Sierra Leone Rebels Forcefully Recruit Child Soldiers

The case of Sierra Leone is known as cruelty. You could understand the cruelty of the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) of Sierra Leone when you read this article. According to this article, RUF abducted and mobilized many children as soldiers, and they repeated the cruel behavior toward the children. Boys who were abducted by RUF were mainly used as soldiers, and they were given a lot of alcohol and drugs to paralyze their rational thought. Girls were abducted for the purpose of rape. In this article, the author says that the RUF has forced many children to rejoin the group during demobilization. Some children run away from the rehabilitation facility, and as a result, they rejoined the group because they could not tolerate the threat from RUF. This article was published in 2000, and many books regarding child soldiers of Sierra Leone have been published until today. We cannot ignore the case of Sierra Leone when we research child soldiers. The strategy that the RUF used and was the most miserable is that robbing families of children by killing their families. Children who become a soldier lose their home at first. The children who lost their family demand their “home” and their comrade, and they become a member of RUF gradually because the RUF understands the weakness which the children have, and supply their “home” and comrade. Many children sacrificed for the civil war of Sierra Leone, and also, the rehabilitation process has never been easy and took a long time. 

Nanami Kanda