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“I would like to give you a message. Please do your best to tell the world what is happening to us, the children. So that other children don't have to pass through this violence.” A 15-year-old girl who escaped from the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda
So many promises are made to children everyday of which most of them are broken. There has been activism around the matter of children’s rights, but it has been mostly theory-based. It is time for more action and less theory because innocent children are falling victim to a fight they do not understand. There needs to be a great deal of specificity and solid outlines of accountability as to how to deal with those who fail to comply with these standards.
The right to education should be a fundamental right to all children on earth, regardless of geography, income and ethnicity. Children should be given an opportunity to be part of an educational institution so as to lessen their chances of involvement in armed conflicts at such early age. In war, children are the most vulnerable people. In comparison to adults, children are left with deeper scars and trauma. The children who are recruited into these armed conflicts are deprived the opportunity to education; and as a result, a future in civil jobs. Every child on earth should have the right to life and most importantly, a childhood.
I dream of the day when children receive protection from all of the perpetrators of these horrendous acts. Every adult has a moral responsibility to guarantee this fundamental right - governments or rebel groups, manufacturers of, or dealers in, weapons of war, unscrupulous businessmen, parents, teachers, siblings and friends; all of us have to work together to make this possible. Children should not be robbed of their childhood. There is a saying that goes, “your can tell a lot about a society by the way it treats its most vulnerable people.” When it comes to the issue of child soldiers, it is time that the world realizes that it is not “their” problem but ours - if not today, tomorrow.
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