Use Of Child Soldiers Research Articles

A Failure by African States or a Gap in the Law? An Appraisal of the African and International Legal Framework for the Protection of Child Soldiers

Abstract The use of child soldiers in Africa is rife. Despite the existence of comprehensive regional and international legal frameworks protecting children in armed conflict their conscription continues to severely violate their best interests. This doctrinal study analyses the duty of African states to care for children in armed conflict within the context of international and regional responses. This article calls for the International Criminal Court to make a clear pronouncement on the status of children in armed conflict over the age of 15. It also asserts that the Dominic Ongwen and Thomas Kwoyelo judgments highlight the plight of child soldiers, who arguably became child soldiers because of the failure of the State to protect them. A valuable contribution is made by specifically analysing the relevance and applicability of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the African Union Agenda 2063 in the protection of child soldiers.

Gendered Perspectives on the Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers in Early Warning

ABSTRACT The recruitment and use of children by armed groups continue to threaten the effective protection of children. Preventive approaches to child protection, call for robust early warning mechanisms that do not only focus on the recruitment and use of children, but capture the root causes and vulnerabilities of both boys and girls for recruitment. A comprehensive early warning mechanism for prevention requires a gender-sensitive approach. This paper seeks to examine the gender dynamics of the recruitment and use of children by armed groups, and how that can inform a gender sensitive data collection and analysis to improve early warning.

"I Just Have to Do What I Can": "Mobile Suit Gundam 0079" and the Burdens of War

The implications of the Asia-Pacific War persisted throughout the 20th century. Since 1945, Japan found itself in an endless conflict between various approaches at remembering the war and had to deal with the ways that these memories pervade public life. The 1970s saw a resurgence of pro-nationalist media, specifically in animation. As an entertainment medium, animation has proven itself to be a popular and receptive outlet for both creative and political expression. In 1979, Tomino Yoshiyuki's Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 first aired in Japan, which launched the Mobile Suit Gundam series. Gundam's historiography consists of analyses of the cinematic remakes of Mobile Suit Gundam 0079, close examinations of later entries, and a thematic approach of the entire series. This paper builds upon the argument that Gundam is a critique of war, and that Tomino specifically criticizes Imperial Japan's policies in the Asia-Pacific War, unlike industry contemporaries. By analyzing selections from the original Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 television series, focusing on major and minor side characters, and connecting this analysis with the experiences of Japanese soldiers during the war, Tomino makes his views apparent to the audience. A conversation between Gundam 0079's protagonist's father and a soldier that would later become an important part of the show and an examination of the main cast of teenage characters as they begin their journey, reveal Tomino's opinions towards the use of child soldiers, a "filler" episode of a rogue soldier protecting a group of defenseless children he previously traumatized illustrates the power of war guilt, and a brief profiling of a major character in the show touches upon the agony of involuntarily participating in war.

Child Soldiers and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

The United Nations' eighth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) focuses on “decent work and economic growth.” A primary objective of this goal is to urgently and effectively eradicate severe forms of child labour. This initiative includes abolishing forced labour, ending modern slavery and human trafficking, and preventing children's use as soldiers. Historically, children have been significantly impacted by the devastating effects of wars, being exploited for various military activities globally. Currently, child soldiers, irrespective of gender, participate in civil wars and conflicts in numerous countries worldwide. Despite the United Nations classifying the military recruitment of child soldiers as a war crime, thousands of children actively participate in conflicts. A significant portion of child soldiers are girls, often subjected to sexual slavery and forced into “marriages” with male combatants. A crucial concern regarding child soldiers is their retraining and reintegration into society. Another significant consideration is the classification of these children — whether they should be viewed as criminals or victims. This study explores the global use of child soldiers, specifically in some instances. A pivotal aspect of this examination is understanding the international legal framework, UN SDGs and the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration process. These models, implemented by the United Nations in partnership with local governments, aim to reintegrate post-conflict children, both boy and girl child soldiers.

Prohibition of Child Recruitment as Soldiers: An International Regulatory Discourse

Children are frequently turned into child soldiers or used as human shields in armed conflicts. The use of child soldiers is condemned by all nations and is regarded as a grave breach of both children's rights and international humanitarian law. The paper aims to discuss pertinent provisions of international legal norms, particularly those that relate to child soldiers in the sequence of their adoption. Additionally, it presents the issue of the implementation of several international conventions on the issue of using child soldiers and its atrocities in the international community. As the result, when it comes to addressing the issue of child soldiers, the international legal sources do not present a consistent picture. There has been a various provision in the determination of minimum age of a child that led to major debates among international communities. The situation is further exacerbated by the fact that, while some countries have accepted the convention as binding on themselves, their implementation faces significant challenges, such as the fact that the majority of international treaties lack sanctioning power, limiting their ability to properly accomplish the preventive purpose.

Vicious gift? Types of external support and child recruitment by rebel groups

ABSTRACT Existing research on child soldiering has largely neglected whether external support affects the decision of child soldiering by rebel groups. This paper shows that rebel groups’ levels of engagement in child soldiering depends on the types of support that rebel groups receive. I argue that territorial support is associated with increased child recruitment, while troop and monetary support are associated with less child soldiering. This research has crucial implications for our understanding of the relationship between rebel groups’ engagement in human rights violations and support from external actors. Furthermore, this research highlights previously overlooked roots of the use of child soldiers, so policy makers can pay more attention to these issues in the future.

The Vancouver Principles - A Moral Grammar for Empowered Witness

In June 2014, General (retired) Romeo Dallaire opened a speech on the subject of child solders to the Royal Canadian Chaplain Service with these words: “Religion is insufficient to attenuate the evil.1 This paper responds to General Dallaire’s statement by examining how The Vancouver Principles on Peacekeeping and the Prevention of the Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers (hereafter The Vancouver Principles) meet the need for new language to address the encounter with children on operations. It argues that a particular set of agreed upon terms to support soldiers throughout the deployment cycle is needed, not only for ending the recruitment and use of children and youth as participants in war, but also to provide the basis for a moral grammar to help peacekeepers and other actors in theatres of operations remain empowered and healthy on mission and afterwards.

Child Soldier Ban: An International Regulatory Discourse

Children are frequently turned into child soldiers or used as human shields in armed conflicts. The use of child soldiers is condemned by all nations and is regarded as a grave breach of both children's rights and international humanitarian law. The paper aims to discuss pertinent provisions of international legal norms, particularly those that relate to child soldiers in the sequence of their adoption. Additionally, it presents the issue of the implementation of several international conventions on the issue of using child soldiers and its atrocities in the international community. As the result, when it comes to addressing the issue of child soldiers, the international legal sources do not present a consistent picture. There has been a various provision in the determination of minimum age of a child that led to major debates among international communities. The situation is further exacerbated by the fact that, while some countries have accepted the convention as binding on themselves, their implementation faces significant challenges, such as the fact that the majority of international treaties lack sanctioning power, limiting their ability to properly accomplish the preventive purpose.

Disasters and Their Effects on Child Development

The special section's papers collectively paint a picture of where disaster and development in children and adolescents research is at. The articles' diversity is impressive; they cover a wide range of crisis circumstances, such as war and the use of child soldiers, terrorism and political unrest, hurricanes and tsunamis, earthquakes and floods, as well as political unrest and climatic change. There are representations of specific calamities that happened in nine different nations. The articles cover a wide range of ages, from very young children through adolescents. In this field of study, longitudinal research and studies that focus on developmental processes are still uncommon. Although a few articles discuss additional levels of analysis, such as biological function and relationships, the majority of the articles concentrate on a behavioral level of function and analysis.

Perpetrator Trauma in Television Crime SeriesWe Hunt Together

Crime fiction scholarship increasingly focuses on trauma in contemporary crime narratives but has largely neglected to investigate perpetrator trauma. This article contributes to filling this gap by exploring perpetrator trauma in We Hunt Together (2020), a British television crime series written by Gaby Hull, that portrays the consequences of perpetrator trauma on a former child soldier from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Babeni (Baba) Lenga, waiting for permanent residency in the UK. Viewers learn about his violent past through flashbacks and his involvement with Frederica ‘Freddy’ Lane which precipitates Baba’s present return to violence. Informed by crime fiction studies, literary trauma theory, and research on child soldier narratives, this study argues that perpetrator trauma complicates and renders agency ambiguous in We Hunt Together, where Baba’s story eventually leads to healing. Ultimately, the perpetrator trauma narrative of a former child soldier, focalised through Baba, brings together the themes of war, colonialism, and the growing use of child soldiers in the present, challenging the crime-solving plot by raising ethical and political issues of guilt and responsibility and problematising any easy distinctions between victim and perpetrator/criminal.

THE USE OF CHILD SOLDIERS IN ARMED CONFLICT

The use of the child soldier is by its very nature contradictory. It is therefore not surprising that the law pertaining to and providing protection for the child soldier is uncertain and often vague. The object of this article is to analyse the use of child soldiers in armed conflict, so as to ascertain the complete situation surrounding the child soldier. The relevance of such an examination lies in the fact that the continued dissemination and awareness of this situation will ensure that further preventative and protective measures aretaken, thereby ensuring that the rights of the child soldier are afforded and implemented in a manner consistent with the child’s best interests. The first part of this article serves essentially as a prologue, defining a “child soldier” and highlighting the context in which the analysis of the use of child soldiers will occur. The second part exposes the consequences of participation in armed conflict, whilst exploring some of the encouraging factors of war which contribute to the emergence of the phenomenon of child soldiering.In law regarding to the child soldier is both analysed and ascertained next, whereafter the full legal position in regard to the child soldier is obtained through the consideration of customary international law. The penultimate part of this article deals with the enforcement and implementation of the law pertaining to the child soldier. The relevance of NGOs and international humanitarian organisations is considered, and recommendations posed by the ICRC are referenced. The conclusion serves to condense the findings of this article, so as to ensure concisely that the full position in relation to the child soldier in armed conflict becomes apparent.

Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers in Afghanistan: Cultural Traits as Pivotal Factor

This paper explores the cultural values that prevailed in Afghanistan to understand the recruitment and use of underage soldiers in the long-lasting armed conflict while comparing the existing domestic and international law. The study analyzed the effect of the traditions of Afghans on child soldiering. The method was doctrinal, and therefore, the collected and analyzed data was qualitative. The analysis was thematical, where each related idea was subjected to review and evaluation. The research found that since time immemorial, the Afghan culture traditions were conducive to underage soldiering for various reasons, including peace and justice where male and female child warriors are treated as heroes, perhaps more than any other member of the Afghan society. Due to the stated reasonings, the study established that more underage soldiers were used and recruited during the period of the British Empire, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the civil war that caused the Taliban and Northern Alliance to resume control and in the post 9/11 phase of armed conflict in Afghanistan irrespective of domestic and international law that prohibited the recruitment and use of underage soldiers as it violated their basic fundamental rights of childhood.

8 - ‘New Wars: Forgotten Warriors’: Why Have Girl Fighters Been Excluded from Western Representations of Conflict in Sierra Leone?

Since the end of the cold war, the way we talk about war has changed. Instead of talking about ‘noble’ inter-state warfare, as was common in the past, there is a new Western vocabulary depicting modern conflict as chaotic and callous. Child soldiers are seen as emblematic element of the ‘new wars’, yet the presence of girl fighters has been continually ignored by the international community and neglected in academic writing. When girls have attracted attention, it has been purely as victims. Using a case study of Sierra Leone, this essay analyses how the Western representation of girls as victims plays into the Western construction of Africa as a place needful of military and humanitarian intervention. By looking at discourses of gender and youth, I examine how the construction of the girl child is integral to maintaining the myth of the young ‘aggressive’ African male and the white ‘saviour’; both essential for ‘new wars’ and the humanitarian industry. The conflict in Sierra Leone has been considered by many academics as a prime example of a ‘new war’ (Kaplan 1994; Kaldor 2001) and thus lends itself particularly well to the subject under discussion. The emphasis in the West has been on the ‘barbarity’ and high level of atrocities carried out by combatants 1 as well as the use of child soldiers. As Rosen points out, it is seen as a ‘symbol of the horrors of modern war’ (2005:58) and continues to attract media attention, as has done the recent film Blood Diamonds shows. Sierra Leone has also been chosen as a case study because of the high level of female participation in the conflict (Mazurana and Carlson 2004:2) and because of the recognition that girls were failed in the Demobilisation Demilitarization and Reintegration (DDR) process (Coulter 2005), which I shall briefly touch on in this essay, although space limits a more detailed analysis.

Gender Mainstreaming in UN Peace Operations and the Prevention of the Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers

20 years after the adoption of the landmark Resolution 1325, it is important to assess the implementation of gender mainstreaming in UN peacekeeping operations and its impact on the prevention of the recruitment and use of child soldiers. How has Resolution 1325 influenced the role of men and women in the fight against recruitment and use of child soldiers? What are the challenges and the way forward? This paper will examine the effect of gender mainstreaming in peacekeeping operations on the prevention of the recruitment and use of child soldiers.

Gender Considerations in Advancing the Vancouver Principles in Armed Forces

Drawing from United Nations Security Council Resolutions on Women, Peace and Security and the Vancouver Principles, this paper highlights key factors to be addressed in military training and education to ensure that military members are adequately prepared to protect children affected by conflict and to enhance military capabilities to participate in the prevention of the recruitment and use of child soldiers. Informed by feminist theories and analysis, this paper argues that military professionals are better prepared for the protection of children when they are given the opportunity to explore gender concepts in relation to their own socialization to the military and if they are provided with the right theories and tools to understand and respond to gender and intersectional dynamics of children and armed conflict. The paper suggests that while content that illuminates gender constructs and their relation to the security of children is crucially important, determining the right pedagogic approaches that support the effective training and education of military professionals is equally vital.

A Critical Feminist Approach to Implementing Vancouver Principle 11

In this paper I aim to provide a critical analysis of how Vancouver Principle (VP) 11 on the Contribution of Women to preventing the recruitment and use of child soldiers addresses gender and women’s involvement in peacekeeping. Critical feminist research on gender and war, the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, and international relations has examined and critiqued the important ways in which gender underlies, informs, and helps give meaning to matters of international peace and security. I draw on this diverse literature to discuss how VP 11 approaches gender and peacekeeping in a way that is at times problematic and at others nuanced and progressive, and provide concrete recommendations for how critical feminist insights can improve the implementation of the Vancouver Principles. The importance of understanding gender dynamics for peacekeeping in general, and for preventing the recruitment and use of children as soldiers in particular, necessitates more nuanced approaches to gender analysis and women’s participation. The implementation of VP 11 can support both of these areas.

Data-Driven Peacekeeping and the Vancouver Principles: Towards Improved Monitoring and Reporting for Grave Violations Against Children

This article examines the UN’s move toward ‘data-driven’ peacekeeping and its implications for the Vancouver Principles, especially implementation of states’ monitoring and reporting commitments as outlined in Principle 6. I argue that data-driven peacekeeping presents both opportunities and challenges when it comes to monitoring and reporting. On the one hand, it can improve the quantity and quality of the information available about the recruitment and use of child soldiers. It can thereby foster improvements in responsiveness, performance, and accountability, both within peace operations and among other stakeholders. Yet data-driven peacekeeping also comes with challenges. These include data literacy and ‘buy-in’ among personnel on the ground, concerns about privacy and confidentiality, and political sensitivities around monitoring and reporting. Together these issues highlight the degree to which the Vancouver Principles are interconnected and mutually reinforcing – each affects implementation of the others, and none can be fully operationalized in isolation.

Gender, Peacekeeping, and Child Soldiers: Training and Research in Implementation of the Vancouver Principles

Since the passage of UN Security Council resolution 1325, there has been a growing focus on the involvement of women in peacekeeping operations. Ambitious UN targets, the Vancouver Principles, and the Canadian government’s Elsie Initiative all aim to support the increased inclusion of uniformed women in peacekeeping missions. This article discusses three areas in which the Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative (Dallaire Initiative) is working to support Vancouver Principle (VP) 11 through the training of women security sector actors, training on gendered dimensions of the recruitment and use of child soldiers and SGBV against child soldiers, and through research on how gender matters in peacekeeping operations. Based on these experiences and an engagement with the academic literature, it makes a number of policy recommendations in support of VP 11.Keywords: gender, peacekeeping, training, child soldiers, SGBV

Child Soldiers and Early Warning

Early warning of the recruitment and use of child soldiers remains an elusive concept. This is surprising given the number and intensity of conflicts today where child soldiers are used. Yet, there is currently no formal early warning system in this sphere that focuses on recruitment and use. Without formally looking at indicators that precede recruitment, the international community runs the risk of missing important opportunities for data collection and analysis which could help to improve child protection and inform conflict mitigation. This paper will employ a qualitative review of the policy and research domains to examine the current landscape of early warning as it applies to child soldiers. It will consider why it is important to expand the scope of early warning to incorporate recruitment and use, so that children can be prioritized on the international security agenda and, to further understand why some children are more vulnerable to recruitment than others. Ultimately, this paper argues that the development of an early warning system for child soldiers would be important to better inform recruitment prevention from its earliest stages.Keywords: Early Warning, Child Soldiers, Conflict, Recruitment Prevention, Child Protection

Is Child Labor an Issue Today? Factors and Policy-Related

The world has accomplished progress in human right and child education under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); the goal that comprises end modern slavery and human trafficking and secures the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labor, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labor in all its forms, nevertheless, child labor issues are continuing to spread to many countries in the world. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to address the issue of child labor and factor that help to eliminate child labor issues in Malaysia. Data were collected through an online survey; the participants included twenty-nine (29) Malaysian civil services. The finding of this research indicated that, although the cost for hiring the children is low compare to the adult as highlighted in supply and demand side, few factors preventing community to use the child as a laborer like religion, awareness/knowledge, humanity, ethic, and culture, therefore, there must be a child labor policy that eliminates all forms of child labor in Malaysia. This research is carried values to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in enhancing the policy to end child labor, reduce poverty and hunger, and improves the quality of education; thus, this research carries values to the minister of labor and social affairs in enhancing the policy on human resources development.