Save The Children In War Zones: A Scope On The U.S. Inner City Youth Gangs and Liberian Child Soldiers.

Abstract

Twentieth century children living and growing up in U.S. poor inner-cities or war zones around the world share the same dynamics of injury and danger. ln the U.S. inner-cities, one still continues to witness the development of youth gangs. Likewise, in Liberia, one is still seeing the emergence of ever increasing numbers of child soldiers. The eruption of both groups is due to major similar societal factors. Among the latter are: poverty, absence of a stable family, society, community, cultural institutions and/or a good judicial system, and legitimate sate, that bring all the societal components to live harmoniously, and effectively together. Consequently, when the children feel that they are lacking the protection from the different institutions that are supposed to do so, they develop new goals for their self-actualization either voluntarily or by force by peer groups, family members, or others. As a result both the U.S. inner-city youth gang members and child soldiers in Liberia are faced with the same physical injuries, psycho-social problems such as trauma.

All of these factorial manifestations combined, I decided to do a comparative study of these two groups. Nonetheless, for this study to be really interesting, I'll use some sociological theories which are generally applicable to both groups except in one instance. The theories I'll be using are: Poverty, Social disorganization, family disorganization, racism, persona! disorganization theories. The causes of both groups' existence are: for the first theory: lack of good infrastructures and money; for the second one: lack of effective community, social, political organization including lack of a positive family structure; for the third one: discrimination against minorities in the job market (applicable only to the youth gang members in the U.S.); for the fourth one: children's lack of balance about how to achieve objectively their subjective goals to succeed in life. After having introduced overviews applicable to both phenomena, l'Il present a full description of each group of children. Then, l'Il present the psycho-social consequences emerging when the youth gang members or the child soldiers, realize that they can't achieve their dreams. Finally, l'Il discuss some solutions which may resolve both problems in the long run.