The Emergence of Terrorism and Its Impact on Children and Their Families

The future of Africa depends on the young generation, unfortunately terrorist groups tend to manipulate and exploit children in order to attain their selfish objectives. Terrorist groups recruit children below the ages... [ view full abstract ]

The future of Africa depends on the young generation, unfortunately terrorist groups tend to manipulate and exploit children in order to attain their selfish objectives. Terrorist groups recruit children below the ages of 18 years for their deadly mission. Children as young as 12 years are used for suicide bombings (news of Boko Haram suicide bombings in the extreme north region of Cameroon and north east of Nigeria). Terrorist actions have disastrous psychological and economical consequences on the lives of children and their families.
The main objective is therefore to train and educate future trainers who will in turn educate and train people in the community on behaviors to be adopted in such situations. Firstly, an intergrative method commonly known as popular defense (the active participation of civilians by denouncing and reporting any acts which are considered as suspicious and threatening to the community) would be used. Secondly the development of intelligence to combat terrorism (research to understand the sociology and psychology of terrorism) and lastly the training of highly skilled professionals in the domain of engineering, computer etc, to dislocate and capture terrorists and their leaders. The realization of the above objectives will have positive results which will go a long way to save the lives of children and families and above all the development of nations.
It is recommended that African governments should rethink their social and educational policies which make some regions feel inferior and marginalized. The absence of social amenities like schools, hospitals, portable drinking water, electricity etc ,make the people from some regions feel discriminated upon, thus terrorists seize this opportunity to easily corrupt and manipulate children and their families to fight the government.Governments should also monitor religious worships in order to avoid extremist groups from brain washing the local population (for example Muslim fundamentalists).