How does the author define “child soldier”?

When examining the use of child soldiers and children in warfare it is important to know what exactly defines a child soldier. The author of Children at War, Peter Singer, defines a child soldier as any person under eighteen years of age who is engaged in deadly combat or combat support as part of an armed force or group This definition may be acceptable for certain cultures, but in many others, the eighteen-year cut-off is simply the upper limit and the number of soldiers whose ages range from ten to seventeen is a much larger percentage. This barbaric war technique not only takes away the adolescence of the kids, but it also changes the scope of their remaining adulthood life. One boy from Sierra …show more content…
Recruitment parties often have specific orders of the amount of required recruits, Singer states, “the LRA sets numeric goals for child recruits and sends raiding parties into villages to meet them.” Both state armies and rebel groups target those in “secondary schools or orphanages where children of suitable sizes are collected in one place, but out of contact with their parents.” In some circumstances parents are even driven to offer their children for combat service simply because they know they are too poor to provide for them. No matter how the deed is done these groups have the same principal goal, “to foster a child’s dependency on an armed organization and inhibit escape.” If they can accomplish this, they will have readily available and obedient weapons at their disposal. Recruitment is only the first phase of a child’s path to war, becoming a child soldier is a much longer grueling process, involving indoctrination, training, and then war. In the indoctrination phase of their training it is common for groups to offer their young soldiers drugs, food, and small amounts of money as remunerative motivators in order to get them hooked on military life. Other means of inspiration commonly used by armies include coercive motivators and physical punishment. Singer remarks, “whatever the means, the typical result of the indoctrination process is a moral and psychological disconnection that allows children to engage in what would normally be considered depraved actions.” The length of training within rebel groups is even shorter and less institutionalized, this is because of the constant need for soldiers and commanders’ lack of remorse for lost lives. The majority of children are trained in guerilla warfare techniques and this is typically administered in short lessons of basic infantry