User:Henrik30nyr/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Child soldiers in Somalia

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I have chosen to evaluate this article as I believe it is important to understand the history of child soldiers and have a detailed understanding of it, both prominent individuals who were child soldiers and placed like Somalia where there was child soldiers. Making this information accurate, accessible, and ensuring it centers the right voices is the first of many steps to heal this injustice and the injustices that led to child soldiers in Somalia and the broader African nations.

Evaluate the article
The article is good in that its claims are all well sourced although there could be some more citations. It provides decent background information for the topic but should use more to describe the political and colonialist background that underlies the sociopolitical context of Somalia, and to that effect, how that situation led to the recruitment of children into war. The article also dives deeply into reactions to Somalia’s child soldiers which is good but some of the information in that category such as speculation of United States funding of it should go in a separate category. There should also be another category describing what went on, how the children were recruited, what attacks or battles they were in, what happened to the child soldiers of Somalia. I think the article needs more context and should also remove statistics of how many soldiers were children from the international reactions section as it is not relevant to that category. A background section would also be helpful.