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