School Essay.

An essay I wrote during fifth year, Aint much good but I just found it on the laptop. Worth a share.

Third World Children.

The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is well-fed, one-third is under-fed one-third is starving- Since you've started reading at least 200 people have died of starvation. Over 4 million will die this year.  Malnutrition is implicated in more than half of all child deaths worldwide, a proportion unmatched by any infectious disease since the Black Death.  Over 10 million children go to sleep on the pavement each night hungry and unprotected. Over 40% of children live in poverty and extreme hardship. Nearly half of India’s children are deprived of their right to education each day. An amazing two-thirds of girl children cannot write or read. India is home to the largest population of working children in the world with an estimated 111 million children struggling as child laborers working in terrible conditions (terrible not being the word in some cases) Working 12 hour days for the smallest wages. Apart from child labor the third largest crime in India after drugs and gun smuggling is child trafficking, there can be up to 45, 000 children missing each year. I see childhood as the time of growth, learning, schooling, time to do what children do, play, laugh and explore the wonderful things out there for them and grow both physically and emotionally. What is this doing to children in the third worlds? How are they supposed to go on with their lives after all this trauma?  Some kids out there see this as the normal. Smuggling guns at young ages we couldn't even believe. There is so much to fear in the world and for these children it is the worst, the fear of the black market, the thought of small children being sold and bought makes me feel quite sick to my stomach, there are so much things that go on behind closed doors that I couldn't possibly imagine! We as people of the first world are quite content with the newest technology and latest gadgets. Not being able to speak for everyone but we really do need to be thinking outside the box, to the whole world around us. I personally feel that something needs to happen to stop and prevent things such as child abuse, trafficking, labor and so on needs to be done pretty much right now! People who do this sort of thing to children, well I don’t know what should be done to them, but something bad, I always feel that if you want to get something to happen that you should put yourself in the other persons shoes, show them a thing or to, get them to go through the same thing. But that’s not going to help anybody in this situation. It needs to be stopped. Children need to have the life they deserve.

The existence of child soldiers will not come to an end until the world attacks the root causes: poverty, lack of economic opportunity, and social inequality.

One of the darkest, worst kept secrets in the world today is the use of young children as soldiers in violent warfare.  Raiding parties often kidnap children from vanquished villages and force them to join the ranks of the group. Children can also be prone to peer pressure which can be brought on by friends, leaders and even parents! In places like Uganda this peer pressure forces children to take up arms and protect their families or villages against attack. In many African societies children have no place and are ignored or outright neglected. Children who lack any attention or respect in their society are lured to join an army with the promise of new power and respect gained by the barrel of an AK-47. Would you say no?  The AK-47 can be stripped and reassembled by a child of 10. In Uganda, an AK-47 automatic machine gun can be purchased for the cost of a chicken and, in northern Kenya, it can be bought for the price of a goat. Things are to easy to obtain.  Just one example of how horrible and taken advantage of children are is during the Iran-Iraq war, child soldiers were sent out ahead in waves over minefields. What life is this for any child. In sierra Leone where the Revolutionary United Front has been raiding villages to capture children in to its ranks and force them to witness or take part in the torture and execution of there own relatives. Outlawed, brutalized and often fed crack and other drugs the children have been led to neighboring villages to repeat this exercise.

Democratic Republic of the Congo

"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.)

"They gave me a uniform and told me that now I was in the army. They even gave me a new name: 'Pisco' They said that they would come back and kill my parents if I didn't do as they said."( 17 year old former child solider. )

"Being new, I couldn't perform the very difficult exercises properly and so I was beaten every morning. Two of my friends in the camp died because of the beatings. The soldiers buried them in the latrines. I am still thinking of them". (Former child soldier interviewed in 2002.)

Iraq

"I joined the Mahdi army to fight the Americans. Last night I fired a rocket-propelled grenade against a tank" (A 12 year-old boy in Najaf, 2004.)

I feel that one of the most alarming trends to children in places such as the 3^rd worlds is the participation as active soldiers  Children as young as eight years of age are being taken into the army, maybe children feel that they will have a better life in the army, that they will do it to make there family proud. Absolutely no child should be taken in by this outrageous torment. I think that children of these young ages don’t know what there doing, don’t know what to expect, the majority of them have not had the education to be able to know there rights and what decisions they can make, but I suppose if your being held at gun point there's no answer but to say yes, unless you want to die. Thinking about everything that is going on in the world today I feel by far that this is the worst. Children that have to spend there life in fear, not even getting a real life and maybe only one that lasts a very short amount of time. Having small nephews and nieces in my family makes me realize even more, the thought of my six year old nephew going out to war in two years time or whatever it may be makes me quite upset. I couldn't never leave that happen. People need to be more aware of what is going on outside the box and do as much as we can to help. Not enough is being done. I see the trocaire adds with small children on TV and I have to turn over, I cant bare to look at them. Children dying of starvation, there bodies being eaten by themselves. A horrible image. Although its not nice to see  the media should be encouraged to expose the use of child soldiers and the need for demobilization.  Child victims of this violence should be heard. Need to be heard now. If something dramatic doesn't happen soon then I really don’t know, but I hope it does for the sake of all children who suffer.

Meghan Kiernan, Human Interest Story.

Theme from Macbeth; Violence and suffering.