensrights/childrenofconflict/soldier.shtml

Due to the popularity and the light weight design of the AK-47, boys as young as 8 years old are being recruited. A new trend developing is the recruiting of young girls. The advantage of using children to fight is that they are easier to cloth, feed, and manage than adults. Children are also easier to manipulate.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sarah read a book you might want to consider for your summer reading list: A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.

What happens within you when you encounter "dark realities"?

Kyle said...

Dr. Pakisha came to visit TRD today. He showed us a powerpoint about the situations within Congo. I was almost brought to tears. I am upset at my own ignorance. I am reminded of a song by Thrice called Cold Cash and Colder Hearts. "They are sick, they are poor, and they die by the thousands and we look away... because we don't have the time here at the top of the world". It might be a Derek Webb thing but I have a phrase in my mind - comfort is murder. To me this speaks of society’s individual focus to achieve for themselves a level of comfort and ease. This happens at the expense of those suffering. Their suffering is not directly our fault but in not addressing the suffering we are inadvertently contributing to it.