The Child Soldier’s New Job
This film reveals how private military companies hire the cheapest possible soldiers and labour. In armed conflicts large parts of both the logistics and the actual combatants have been outsourced to private companies who want to maximize profit. As a result cheap labour is hired from the poorest parts of the world. The gravest example of which is the employment of former child soldiers.
The US Department of Defence have engaged in an almost 300 million $ deal with the private military company Aegis (until recently run by former mercenary Tim Spicer) to execute operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Aegis now hires former child soldiers from Sierra Leone and Uganda despite a code of conduct that have been formulated for the industry. The film focuses on how the industry works and the ethical and political implications of the privatization of war, in large part told by the former child soldiers themselves