Former warlords of the Liberian conflict have been pressured to show concerns for the wellbeing of ex-child fighters who they used to execute the war against the state.

A local child advocacy group, FOCUS, is raising its voice in this direction, calling on former warlords in the out-dated Liberian civil war to set up an educational endowment fund for ex-child fighters whom they recruited, drugged and armed to prosecute rebel war against the Liberian people for their selfish games.  FOCUS is a fore-runner of children’s universal rights for survival.

A statement issued over the weekend quoted its Executive Director, Anthony Boakai as saying that former faction leaders who exploited the Liberian children to enrich themselves should not take comfort in the silence of their victims to abandon them in abject poverty and perpetual illiteracy.

The ex-rebel leaders, who turned the children into thugs to commit terrible crimes against their peers and the larger society, according to the statement, should muster the courage to revive their lives by creating an opportunity for them to go to school which serves as an alternative to their current involvement in child labor.

The release said the statement was in observance of the World Day Against Child Labor. The day was celebrated worldwide on June 12th with the theme “Give Child a Chance, End Child Labor.”

June 12th was set aside to articulate the use of children as innocent street peddlers, domestic servitudes and other worst forms of child labor.

The release quoted the ILO Conference as saying that about 75 million children worldwide do not have the rights of acquiring basic primary education.

The conference noted that education was critical to breaking the cycle of child labor, poverty as well as educating child labor in its worst forms in 2016.