In a Developed country like the one we as Canadians enjoy, it's sometimes easy to lose sight of how good we have it here compared to most of the countries in the world. Things we perceive as everyday amenities such as food, water, education and even basic child protection laws are merely dreamt of by the general population as they watch there son's and daughter's being dragged off in the middle of the night against their will to be forced into some pointless confrontations where they will almost certainly perish.
The issue of child protection has been consistently on the rise in some of the African countries such as Angola, Uganda, Sudan, and Sierra Leone as thousands of children abducted by rebel forces are forced to participate in terrible acts of violence against civilians, including, beheadings, amputations, rape, and the burning of live women and children. These "child soldier's were often given heavy doses of drugs to overcome there fear or reluctance to fight. It is now estimated that there are around 140,000 children in Africa alone fighting in these militia groups. .
The facts are frightening: .
Approximately 300, 000 children under the age of 18 are currently exploited around the world as soldiers, domestic servants, spies, and sexslaves. .
In the past 10 years, armed conflicts have killed about 2 million children. To put this into perspective that is a city twice the size of Calgary - every man, women, child - dead. .
Armed conflict has left one million children orphaned and about 12 million homeless. .
It easy to say that there is nothing that we as a peace promoting country can do to effect change in violence in third world countries. The fundamentalist will try to tell us that the people are not educated enough to understand the brain washing that they are subjected to, or strong enough to fight the rebels even if they wanted to. I disagree, and so thankfully do many other organizations and our government.
