Introduction
What is a child soldier, and why is child soldiering wrong? Historically, children have been identified as participants in conflicts – from the medieval Children’s Crusade, to the American Revolutionary War, and up the twentieth century in defending the Soviet Union from German invaders during World War Two, as well as during the Communist uprising in China.
Today, data suggests that as many as 300,000 children may be involved in the conduct of armed activities, serving either in direct combat or support roles. Child soldiers have been identified in 50 countries and nearly 60 nongovernmental organizations – including terrorist cells (Child Soldiers International 2017). Among this number, some 40 % of child soldiers are currently found within African nations (Dudenhoefer 2016).
Today, most observers would agree that there is something uniquely horrifying about seeing a child participating in armed hostilities. However, the notion of children as innocent souls in need of...
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Further Reading
Child Soldiers International Website (2017). https://www.child-soldiers.org/.
Briggs, B.. (2017). 10 countries where child soldiers are still recruited in armed conflicts. Relief Web. Available at https://reliefweb.int?report/central-african-republic/10-countries-where-child-soldiers-are-still-recruited-armed.
Invisible Children website (2020). https://invisiblechildren.com/.
Beah, I. (2008). A long way gone: Memoirs of a child soldier. New York: Sarah Crichton Books.
Jal, E. (2010). War child: A child soldier’s story. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.
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Manjikian, M. (2020). Child Soldiers. In: Romaniuk, S., Thapa, M., Marton, P. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Global Security Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74336-3_9-1
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