Abstract
ABSTRACT In this article, we employ theoretical tools of social psychology to develop a framework to understand how ideas about children, girls, and child soldiers are constructed and reinforced in the field of International Relations. We show how specific ideas of girls, children and child soldiers as victims are constructed in the United Nation’s Agenda on Children and Armed Conflicts between 1999 and 2019, and how these contrast with alternative reports and narratives of girl soldiers’ experiences in Colombia. Although there is a growing literature on girl soldiers, we conclude that girl soldiers continue to be a triply silenced group in international policy-making inside the categories of children, girl, and child soldier, particularly in Colombia.
Highlights
Pre-defined and socially constructed cognitive structures shape the international reality
We argue that girls involved in armed conflicts are triply silenced due to ideational constructions of children, girls, and child soldiers connected to the concept of victimhood
The experiences of girl soldiers differ from the ideational imagery through which they are understood within mainstream cognitive structures, which tend to silence them as children, women, and girl soldiers by over-emphasising the victimhood aspects associated with gender-based violence (Carroll 2015)
Summary
Pre-defined and socially constructed cognitive structures shape the international reality. Ideas: the pre-definitions and pre-concepts concerning children, girls, and child soldiers, interact with interests on developing operational frameworks and policies to address that abstract ideational object Those two elements shape a cognitive structure in agents (policymakers and analysts). For ‘material’, we address the constraints and situations that are external to agents, and in relation to which they have less agency Both cognitive and material structures change or reinforce each other, leading to either theoretical silencing or voicing of actors like girl soldiers. The experiences of girl soldiers differ from the ideational imagery through which they are understood within mainstream cognitive structures, which tend to silence them as children, women, and girl soldiers by over-emphasising the victimhood aspects associated with gender-based violence (Carroll 2015) This silencing process is apparent in the case of the Colombian armed conflict, as seen below
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