Children of War: Evolving Local and Global Understandings of Child Soldiering in African Conflicts, c.1940-2000
Lead Research Organisation:
UNIVERSITY OF EXETER
Department Name: History
Abstract
Children are integral to contemporary humanitarian and human rights campaigns, both as subjects of intervention and as humanitarian icons. In the 1990s one form of child victim came to prominence: the child soldier. Global estimates at that time posited that over 300,000 child soldiers were fighting or had recently been demobilized, 120,000 of those in Africa. The iconographic image of 'the child soldier' was overwhelmingly African. Humanitarian campaigns in 1990s raged against this new 'child soldier crisis', depicting child soldiers as traumatized victims of adult abuse and the 'barbarism' of new hyper-violent, civilianized forms of contemporary warfare. However, contrary to these campaigns, child soldiering was not a new phenomenon: this project shows that children were a significant presence in African conflicts throughout the twentieth century, and their involvement was linked to wider patterns of warfare, child labour and modern slavery, and youth mobilization.
This three-year project delivers the first properly historical account of the development of child soldiering in Africa, through a comparative analysis of children's involvement in warfare from the colonial to contemporary eras. It traces African child soldiering from the Second World War to anti-colonial insurgencies, through civil wars and Cold War proxy conflicts to the 'new wars' of the 1990s that made the 'African child soldier' the literal poster child of global advocacy. Key case studies will be Uganda, Angola, Rwanda and Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) providing comparisons across time, region, forms of warfare, and varying forms of child recruitment and military use. There will be a strong critical focus on both gender and generational dynamics, with three levels of child soldiering analysed, looking at direct and indirect participation throughout: youth as able-bodied force multipliers; as liminal covert agents; and as symbolic militarized 'children'.
The 'child soldier crisis' emerged in late 1980-90s not because children suddenly appeared on global battlefields, but because changing notions of childhood, child rights, human security and war rendered them visible as objects of humanitarian concern. As such, this project also traces the evolution of humanitarian responses to children's involvement in war from their absence in the 1949 Geneva Additional Protocols to the 2000 Optional Protocol to the Convention of the Rights of the Child. It forms a phenomenological study of shifting ideas of 'the African child soldier' in both African and global knowledge systems. The project analyses the legal and discursive emergence and expansion of the category of 'child soldier', highlighting tensions between local and global norms of childhood and youth. Informed by postcolonial and decolonial perspectives, it shows how the object figure of the child soldier as victim was framed by racialized and paternalistic tropes of African/global South societies that suffused international organizations.
To do so, this groundbreaking project analyses qualitative evidence from imperial, international humanitarian, and African archives, alongside human rights reports, news media, and child soldier memoirs. Oral history interviews with key humanitarian practitioners and activists, and selected former child soldiers, form a supplementary methodology. A visual and cultural history dimension is added through analysis of war photography, film, documentaries, novels and music. Project development will incorporate input from international child soldier NGOs and grassroots groups in Uganda, Angola and Rwanda/DRC to determine impact outputs, including briefing reports, data for global surveys, and teaching materials. Academic outputs are a PI-authored monograph, co- and full-team authored articles, and articles by PDRAs. Research findings will be publically disseminated through a project website/digital archive to facilitate engagement by African researchers and communitie
This three-year project delivers the first properly historical account of the development of child soldiering in Africa, through a comparative analysis of children's involvement in warfare from the colonial to contemporary eras. It traces African child soldiering from the Second World War to anti-colonial insurgencies, through civil wars and Cold War proxy conflicts to the 'new wars' of the 1990s that made the 'African child soldier' the literal poster child of global advocacy. Key case studies will be Uganda, Angola, Rwanda and Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) providing comparisons across time, region, forms of warfare, and varying forms of child recruitment and military use. There will be a strong critical focus on both gender and generational dynamics, with three levels of child soldiering analysed, looking at direct and indirect participation throughout: youth as able-bodied force multipliers; as liminal covert agents; and as symbolic militarized 'children'.
The 'child soldier crisis' emerged in late 1980-90s not because children suddenly appeared on global battlefields, but because changing notions of childhood, child rights, human security and war rendered them visible as objects of humanitarian concern. As such, this project also traces the evolution of humanitarian responses to children's involvement in war from their absence in the 1949 Geneva Additional Protocols to the 2000 Optional Protocol to the Convention of the Rights of the Child. It forms a phenomenological study of shifting ideas of 'the African child soldier' in both African and global knowledge systems. The project analyses the legal and discursive emergence and expansion of the category of 'child soldier', highlighting tensions between local and global norms of childhood and youth. Informed by postcolonial and decolonial perspectives, it shows how the object figure of the child soldier as victim was framed by racialized and paternalistic tropes of African/global South societies that suffused international organizations.
To do so, this groundbreaking project analyses qualitative evidence from imperial, international humanitarian, and African archives, alongside human rights reports, news media, and child soldier memoirs. Oral history interviews with key humanitarian practitioners and activists, and selected former child soldiers, form a supplementary methodology. A visual and cultural history dimension is added through analysis of war photography, film, documentaries, novels and music. Project development will incorporate input from international child soldier NGOs and grassroots groups in Uganda, Angola and Rwanda/DRC to determine impact outputs, including briefing reports, data for global surveys, and teaching materials. Academic outputs are a PI-authored monograph, co- and full-team authored articles, and articles by PDRAs. Research findings will be publically disseminated through a project website/digital archive to facilitate engagement by African researchers and communitie
