Child soldiers : Finally broke the silence
According to BBC, Yemen civil war is known as ‘Silence of War’ since the world major media paid less attention compared to the gravity of the situation. But finally the silence was broken. The children played a big role. Thanks a lot. I would also like to thank the adults who wrote these articles. I think we can feel it only if we listen to the children’s voices. So I try to write their stories mainly.
He recalls, “I saw the people beside me get killed.” “I sat next to them(his fellow child soldiers) and cried too.”
Marib(13-year-old) said he couldn’t think of anything else, he says, not even his favorite animals. Naji, 13, says the rebels had him dragging dead bodies from the field. “One day, I looked at the body and it was my uncle. I cried and I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t pull his body out,” Naji recalls.
It’s a serious Global Issue
Since 2015, over 8,600 people died and 50,000 have been injured (WHO)
Since March 2015, the United Nations has verified 2,369 cases of child recruitment and use of children in combat in Yemen, Meritxell Relano, UNICEF resident representative in Yemen, told CNN. The UN says it faced various challenges to monitoring and believes the number to be much higher. Yemeni officials in the Western-backed government in the South believe there are more than 6,000 child soldiers across the country.
Last December, the UN’s Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen said he was “deeply disturbed” by mounting civilian casualties and said it was proof of the “complete disregard for human life that all parties continue to show in this absurd war.” The UN dubbed Yemen’s war “a children’s crisis,” and argued that young people were bearing the brunt of the conflict’s humanitarian disasters. This civil war has most of the Yemen war’s child casualties.
God has saved you from them
Recovering from the trauma is slow. Nightmares still haunt Younis and sometimes spill into reality. “One night at school I could see a face on the wall looking at me,” he recalls. That night he thought someone was going to kill his friends in a nearby room and then come for him. He locked himself in his room.
“He used to wake up at night startled, screaming ‘The Houthis, the Houthis. They are coming to take me,'” Samira says. “I would go to him, tell him to say a prayer. ‘You are here with me, not with them. God has saved you from them and brought you to us.'”
Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die.
– Herbert Hoover
Older men declare war. But it is child that must fight and die.
