Child Soldier Recruitment in the Liberian Civil Wars: Individual Motivations and Rebel Group Tactics

Abstract

Involvement of children and youth in civil confict is a multidimensional theme for disaggregating experience of conflict processes and its impact on participants and broader civilian communities. This chapter will analyse field data on individual experiences of war and fighting to identify two sides of the recruitment and mobilization spectrum for child soldiers in the Liberian civil wars. First, it provides an overview of the conflict, the main actors and armed groups, before examining the various push and pull factors behind recruitment of children and youth to glean individual motivations and compulsions. It then focuses on the recruitment strategies of six main armed groups: the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) and Independent NPFL (INPFL), the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy Kromah faction (ULIMO-K), the Liberian Peace Council (LPC), the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), the Taylor militia elements, the Government of Liberia (GoL) and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) to explore inter-group variance. The chapter concludes by de-coupling how individual and group level motivations relate in the Liberian context to present a more nuanced understanding of recruitment and mobilization dynamics in instances of high incidence of youth participation in civil confict.KeywordsArmed GroupChild SoldierRebel GroupInternally Displace PersonInternational Crisis GroupThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.