The Utility and Consequences of Using Impressed Child Soldiers in Africa's Contemporary Wars

There is no right way of doing a wrong thing, it is already wrong that children are being used as soldiers by various units of "freedom fighters" in Africa and other parts of the world. The purpose of this paper titled; "The Utility and Consequences of Using Impressed Child Soldiers in Africa's Contemporary Wars," is to examine the practice of using children as soldiers by various African combatants in achieving their military goals. Freedom fighters in several African states have used child soldiers. These include Liberia, Uganda, Mozambique, Namibia and in South Africa during the Boar War and more recently, the latter days of apartheid. This paper addresses the background of the use of child soldiers as early as the Stone Age and the situation making these child soldiers more vulnerable to the units employing them. The skill and experience of the child soldier with the changing military culture and political winds across Africa are also examined. This paper recommends possible methods on how best to stop the use of children as soldiers. The United Nations (UN) emphatically condemns the use of child soldiers. Those states that have used child soldiers provide some recent evidence on the post war wonders of these child soldiers to the state and those units that employed them. The evidence available proves that although international law forbids children as combatants, throughout the world the young are still being turned into soldiers. Entrenched poverty and the glorification of violence has increased this trend; Are children more brutal fighters than adults? Violence done to children and the psychological impact to the youths as teenage warriors will be analyzed.