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Roughly 100.000-140.000 child soldiers in Sierra Leone fought between 1991 and 2002 in the Sierra Leone Civil War.Children fought on both sides of the conflict. Nearly half of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), and a quarter of the government armed forces consisted of children aged 8–14 years old.
The Small Boys Unit (SBU) was a group of children who were forcibly recruited by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) as militants during the Sierra Leone Civil War.The war began in 1991, when the RUF desired to overthrow the government and gain control of the diamond mines, a major source of revenue for the country.
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier is a 2007 memoir written by Ishmael Beah, an author from Sierra Leone. The book is a firsthand account of Beah's time as a child soldier during the Sierra Leone Civil War in the 1990s. [1] The book describes the change from Beah being an innocent child to being corrupted by war and its effects.
Child soldiers were heavily recruited in the Sierra Leone Civil War; a total of 11,000 are thought to have participated in the conflict. [10] Most were used for attacks on villages as well as guard duty for diamond fields and weapons stockpiles. The RUF made extensive use of child soldiers. [11]
In 1991, the Sierra Leone Civil War started. Rebels invaded Beah's hometown, Mogbwemo, located in the Southern Province of Sierra Leone, and he was forced to flee. Separated from his family, he spent months wandering south with a group of other boys. At the age of 13, he was forced to become a child soldier.
A military court in Sierra Leone has sentenced 24 soldiers to lengthy prison terms for their roles in a failed attempt to overthrow the government of President Julius Maada Bio last November. The ...
A high court in Sierra Leone has sentenced 11 people including soldiers and police officers to long prison terms for their alleged roles in a failed military coup last year. The twelfth accused ...
In his book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Child Soldier, Ishmael Beah chronicles his life during the conflict in Sierra Leone. [46] In Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism anthropologist David M. Rosen discusses the murders, rapes, tortures, and thousands of amputations committed by the RUF Small Boys Unit. [47]