The Security Council’s Children Of War
I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the suffering of millions, and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty, too, will end. Ann Frank (Died in a Nazi Concentration Camp)
Many of our articles deal with controversial issues that paint a picture of radicals or tyrant leaders wreaking havoc on the world or their own people. This article is different. This article will shed light on how the very body that empowered themselves at the end of the second world war to ensure future world peace has created conflict after conflict throughout third world nations. These conflicts have seen women, children and the elderly slaughtered in private wars being fueled or secretly waged from within the Security Council and other wealthy United Nation members. The United Nations Security council was established to be the center of power and guardian of peace in the world. To establish peaceful resolutions rather than face yet another world war. It gave the five permanent members undue power based on the fact that they were nuclear nations and possessed the most powerful militaries of that era. It did not take long for the United Nations and it’s Security Council to become a wrecking ball to the rest of the planet.
International humanitarian law asserts that children’s rights must be respected during armed conflict but children are often torn from their families, pressed into serving as soldiers, held in captivity or simply killed. This does not mention the devastating results that come into the lives of the surviving children that grow up with memories or scars from conflicts waged for profit or ideologies that they are unaware of.
Why Child Soldiers?
In impoverished third world countries around the globe children are used as child soldiers in war and conflicts. There are many reasons that children are ideal for use as soldiers in these impoverished conflicts. Children are easily manipulated and coerced compared to their adult counterparts. Child soldiers are less expensive to utilize since their salaries if any are paid are much less. Child soldiers in the majority of cases only receive food and shelter. In many war torn third world countries child soldiers are often left with no where else to turn. The fate of their parents often results in death, missing during refugee movements or they are unable to provide the basic essentials including food and water let alone shelter and safety. In the movement of a refugee crisis children parish often due to starvation, disease, and butchering militant attacks targeting the overcrowded refugee camps. In essence some parents simply give their children to the militia to have a better chance of survival. They have no where else to turn. Other children are often just kidnapped during round ups and forced into militant groups. Many children joined armed groups in Cambodia in the 1980s as the best way to secure food and protection. Similarly, in Liberia in 1990, children as young as seven were seen in combat because, according to the Director of the Liberian Red Cross, “those with guns could survive.”
In the past small children were not able to carry and operate the heavy and more difficult to load weapons. Today’s weapons such as the Ak-47 assault rifle is light weight, easily operated, and is a durable killing machine. Kalashnikov Kids as they are called have proven to be some of the most deadliest phenomenon of our time. Hundreds of thousands of these child soldiers are fighting in conflicts throughout Africa. In simplest terms, child soldiers are used because a bullet is just as deadly fired from an eight year old as it is from a forty year old adult. Since their introduction in 1947, around 55 million AK-47s had been sold in a study 12 years ago in 1996. In some African countries an AK-47 can cost as little as $6 each in U.S. dollars. The M-16 is just as available, and has been described by one military historian as the “transistor radio of modern warfare.” With deadly weapons so affordable, available, and dependable combined with conflicts lasting decades children are essential manpower to continue conflicts. Equipping them with a six dollar weapon makes it even more appealing.
Children And War Atrocities
Children suffer in war in so many ways that it is impossible for those in the West to contemplate the actions and pain endured in these third world countries. Rape, murder, torture, slow painful starvation and so much more is happening to children throughout conflicts in over 50 countries across the planet according to a new study conducted by researchers at the University of Utah.
Rape in war is an especially scarring and traumatic event. In Rwanda, rape has been systematically used as a weapon of ethnic cleansing to destroy community ties. In some raids, virtually every adolescent girl who survived an attack by the militia was subsequently raped. Many of those who became pregnant were then ostracized by their families and community; some abandoned their babies, others committed suicide. Mass rape is an increasingly sophisticated weapon of war, as used in the Bosnia-Herzegovina conflict and in other conflicts—such as Haiti, Georgia (CIS), and Rwanda. In fighting in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, it had been deliberate policy to rape teenage girls and force them to bear ‘the enemy’s’ child. A European Community fact-finding team estimated that more than 20,000 Muslim women had been raped in Bosnia by 1992. It is a fact that a woman born in South Africa has a greater chance of being raped, than learning how to read. One in four girls faces the prospect of being raped before the age of 16 according to the child support group. Rape and other forms of sexual violence in Darfur are being used as a weapon of war in order to humiliate, punish, control, inflict fear and displace women and their communities. Sudan’s Darfur crisis has exploded on many fronts — violence, hunger, displacement and looting — but United Nations peacekeepers say the biggest issue now affecting the region is the systematic rape of women and children. Thousands of women as young as 4 caught in the middle of the struggle between rebel forces and government-backed Arab militias have become victims of rape.
A disturbing cases of lost children has emerged in the civil war in southern Sudan. Apart from the main government and opposition groups, there are also various militias that spread terror by pillaging villages and killing or seizing their inhabitants. Fearing capture or death, at least 20,000 Sudanese young people, mostly boys between the ages of 7 and 17, have fled their homes. Thousands of girls have also been killed or abducted by the raiders, but few have run away from their villages since it is more difficult for girls to envisage life outside their families. These ‘lost boys’ of the Sudan have been trekking enormous distances over a vast unforgiving wilderness, seeking refuge from the fighting. Hungry, frightened and weakened by sleeplessness and disease, they have crossed from the Sudan into Ethiopia and back. Many have died on the journey; most survivors are now in camps in the parched north-western plains of Kenya.
The UN and Security Council Are To Blame
Now that we have established that the world that we live in is not only allowing horrible atrocities to be inflicted upon children, but it is the role that members of the UN Security council members are actually providing the weaponry and financing of the injustices that is ignored. Of all the the items that the UN should be concerned with no other crime is as unacceptable as those committed against children. Why does the Media not openly embarrass the members for their roles in these conflicts.
Land Mines
Of all the weapons that have used over the years of war, few are more persistent and more lethal to children than land mines . Hundreds of thousands of children, herding animals, planting crops or just playing too far away from their home have been killed or maimed by these deadly devices. During the Persian Gulf war, the US and its allies laid about 1 million mines along the Iraq-Kuwait border and around the Iraqi city of Basra. And some 3 million were laid in the Balkan war. Some of the largest numbers lie in wait in Africa and Asia. The countries most devastated by land-mines are probably Afghanistan, Angola and Cambodia. Afghanistan has an estimated 10-15 million mines in place. The United Nations says there are more than 110 million landmines planted in more than 70 countries around the world. The UN estimates that someone is killed by a landmine every 20 minutes. Countries that manufacture landmines include: Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, North Korea, Pakistan, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, U.K., U.S., Vietnam and Zimbabwe. If you notice all five UN Security Council members are on the list of producers.
China: Africa’s Dealer of Death
The Automat Kalashnikov, or AK-47, reigns supreme. It’s the durable, cheap, usually lethal, Cold War icon of the Soviet bloc and resistance movements across the world. The gun’s familiar silhouette — easily identified by the banana-shaped magazine — has appeared on Mozambique’s flag, Palestinian currency and Russian vodka. An estimated 100 million have been produced in hundreds of factories in dozens of countries during its 60-year history. The original was a Russian made weapon but China has flooded Africa with the weapon that has a life span of decades. U.N. stockpiles of captured weapons usually contain a majority of Kalashnikovs manufactured in China. China supports two of the most deadliest and human rights violators in the world in Sudan and Zimbabwe. In China’s quest for resources to feed their new gigantic growing economy the need for oil and other precious resources necessary for driving the China machine into the new century. Africa is full of two things: resources and corruption. China is using both to create opportunity for it’s economy. From Nigeria in the north, to Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Angola in the west, across Chad and Sudan in the east, and south through Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, China has seized a vice-like grip on a continent which officials have decided is crucial to the superpower’s long-term survival. there is a lethal price to pay. There is a sinister aspect to this invasion. Chinese-made war planes roar through the African sky, bombing opponents. Chinese-made assault rifles and grenades are being used to fuel countless murderous civil wars, often over the materials the Chinese are desperate to buy. Recently, a giant container ship from China was due to deliver its cargo of three million rounds of AK-47 ammunition, 3,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 1,500 mortars to President Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe in the wake of the disputed election in the country that is creating a crisis among supporters and opponents to the government dictatorship of Zimbabwe. In Darfur, China is supplying the Sudanese government whose President Omar al-Bashir was recently charged by the International Court With Genocide in Darfur. China has much to gain by the conflicts in Darfur and other hot spots in Africa. The Chinese – who now buy half of all Sudan’s oil – have happily provided armored vehicles, aircraft and millions of bullets and grenades in return for lucrative deals. China has repeatedly thwarted United Nations denunciations of the Sudanese regime.
The United States, Russia and United Kingdom’s Weapons Foot Print
The United States maintained its role as the leading supplier of weapons to the developing world in 2006, followed by Russia and Britain, according to a Congressional study. Pakistan, India and Saudi Arabia were the top buyers of weapons products. In 2006, the United States agreed to sell $10.3 billion in weapons to the developing world, or 35.8 percent of these deals worldwide.
The United States has been under pressure as of late for their use of depleted uranium ammunitions that are suspected of causing cancer in children as well as the use of cluster bombs. Cluster bombs are indiscriminate in that they maim and kill people over a large area. Additionally, a small percentage of the bomblets – often estimated at around 7% to 10%, depending on the type – fail to detonate on hitting the ground. They can be accidentally triggered by civilians years later. The bomblets are often brightly colored, making them attractive for children to pick up.
Russia has been a major supplier of weapons to Iran in past years – including a $700 million deal for surface-to air-missiles in 2005. Russian agreements with Venezuela in 2006 included the sale of two-dozen Su-30 fighter aircraft valued at more than $1 billion, along with attack and transport helicopters valued at more than $700 million. Russia also sold Venezuela a large number of AK-series assault rifles in a deal that included a pledge to build a factory in Venezuela to produce those rifles and bullets, together valued at more than $500 million
The Members of the Security Council has used war to sway their influence upon third world countries rich in untapped resources. These activities have resulted in decades of war in Africa, Afghanistan, the Middle East, South and Central America, Eastern Europe and Asia. The United States, France, Russia, U.K. and China have waged secret wars through creating markets for their weapons, for the gain of influence with dictators to exploit resources, as well as blatant secret wars against one another as in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation and more than likely the with the current American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. In efforts to open up new economic markets and to complete strategic defense objectives these countries have backed ruthless and oppressing regimes throughout the world. They have all used the U.N. Security council to block action against their interests even though millions of lives have been fuelled by their growing needs. As competition for world resources have escalated and is expected to continue in demand, the future will produce more conflicts.
The result of this embarrassing activities is resulting in the creation of the types of conflicts that we have described earlier in places such as Darfur, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Somalia, the Congo, and a host of other venues. Children are bearing the brunt of this greed where the price is too high in consequences to their existence. As long the Security Council continues to fund and arm conflicts around the globe there will be ethnic cleansing, systematic raping of women and children, child soldiers and all the atrocities that war can bring to the weak , poor and hungry of the third world.
