Child Soldiers of CHICAGO
Denise
When people think of child soldier’s people right away think that it's a child from Africa holding an AK47 in their hand when in reality there's more to that. If people start thinking deeply about it gang members that are younger than 18 has similar causes for joining gangs, and have similar responsibilities. People that are younger than 18 join gangs either willingly or being forced. Even though most of the gang members willingly join, there are so many factors on why they choose to join a gang, which are similar to why a child soldier joined an armed group. Poverty, lack of resources, and lack of opportunities are factors could be reasons why a child would be interested in joining gangs. There are also cases of teen being forced to join gangs. An example would be a case that happened on the last week of March of this year when a person was charged for attacking a teen because the teen refused to join the gang (Chicago Tribune "2nd person charged in attack on teen who refused to join gang"). That's not the only factor a young gang member under the age of 18 have in common with child soldiers but also the duties that they have are similar, they become fighters, porters, messengers, and/or spies. If we want to make a change for child soldiers we should begin with making an action locally and solve the problems locally before we want to solve this problem nationally, and globally. Thinking globally and acting locally is important for a resolution to child soldiers. In order to resolve a big and general problem like child soldiers working to solve. An organization that is being held in Chicago is the National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention; the main purpose for this organization is to end youth violence (City Of Chicago "National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention").
Luis
Today, an anarchistic gang structure is described in many ways, wherein gangs crop up for each block of the neighborhood, with impulsive retaliations spawning further gang activity (Glass, 2013).In Chicago, I'm a victim of Child soldiering, but not as any type of rebel soldier or army-trained young assassin, but a simple civilian that was almost forced to become a soldier to protect the other side of the neighborhood. Harper students from the neighborhood of Englewood, listed fifteen different gangs within a few square miles in Englewood, with each gang having access to guns (Glass, 2013). According to the testimony of these students, every student is affiliated with a gang – whether they want to be or not. There are no “neutral” students. Also, according to UNICEF’s definition, adolescent urban gang members qualify as formal “child soldiers” due to their participation in irregular armed forces or armed groups. However, this idea of gang members being child soldiers does not exist in America.
Cure Violence, a non-profit organization, is ranked #9 on global journalist’s of top 100 NGOs 2013. Basically, this program is well known in Chicago, because the Cure Violence model reduced violence in every neighborhood it operates in by up to 34 percent. The program also successfully cut retaliatory homicides by 100 percent. The impact of the Cure Violence has also shown the impact of model in reducing shootings, violent confrontations, and killings in multiple cities across the United States. The program Cure has been a very huge impact on the casualty ratings of the violence distributed or committed in Chicago, specifically in the south.
There are serious similarities and important differences among child soldiers and urban gang members. They both live in poor and violent contexts and join a military organization or a gang for protection. In urban areas and countries torn by civil war, the state does little to protect people from violence. Children are recruited into both armed forces and gangs by other people who are able to manipulate them from within their social environment. Both groups commit acts of violence and are encouraged to do so by older soldiers and gang members. Of course, the amount of violence is less among urban gang members in the U.S than the amount of extreme violence committed in other parts of the globe. There are pressures that remain in gangs, but more importantly, once a gang banger has entered the penal system he (or she) may be drawn into prison gangs and, the likelihood of rearrest and a continued life of crime increases.
Neither child soldiers nor gang members have the tools and skills necessary to live in a peaceful civil society. Also, neither receives enough resources for rehabilitation, but there is also a difference in attitudes held by those with the ability to rehabilitate among adolescent gang members and child soldiers. In one African survey, for example, 80% of adults did not want their children to play with former child soldiers (Singer, 2005); meaning that parents didn’t want their children to also get manipulated or involved with the same horrific violence or tragic crimes child soldiers commit, and while there are many programs in the US designed to prevent children from joining gangs, once children do actually join a gang and are convicted of crimes, there is little enthusiasm for programs to rehabilitate them back to society and become something better, rather than a soldier for others to use (Glass, 2013).