Download or read book Child Soldiers Victims and Aggressors written by Alfred Reynolds and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2022-02-17 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Children have been used since the Stone Age to fight wild beasts and hunt for food for the survival of themselves and their clans. People in positions of power have realized that they can be used as child soldiers to become either spies or assassins. It was the case for the Spartan children who fought wars throughout 550 B.C. and those child soldiers were called different names according to the countries where they were recruited. For the past thirty years, the number of children who are used in national and transnational armed conflicts have increased. In this context, the author travels through different centuries by stopping in multiples countries, such as Haiti, to analyze the international conventions in relation to the issue of child recruitment in countries with internal conflicts to update the confusion that exists on the criminal responsibility of child soldiers who are considered victims and aggressors.
Download or read book Child Soldiers Victims and Aggressors written by Alfred Reynolds and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2022-02-17 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Children have been used since the Stone Age to fight wild beasts and hunt for food for the survival of themselves and their clans. People in positions of power have realized that they can be used as child soldiers to become either spies or assassins. It was the case for the Spartan children who fought wars throughout 550 B.C. and those child soldiers were called different names according to the countries where they were recruited. For the past thirty years, the number of children who are used in national and transnational armed conflicts have increased. In this context, the author travels through different centuries by stopping in multiples countries, such as Haiti, to analyze the international conventions in relation to the issue of child recruitment in countries with internal conflicts to update the confusion that exists on the criminal responsibility of child soldiers who are considered victims and aggressors.
Download or read book Armies of the Young written by David M. Rosen and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Children have served as soldiers throughout history. They fought in the American Revolution, the Civil War, and in both world wars. They served as uniformed soldiers, camouflaged insurgents, and even suicide bombers. Indeed, the first U.S. soldier to be killed by hostile fire in the Afghanistan war was shot in ambush by a fourteen-year-old boy. Does this mean that child soldiers are aggressors? Or are they victims? It is a difficult question with no obvious answer, yet in recent years the acceptable answer among humanitarian organizations and contemporary scholars has been resoundingly the latter. These children are most often seen as especially hideous examples of adult criminal exploitation. In this provocative book, David M. Rosen argues that this response vastly oversimplifies the child soldier problem. Drawing on three dramatic examples-from Sierra Leone, Palestine, and Eastern Europe during the Holocaust-Rosen vividly illustrates this controversial view. In each case, he shows that children are not always passive victims, but often make the rational decision that not fighting is worse than fighting. With a critical eye to international law, Armies of the Young urges readers to reconsider the situation of child combatants in light of circumstance and history before adopting uninformed child protectionist views. In the process, Rosen paints a memorable and unsettling picture of the role of children in international conflicts.
Download or read book Research Handbook on Child Soldiers written by Mark A. Drumbl and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2019 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Child Soldier Victims of Genocidal Forcible Transfer written by Sonja C. Grover and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-01-05 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an original legal analysis of child soldiers recruited into armed groups or forces committing mass atrocities and/or genocide as the victims of the genocidal forcible transfer of children. Legal argument is made regarding the lack of criminal culpability of such child soldier 'recruits' for conflict-related international crimes and the inapplicability of currently recommended judicial and non-judicial accountability mechanisms in such cases. The book challenges various anthropological accounts of child soldiers' alleged 'tactical agency' to resist committing atrocity as members of armed groups or forces committing mass atrocity and/or genocide. Also provided are original interpretations of relevant international law including an interpretation of the Rome Statute age-based exclusion from prosecution of persons who were under 18 at the time of perpetrating the crime as substantive law setting an international standard for the humane treatment of child soldiers.
Download or read book Child Soldiers written by Ilene Cohn and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1994 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this path-breaking study, Professor Goodwin-Gill and Dr Cohn assess the status of the Child Soldier in international law and highlight the ways in which international humanitarian law fails to provide effective protection, particularly in the internal conflicts which are the most common battlefields today. Based upon empirical data gathered from places of conflict all over the world, the authors examine the consequences for child soldiers, their families and communities, of their participation in armed conflict. They conclude their study with practical suggestions for preventing recruitment, and call for a more coherent policy of treatment for those children who have participated in acts of violence."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Download or read book Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination written by David M Rosen and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-12 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When we hear the term “child soldiers,” most Americans imagine innocent victims roped into bloody conflicts in distant war-torn lands like Sudan and Sierra Leone. Yet our own history is filled with examples of children involved in warfare—from adolescent prisoner of war Andrew Jackson to Civil War drummer boys—who were once viewed as symbols of national pride rather than signs of human degradation. In this daring new study, anthropologist David M. Rosen investigates why our cultural perception of the child soldier has changed so radically over the past two centuries. Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination reveals how Western conceptions of childhood as a uniquely vulnerable and innocent state are a relatively recent invention. Furthermore, Rosen offers an illuminating history of how human rights organizations drew upon these sentiments to create the very term “child soldier,” which they presented as the embodiment of war’s human cost. Filled with shocking historical accounts and facts—and revealing the reasons why one cannot spell “infantry” without “infant”—Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination seeks to shake us out of our pervasive historical amnesia. It challenges us to stop looking at child soldiers through a biased set of idealized assumptions about childhood, so that we can better address the realities of adolescents and pre-adolescents in combat. Presenting informative facts while examining fictional representations of the child soldier in popular culture, this book is both eye-opening and thought-provoking.
Download or read book Child Soldiers as Agents of War and Peace written by Leonie Steinl and published by T.M.C. Asser Press. This book was released on 2017-09-01 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals with child soldiers’ involvement in crimes under international law. Child soldiers are often victims of grave human rights abuses, and yet, in some cases, they also participate actively in inflicting violence upon others. Nonetheless, the international discourse on child soldiers often tends to ignore the latter dimension of children’s involvement in armed conflict and instead focuses exclusively on their role as victims. While it might seem as though the discourse is therefore beneficial for child soldiers as it protects them from blame and responsibility, it is important to realize that the so-called passive victim narrative entails various adverse consequences, which can hinder the successful reintegration of child soldiers into their families, communities and societies. This book aims to address this dilemma. First, the available options for dealing with child soldiers’ participation in crimes under international law, such as transitional justice and criminal justice, and their shortcomings are analyzed in depth. Subsequently a new approach is developed towards achieving accountability in a child-adequate way, which is called restorative transitional justice. This book is in the first place aimed at researchers with an interest in child soldiers, children and armed conflict, as well as international criminal law, transitional justice, juvenile justice, restorative justice, children’s rights, and international human rights law. Secondly, professionals working on issues of transitional justice, juvenile justice, international criminal law, children’s rights, and the reintegration of child soldiers will also find the subject matter of great relevance to their practice. Dr. Leonie Steinl, LL.M. (Columbia) is a Researcher and Lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the Humboldt-Universität in Berlin.
Download or read book Trauma and Resilience Among Child Soldiers Around the World written by Patricia K. Kerig and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-22 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is estimated that approximately 300,000 children actively serve in various kinds of military groups around the world. Some of these children are forcibly conscripted through abduction or threats of violence to themselves or their families, others are coerced or manipulated into joining, and still others are more subtly compelled by circumstances that lead choosing to enlist to represent the lesser of the evils life has placed before them. No matter how they come to serve in war, however, child soldiers are exposed to, subjected to, and often forced to perpetrate horrors that meet or exceed our diagnostic criteria for trauma exposure. This volume brings together leading investigators in the field to share new research regarding the traumatic impact of child soldiering from diverse international contexts, including Burundi, Colombia, Liberia, Mozambique, Nepal, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and—provocatively—among gang-involved youth in the United States. Contributions include data from longitudinal studies following former child soldiers into adulthood as well as investigations of the intergenerational impact of childhood conscription on former child combatants own children. In addition, research presented in this volume uncovers sources of resilience among these youth and details efforts to bring trauma-informed intervention and rehabilitation programs to these war-torn regions. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment and Trauma.
Download or read book Child Soldiers in the Age of Fractured States written by Scott Gates and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2010-01-31 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Current global estimates of children engaged in warfare range from 200,000 to 300,000. Children's roles in conflict range from armed and active participants to spies, cooks, messengers, and sex slaves. Child Soldiers in the Age of Fractured States examines the factors that contribute to the use of children in war, the effects of war upon children, and the perpetual cycle of warfare that engulfs many of the world's poorest nations. The contributors seek to eliminate myths of historic or culture-based violence, and instead look to common traits of chronic poverty and vulnerable populations. Individual essays examine topics such as: the legal and ethical aspects of child soldiering; internal UN debates over enforcement of child protection policies; economic factors; increased access to small arms; displaced populations; resource endowments; forced government conscription; rebel-enforced quota systems; motivational techniques employed in recruiting children; and the role of girls in conflict. The contributors also offer viable policies to reduce the recruitment of child soldiers such as the protection of refugee camps by outside forces, "naming and shaming," and criminal prosecution by international tribunals. Finally, they focus on ways to reintegrate former child soldiers into civil society in the aftermath of war.
Download or read book Child Soldiers and Restorative Justice written by Jean Chrysostome K. Kiyala and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-07-18 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Child Soldiers written by Michael Wessells and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-31 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compelling and humane, this book reveals the lives of the 300,000 child soldiers around the world, challenging stereotypes of them as predators or a lost generation. Kidnapped or lured by the promise of food, protection, revenge, or a better life, children serve not only as combatants but as porters, spies, human land mine detectors, and sexual slaves. Nearly one-third are girls, and Michael Wessells movingly reveals the particular dangers they face from pregnancy, childbirth complications, and the rejection they and their babies encounter in their local contexts. Based mainly on participatory research and interviews with hundreds of former child soldiers worldwide, Wessells allows these ex-soldiers to speak for themselves and reveal the enormous complexity of their experiences and situations. The author argues that despite the social, moral, and psychological wounds of war, a surprising number of former child soldiers enter civilian life, and he describes the healing, livelihood, education, reconciliation, family integration, protection, and cultural supports that make it possible. A passionate call for action, Child Soldiers pushes readers to go beyond the horror stories to develop local and global strategies to stop this theft of childhood.
Download or read book The Child and the World written by Jana Tabak and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2020 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: However unthinkable child-soldiers may be within a generalized conception of childhood, they are not imaginary figures; rather, they are a constant in almost every armed conflict around the world. The participation of children in wars may question the idea of childhood as a "once-upon-a-time story with a happy and predictable ending," disrupting the (natural) idea of a protected and innocent childhood and also eliciting fear, uncertainty, revulsion, horror, and sorrow. Using the perspectives of both childhood studies and critical approaches to international relations, Jana Tabak explores the constructions of child-soldiers as "children at risk" and, at the same time, risky children. More specifically, The Child and the World aims both to problematize the boundaries that articulate child-soldiers as necessarily deviant and pathological in relation to "normal" children and to show how these specific limits participate in the (re)production and promotion of a particular version of the international political order. In this sense, the focus of this work is not on investigating child-soldiers' lives and experiences per se but on their presumed threatening feature as they depart from the protected territory of childhood, disquieting everyday international life.
Download or read book Child Soldiers written by Amnesty International, London (GB). International Secretariat and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 17 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Easy Prey written by Janet Fleischman and published by Human Rights Watch. This book was released on 1994 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Child soldiers are among the most tragic victims of the war in Liberia. Although international law forbids the use of children under the age of 15 as soldiers, thousands of young children have been involved in the fighting since it began in December 1989. The main rebel forces, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) and the United Liberian Movement for Democracy in Liberia (ULIMO), have consistently used children under the age of 18, including thousands under 15. Children are also reportedly used by the other warring factions. As a consequence, thousands of children in Liberia have suffered cruelly during the war: many have been killed or wounded or witnessed terrible atrocities. Moreover, many children themselves have been forced to take part in the killing, maiming or rape of civilians. The use of children as soldiers presents grave human rights problems. Many of these children have been killed during the conflict, thus denied the most basic right -- the right to life. Others have been forcibly conscripted by the warring factions, and separated from their families against their wills. Many have joined warring factions to survive. All have been denied a normal childhood. Reintegrating these children into their communities is a task of immense difficulty. Some children's parents have been killed, their families have fled, and no relatives can be found. In others, families have refused to take children back because of the abuses they have committed. Human Rights Watch believes that 18 is the minimum age at which people may properly take part in armed conflict."--cover.
Download or read book Child Soldiers in Africa written by Alcinda Honwana and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-06-03 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Young people have been at the forefront of political conflict in many parts of the world, even when it has turned violent. In some of those situations, for a variety of reasons, including coercion, poverty, or the seductive nature of violence, children become killers before they are able to grasp the fundamentals of morality. It has been only in the past ten years that this component of warfare has captured the attention of the world. Images of boys carrying guns and ammunition are now commonplace as they flash across television screens and appear on the front pages of newspapers. Less often, but equally disturbingly, stories of girls pressed into the service of militias surface in the media. A major concern today is how to reverse the damage done to the thousands of children who have become not only victims but also agents of wartime atrocities. In Child Soldiers in Africa, Alcinda Honwana draws on her firsthand experience with children of Angola and Mozambique, as well as her study of the phenomenon for the United Nations and the Social Science Research Council, to shed light on how children are recruited, what they encounter, and how they come to terms with what they have done. Honwana looks at the role of local communities in healing and rebuilding the lives of these children. She also examines the efforts undertaken by international organizations to support these wartime casualties and enlightens the reader on the obstacles faced by such organizations.
Download or read book Assessing the Innocence and Victimization of Child Soldiers written by Kathryn Brons and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 67 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To date, the majority stance taken by researchers in the field of criminology has been that child soldiers should be treated as innocent victims of war. While there have been some authors who have examined whether this label should be attached to the child, none have firmly taken the minority side in this debate. International law disregards the criminal acts against humanity committed by a child soldier and instead criminalizes the adults who either abducted the child for military duty or allowed the child to willingly volunteer for the armed services. This thesis proposes that many child soldiers are not innocent victims, but they are instead perpetrators of violence. In doing so, definitions of `innocent' and `victim' are called upon to show how many child soldiers are neither of these things and are able to take advantage of the International Criminal Court because of the ambiguity in international law. Labeling theory is used as the theoretical framework for this thesis. By labeling child soldiers as innocent victims, it has an adverse effect that allows child soldiers to continue committing criminal acts.
