Saving the Child Soldiers of South Sudan

It was just before dark, and Charles was pulling weeds with his father in South Sudan’s Western Equatoria state when roughly a dozen armed rebels appeared, demanding he join their ranks. Charles was terrified. His father tried to intervene, but he was outnumbered. That night, Charles, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, was separated from his father and forced to become a soldier. He was just 13 years old.

It’s been three years since the beginning of , and the consequences have been devastating. Rebels and government forces have conscripted more than 17,000 children to fight, , in a conflict between supporters of President Salva Kiir and those of former Vice President Riek Machar. The war has already killed tens of thousands of civilians placed most of the blame on the government’s side. The conflict has also been economically disastrous, creating inflation and now famine. , the U.N. said some 100,000 people are on the brink of starvation, while another million could be affected. Months earlier, Yasmin Sooka, the U.N.’s chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights in the country warned that South Sudan was showing of a Rwanda-like genocide.