Being a child soldier
Liberia 🇱🇷 “I was one of 20,000 child soldiers who fought in the Liberian civil war. Both my parents had been killed because my father, an ex-military man, has refused to join the army. I was 11-years-old when soldiers found me hiding in a derelict building. They abducted me and forced me to kill. We were given drugs to numb our sense of right and wrong. Child soldiers were the best bodyguards. Even the older ones that were behind the commander were afraid of us, because if the commander said we should beat you, we’d beat you. If the commander said we should torture you, we’d torture you. The only thing I could depend on was my AK, because that’s the only thing I felt could save me, it could help me, it could find food for me. It could find anything I wanted so I took the AK-47 as my parents and my family.”
#childsoldiers #Liberia #children #hiding
Morris is the Founder/CEO at the Initiative for the Development of Former Child Soldiers
