What would you do if you figured out that there are kids in the world who are forced to be soldiers, and taken from their families, would you be happy, or sad? I would feel sad and mad, and I’ll tell you why.
Child soldier’s are kids around 13 to 16 who are sent to war, given an AK-47, and put out on the front lines. The most popular places for this is Uganda, Sierra Leone, and South Africa. A good side to these children is that they have a safe place to say, however, they can get injured and possibly die from the rebels or the government, depending on which side they're on. The kids may get food when they are soldiers, on the other hand, they’re also put on drugs, one example is brown-brown, i.e a mix of cocaine and gunpowder.

A famous child soldier who survived being a soldier is Ishmael Beah. Who prevailed, being taken away from his family by the government and put on the front line. He was finally saved on April 20th, 2007 by UNICEF. He wrote a book called  A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier which talks about him being a soldier. One more kid named Hassan, who was another child soldier, and forced to become a rebel, while his village was burning down, then, the rebels found him and captured him and his friends.

According to a Newsela article, there are 7,000 kids who are at  war as a child soldier. Usually, as part of the induction process or an introduction to the side, usually rebels, the child soldier’s would have to kill their family, friends, and sometimes even neighbors, so they have nothing left to stand for, and usually a ritual would come, too. Likewise, the kids were sent out far from their village, and if they tried to escape, they would get killed.
Another website, Amnesty International, says that the problem is most severe in Uganda, an African country near Kenya and Sudan. Here, there is the government and the Lord’s Resistance, which are rebel’s against Uganda. They strip the kids from the families, make them kill close friends, and have to do a ritual so they won’t have a reason to escape. Another country that uses child soldier’s is Sudan, which is right above Uganda, Companies such as UNICEF and SOS children have saved a majority of kids here, but a lot more have gotten injured and died.

Subjectively, after reading this information, I think that children should not be child soldiers, and if they wanted to, I don’t know why.I think it’s really sad to hear what some kids have to say, like Ishmael Beah said “After a while shooting just became like drinking a glass of water, you get used to it,” and “ we went from children that were afraid of gunshots to kids who were gunshots.” Along with that, I think that the induction process   and being on the battlefield is horrible, and that they should not be treated like prisoners. Finally, I think nobody should ever have to go through the things they had to go through. These are my thoughts, and I think that nobody should be a child soldier by force, or any other way.