The document discusses the use of child soldiers in Sierra Leone during the country's 11-year civil war from 1991 to 2002. Thousands of children's lives were devastated as they were forced to fight for rebel groups like the Revolutionary United Front. The children were subjected to horrific acts of violence, torture, and destruction and left scarred by the memories of war. Many were orphaned or separated from their families. While some children have since been rehabilitated and reunited with loved ones, many remain plagued by the trauma of their experiences as child soldiers in the conflict.

1. Children Soldiers
Brad Griner
10A World Literature/Composition
4th Period
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2. War dragged on in Sierra
Leone for a good ten years.
Thousands of children's lives
changed for the worst.

3. Civil War 1991-2002

4. Revolutionary United Front (RUF)
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5. This image was used under a CC license from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zomgitsbrian/3590665627/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Killers

6. DESTRUCTION
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7. Torture
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8. Scarred with the memories of war
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9. This Picture is used under a CC license from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/travlr/83149640/sizes/o/in/photostream/
Rehab

10. Reunited
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11. Orphaned
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12. “Sometimes I closed my eyes hard to avoid thinking, but the
eye of my mind refused to be closed and continued to plague
me with images.” (Beah, pg. 49)
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13. Insight
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14. Work Cited
• “AK-47: the Sierra Leone child soldier.” BBC news. BBC news, 6 Dec. 2005.
Web. 22 Oct. 2010. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4500358.stm>. This
article was very interesting. It is a newspaper article about how modern
weapons improve the efficency of children soldiers. It also provided specific
details about the issue. The newspaper proved its self reliable.
• Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone. New York: Sarah Crichton, 2007. Print. We
used this book to provide the basis for our informatiuon. It helped use come
up with questions and some answers. It is a first hand acount of what
happened.
• “Child soldiers.” war child. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Oct. 2010.
<http://www.warchild.org.uk/issues/child-
soldiers?gclid=COKZ0Zr28KQCFc9a7AodEmbm1A>. This resource gives a lot
background imformation. It is not specificaly children soldiers in Sierra Leone,
however it provides information about how the children are treated and used.
It provieds alot of facts. We checked the publising organization to back up the
source. This organization proved to be a very crediable source

15. Work Cited
• Child Soldiers in Sierra Leone. 2003. Zenger Media. DVD. This DVD was provided by Ms. Hamilton. It was
about the UNs efforts to help children that have been rescued from life as a child soldier. It provided
background information to about the issue. It told us how they are helping the orphaned children, and
how they are trying to find their family.
• Jones, Lynne. “The boys of war.” Globe & Mail 3 Mar. 2007: n. pag. Gale Opposing Viewpoints in Context.
Web. 22 Oct. 2010.
<http://infotrac.galegroup.com/default/cant48040?cause=http%3A%2F%2Fic.galegroup.com%2Fic%2Fovi
c%2FNewsDetailsPage%2FNewsDetailsWindow%3FdisplayGroupName%3DNews%26prodId%3DOVIC%26a
ction%3De%26windowstate%3Dnormal%26catId%3D%26documentId%3DGALE%7CA160065469>. This
Article was conecting the book “A Long Way Gone” to the real life scenarios relateing to the issue at hand.
It was a good summary of the book and touched bases on our issue greatly. as far as evaluating this article,
I trust Gale database. I also know that this is a legitimate newspaper in Canada. This will help increase my
understanding of the book and will help me conect the book to my research.It also gave me another
opinion on the issue and how it relates to the book.
• “Military use of children.” Wikipedia. N.p., 18 Oct. 2010. Web. 26 Oct. 2010.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_use_of_children#Sierra_Leone>. This source provided a very broad
over view of the issue. THis gave us a better understanding of where to focus our research to find specific
facts. It also told us specificaly about children soldiers in Sierra Leone. We got this source from wikipedia
there were no flags on the page ,but we still check some of the information to make sure it was reliable.
• Richards, Paul. “Sierra Leone.” Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. Ed. Dinah L
Shelton. Vol. 2. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. 946-954. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 22
Oct. 2010.
<http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CCX3434600309&v=2.1&u=&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w>. This
source provided information about the civil war in Sierra Leone. This was helpful, because it gave us a
good background to why the war is going on. The reasons why they rebals and millitary use children as
warriors. This source was an article from an encyclodidia. We checked this source and it proved its self
reliable.