Amnesty and Child Soldiers

Sent to the Amnesty International Headquarters

To whom it may concern;

In this letter, I will argue that child soldiers, after being taken into UNICEF’s custody, should be given amnesty for their actions during times of war because they, as children, are not capable of making clear choices and are more malleable & easier to manipulate due to their lack of cognitive development. Furthermore, their participation in war is a violation of rights & consent, given that they are either pressured, goaded, sold, threatened and/or manipulated into being drafted.

In 1993, Ceci and Bruck, two psychologists, said that children are more vulnerable to suggestions by adult interviewers, as they feel intimidated by them. They said that “a child is more likely to succumb to suggestion when they are interviewed for long periods of time in which misleading questions are predominantly used confusing the child into thinking what they believe is wrong and what is being suggested is correct.” In the case of child soldiers, they are not being interviewed, but being persuaded to follow an authority figure, because suggestions exerted by those with authority over children can lead them to give in to them because the child is eager to please. Additionally, based on the work by developmental biologist Jean Piaget, children only start to be capable of reasoning as an adult when they reach around the age of fifteen, and so a younger child is more susceptible to suggestions such as that going to war and killing is cool, or they’d be a doing a good deed by doing so. This also happens a lot in physically and emotionally abusive relationships, were the victim believes in and doesn’t realize that what their abuser is doing is bad due to feelings of misguided love and admiration towards them, and therefore don’t fight back or tell anyone about it.

These child soldiers are also tricked, bribed, and threatened into enlisting, the bosses offering the child resources such as sustenance and protection for their duty. As said by Jeffrey Gettleman, in his article The Perfect Weapon for the Meanest Wars, “In some countries, hunger and poverty drive parents to sell their children into service.” Further proving the dubious consent involved in the enlisting of child soldiers. Additionally, former child soldier Ishmael Beah, said that sometimes the soldiers were fed drugs by their bosses to desensitise them, so they don’t have complete recollection or their conscience when they’re out in the battlefield. The children don’t take the drugs willingly, and are usually threatened to take them. In this case, the phrase “dissociative reaction” comes into play. Dissociative reaction, as defined by Dictionary.com, is “a psychological reaction characterized by such behavior as amnesia, fugues,sleepwalking, and dream states.”, and in court, most crimes, when backed up with the “dissociative reaction” excuse by a psychologist, are pardoned and the charges usually dropped. While this happens mostly in cases such as those in homicidal somnambulism, it could also be applied to the case of child soldiers being drugged during war, since they’re not in their right mind, and perhaps even fugue.

Some people argue that the leaders of child soldiers will keep using them in the cruel manners they’ve always had if we give them amnesty , as they’ll think it would be easier to get away with. But is it, really? After a while, if they keep drafting children, they’ll get tired of being involved with all the dubiousness and moral un-justiciability of their actions, and stop getting children into the war. Additionally, organizations such as UNICEF work to get children out of these situations, and throw in the amnesty, it’s easier to get the children to safety. Because of that, the bosses might enlist more children, but it’ll get easier to save them.

In conclusion, because of all the points I mentioned above, the child soldiers should be pardoned. They committed crimes, they killed, but they did so unwillingly, non-consensually, and sometimes, unconsciously. Because of this, I believe that we would be retaining the rights and doing a disservice to the poor child soldiers if we deny them amnesty.

I hope you take my points into consideration.

Yours respectfully,

Isabella Meyn

Cherry, Kendra. "Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development: The 4 Stages."About Education. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Feb. 2015.

Bruck, Maggie, Stephen Ceci, and Helene Hembrooke. "The Nature of Children’s True and False Narratives." Academic Press (n.d.): n. pag. 2002. Web.

Gettleman, Jeffrey. "Armed and Underage." The New York Times Upfront. The New York Times, n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2015.

Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone. New York: Sarah Crichton Books, 2007.