‘I’ve seen people get their hands cut off, a ten-year-old girl raped and then die, and so many men and women burned alive... So many times I just cried inside my heart because I didn’t dare cry out loud.’

This is how recounted a fourteen-year-old girl, abducted in January 1999 by the Revolutionary United Front, a rebel group in Sierra Leone.



If you think the situation has changed after 7 years, than I’m sorry to say, you’re living in your own cozy world and you don’t know the truth. As per reports from the International Coalition Against the Use of Child Soldiers, nearly 120,000 children were being thrown into the fire of war forcibly in the last three years. Thousands of children in Uganda, Congo and Burundi taste the bullets on the battlefield.



Most of them are a part of armed rebel groups. The impressionable minds are drawn into this heinous act easily. They are tortured and even compelled to take drugs to combat fear. Both boys and girls are used in ambush and guerrilla attacks. I’ve covered this topic extensively in my earlier posts and the only thing reflected by this whole bleeding drama is that only ‘TIME’ can bring in the cool winds of change in African war-torn countries. But still we can’t sit with our hands tight, waiting for things to go out of hands completely.



When these kids open their eyes, they hear bullets, they see blood-bathed earth and everything imbibes in them effortlessly. No, matter how hard UNICEF and other groups try, the situation can only be transformed if the whole continent join hands and fight to give our children a better future.



Source: WarChild