Little Kids With Guns

Came across this news article in TheStar a couple of days back. It reads “Up to 6,000 child soldiers recruited in Darfur”

Imagine that. Children as young as 11 years old are carrying guns, going around KILLING people. Most of them probably don’t even know what are they fighting and risking their life for; it’s a battle without purpose.

It’s heart-aching to see those children being robbed off their opportunity to live a proper life. Such experience would definitely leave an irrevocable scar and trauma on their lives. More importantly, they are being deprived off their rights to proper development and survival.

“U.N. agencies estimate more than four million people have been affected by almost six years of fighting in Darfur. Of those roughly 700,000 were born since 2004, so all their life they have lived in an area that has been in conflict”.

“Ahmed Adam is in the second grade. When he was just five years old, his uncle was killed in an attack on their village. The one thing he remembers about that day is the fear he saw in his elders and his parents, a fear that he did not expect from his protectors. Over eight people were killed that day. Luckily, after the attacks, him and his family were able to escape to Jabal Mastaria. For three weeks they stayed on that mountain until they were finally able to make their way to the Mastaria valley where many other villages had gathered.”

At such young age, much of hope is gone, robbed.

More sadly, the plight of the children is perhaps only a fraction of the crisis that Darfur is in. What happened in the past 6 years is an inhumane ethnic-based genocide that the people there do not deserve at all.

Some background on Dafur:

“Darfur is a western region about the size of Texas or France, located in Sudan – a country in northeastern Africa. The culmination of decades of drought and government neglect of the region led two rebel groups to challenge the Sudanese Government in 2003. In retaliation, the government unleashed a genocidal campaign against the Darfur rebels, and against living civilians in the region. As a result, over 400,000 people had died, millions have been forced to flee their homes, and countless villages have been burned to the ground. Living in a state of fear has become the way of life for citizens of Darfur”

All these may sound distant and unrelated to us. But ultimately, it has an easy and literal message to it; people’s lives are being taken away unrightfully (well, not that there’s a “rightfully” anyway).

Haven’t got time to research more on Dafur. If you’re interested, here’s a good place to start. http://teamdarfur.org/learn