Child Soldier

Child soldiers remain poorly understood and inadequately protected, despite significant media attention and many policy initiatives. This Research Handbook aims to redress this troubling gap. It offers a reflective, fresh and nuanced review of the complex issue of child soldiering. The Handbook brings together scholars from six continents, diverse experiences, and a broad range of disciplines. Along the way, it unpacks the life-cycle of youth and militarization: from recruitment to demobilization to return to civilian life. The overarching aim of the Handbook is to render the invisible visible – the contributions map the unmapped and chart new directions. Challenging prevailing assumptions and conceptions, the Research Handbook on Child Soldiers focuses on adversity but also capacity: emphasising the resilience, humanity, and potentiality of children affected (rather than ‘afflicted’) by armed conflict.

What happens when children are forced to become child soldiers? How are they transformed from children to combatants? In Child to Soldier, Opiyo Oloya addresses these timely, troubling questions by exploring how Acholi children in Northern Uganda, abducted by infamous warlord Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), become soldiers. Oloya – himself an Acholi, a refugee from Idi Amin’s rule of Uganda, and a high ranking figure in Canadian education – is a scholar who challenges conventional thinking on child-inducted soldiers by illustrating the familial loyalty that develops within a child’s new surroundings in the bush. Based on interviews with former child combatants, this book provides a cultural context for understanding the process of socializing children into violence. Oloya details how Kony and the LRA exploit and pervert Acholi cultural heritage and pride to control and direct the children in war. Child to Soldier is also ground-breaking in its emphasis on the tragic fact that child-inducted soldiers do not remain children forever, but become adults who remain sharply scarred by their introduction into combat at a young age. Given the constant struggle in courts in deciding whether former child-inducted soldiers should be pardoned or prosecuted for their activities and conduct, Oloya’s eye-opening book will have a major impact.

Child soldiers are generally perceived as faultless, passive victims. This ignores that the roles of child soldiers vary, from innocent abductee to wilful perpetrator. This book argues that child soldiers should be judged on their actions and that treating them like a homogenous group prevents them from taking responsibility for their acts.

Ruby loves to play superhero, so when her mother gives her a “mission” that takes her into the deep, dark woods, Ruby throws on her red cloak to become … Super Red Riding Hood! Nothing can scare her — except maybe coming face-to-face with a big bad wolf. What would a superhero do? A story of guts and girl power, this is a fun update on a familiar tale.

This book examines the complex and under-researched relationship between recruitment experiences and reintegration outcomes for child soldiers. It looks at time spent in the group, issues of cohesion, identification, affiliation, membership and the post demobilization experience of return, and resettlement.

Photographs by: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Lynsey Addario, Martin Adler, Richard Butler, Francesco Cito, Gary Calton, Chris de Bode, Donna De Cesare, Miquel Dewever Plana, Tiane Doan na Champassak, Colin Finlay, Riccardo Gangale, Cedric Gerbehaye, Jan Grarup, Tim A. Hetherington, Rhodri Jones, Bob Koenig, Roger Lemoyne, Zed Nelson, Peter Mantello, Heather McClintock, Olivier Pin Fat, Giacomo Pirozzi, Q. Sakamaki, Marcelo Salinas, Dominic Sansoni, Guy Tillim, Sven Torfinn, Ami Vitale, Vincent van de Wijngaard, Tomas van Houtryve, Kadir van Lohuizen, Alvaro Ybarra-Zavala, Francesco Zizola Essay by: Jo Becker, Jimmi Briggs, Dick Durbin, Emmanuel Jal, Michael Wessells "I would like to give you a message. Please do your best to tell the world what is happening to us, the children, so that other children don't have to pass through this violence." -A 15-year-old girl who escaped from the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda Up to half a million children have been engaged in more than 85 conflicts worldwide. As armed conflict proliferates, increasing numbers of children are exposed to the brutalities of war. Boys and girls around the world are recruited to be child soldiers by armed forces and militant groups, either forcibly or voluntarily. Some are tricked into service by manipulative recruiters, others join in order to escape poverty or discrimination, while still others are outright abducted at school, on the streets, and at home. Aside from participating in combat, many are used for sexual purposes, made to lay and clear land mines, or employed as spies, messengers, porters, or servants. Kids have become the ultimate weapons of twenty-first-century war. Child Soldiersfocuses on countries with a history of child warfare, as captured by photographers and writers from across the globe. The book explores the children's time as combatants, as well as their demobilization and rehabilitation. Included are Tim Hetherington's photographs from Liberia; Roger Lemoyne and Cedric Gerbehaye's work from the Congo; Ami Vitale's series on child Maoist recruits in Nepal; and other work from Burma, Columbia, the Central African Republic, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and Palestine.

This book investigates how, while children used as soldiers are primarily perceived as victims of offences against international law, they also commit war atrocities. In the aftermath of armed conflict, the mainstream justice system targets warlords internationally, armed groups and militias’ commanders who abduct and enrol children as combatants, leaving child perpetrators not being held accountable for their alleged gross human rights violations. Attempts to prosecute child soldiers through the mainstream justice system have resulted in child rights abuses. Where no accountability measures have been taken, demobilised young soldiers have experienced rejection, and eventually, some have returned to soldiering. This research provides evidence of the potential of restorative justice peacemaking circles and locally-based jurisprudence – specifically the Baraza - to hold former child soldiers accountable and facilitate their reintegration into society.

Caught up in a horrifying guerrilla war at the age of eight, China Keitetsi experienced years of abuse in Uganda. She has spoken at the United Nations on the rights of the child, and here tells her own story.