A Stolen Youth
Dogo was only fourteen when armed groups stormed his village and was abducted to fight as a child soldier. He told CTV news about how they drugged him and gave him weapons as he joined hundreds of other young children that had been recruited to fight. Dogo was lucky. He escaped while many others died in battle, from overdosing, or from disease. A gunshot wound to his hand is the only lasting physical mark of Dogo’s time at war, but the emotional and mental scars that him and other child soldiers bear will last for a lifetime. (Wintonyk, 2014)
"More than a third [of child soldiers polled] told the charity they were afraid every day, while more than half had been orphaned or separated from their parents. A quarter had been forced to live without any adult support. More than a third described witnessing or experiencing episodes of violence, at times extreme." (Tran, 2014) The war in the Congo was undeniably violent and brutal but the addition of child soldiers transformed the war not only into a terrible conflict, but an extreme moral and humanitarian issue. A ten year old child soldier recounts his experience in the war. After his parents were killed by rebels, he was convinced to join the fighters and remembers his experience as a terrifying one: “I was so scared. I lost everyone; I had nowhere to go and no food to eat. In the mayi-mayi I thought I would be protected, but it was hard. I would see others die in front of me. I was hungry very often, and I was scared. Sometimes they would whip me, sometimes very hard. They used to say that it would make me a better fighter." (Amnesty International, 2013)
By: Amelia Buckley