How is society effected?

My parents always encouraged me to go to school, get an education and find a profession that interests me which will allow me to support myself when I am older. I realize now that my friends and I and other classmates are a group of young adults who are on our way to making up a new generation of professionals who will ultimately support, influence and impact our society. We rely on the lessons our parents and elders teach us as well as our education to guide us through to adulthood. Thus, a society, which raises child soldiers, must be greatly affected by the loss of such a large population of future leaders, doctors, teachers and good citizens. What can the future of a country be if they lose a generation of children? One of the most impacting results of being a child soldier is the loss “of education and work experience . . . largely because of the time away rather than violence and brutality.” It must be extremely difficult for a former child soldier, who was under the pressures and threats of death and violence, to assimilate back into a functioning society. I have heard many times that my teenage years are supposed to be considered the best years of my life. Child soldiers are missing these years, fighting when they could be learning to read, write and learn life’s lessons outside of war. The lack of education does not only affect the individual but also society and its economy. The nation’s economy ultimately suffers when “children who are in the army do not go to school, [and] do not prepare to enter the workforce, etc.” It makes me sad to think of the plight of child soldiers who not only are loosing the freedoms and joys of their youth but are also robbed of a functioning and stable adulthood.

http://blogs.cgdev.org/globaldevelopment/2007/10/former_child_soldiers_pariahs_1.php

http://www.itvs.org/beyondthefire/Lesson_plan2.html

Can child soldiers return to society?

When young adults like me and many others I know my age leave our families for a long period of time, we are accepted back into our homes, towns, and families with open arms. Whenever I come home from college, I am always greeted with love and care. However, it must be hard for child soldiers to be welcomed back home after the war or controversy ends. In many instances, they are excluded from society. In fact, where is there home? Many have lost their parents, their villages burned to the ground and their siblings, if still alive, dispersed through the country. Both I and the children fighting wars in Uganda are sent away from their homes to fulfill a responsibility. In my case, it is a voluntary leaving. In the case of a child soldier, it is usually forced. I also do not experience the traumas of war and combat when I am away at college. It is very different to grow up in a situation when you have to live away from home and you must watch your parents get hurt, do things against your will, and not be able to rebel or challenge authority. Of course, the values, morals and lessons that parents teach their children must be similar all around the world. All parents must teach their children not to talk back to authority figures. However, I do not face the same repercussions and I am not under the same fear and threat as child soldiers are when they wish to speak against authority. Thus, it becomes harder for child soldiers to come back into society after fighting in war because of these limitations. They do not have the opportunity to be nurtured, educated, or well fed while in guerilla camps. When students go off to college, they come back to the society that they left, with more knowledge and experience. But, when child soldiers return to their societies, they come back knowing only what to do and what not to do in a fighting environment. However, the cause to integrate child soldiers back into society has not been lost forever. There are some that have been able to become influential members of society. Ishmael Beah is a former child soldier who was kidnapped at the age of 12 by Sierra Leone’s national army and was forced to fight in the rebel attacks. Now at age 26, Beah has been “named an ambassador for the U.N. children’s agency . . . vowing to be an advocate for children worldwide, not just in African war zones.” He has also written a memoir detailing his “remorse over the war and how he eventually found support from a UNICEF rehabilitation program and from a new adoptive family in the United States.” The future of a child soldier depends greatly on whether or not the society that sent him or her away receives them back openly and does not shun them away.

http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/international/ticker/detail/Former_child_soldier_becomes_UNICEF_ambassador.html?siteSect=143&sid=8447422&cKey=1195621643000&ty=ti

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/6865

My Real Cross-Cultural Encounter

My expectations for writing this blog were to learn about a culture of war and the history of child soldiers. I had no anticipation of hearing from someone who would respond to my blog. I always knew my blog would be in a public domain but I never realized what effect posting your own thoughts in public could have on others. While I expected to receive comments from my classmates, I was astonished that someone from Uganda, the place I was studying, read and commented on my blog would ever read it. For me, this became a real cross-cultural encounter. It gave me an opportunity, whether my facts were right or not, to have an exchange with someone who could intimately relate to the topic and made the issue more personal. The initial point of my blog was not to just tell a story, but to get a response and encounter people who could teach me more about my subject. While I still have not spoken to or met a child soldier, this encounter got me to rethink and expand my facts and beliefs. It forced me to see whether or not my western Caucasian background, my views and attitudes towards the information I gathered, were accurate or slandered. The importance to me was not so much about what I was writing in my blog, as much as putting something out in the public view to form a dialogue and come in contact with people who had personal experience. I am much more aware of what and how I write now as I am certain people, not just close to me, but all around the world, could be reading my thoughts and information.