Download or read book Reimagining Child Soldiers in International Law and Policy written by Mark A. Drumbl and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-26 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Child Soldiers written by Leora Kahn and published by powerHouse Books. This book was released on 2008-10-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Innocents Lost written by Jimmie Briggs and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2009-04-27 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ida, a member of Sri Lanka's Female Tamil Tigers, fought with one of the longest-surviving and successful guerilla movements in the world. She is sixteen. Francois, a fourteen-year-old Rwandan child of mixed ethnicity, was forced by Hutu militiamen to hack to death his sister's Tutsi children. More than 250,000 children have fought in three dozen conflicts around the world, but growing exploitation of children in war is staggering and little known. From the "little bees" of Colombia to the "baby brigades" of Sri Lanka, the subject of child soldiers is changing the face of terrorism. For the last seven years, Jimmie Briggs has been talking to, writing about, and researching the plight of these young combatants. The horrific stories of these children, dramatically told in their own voices, reveal the devastating consequences of this global tragedy. Cogent, passionate, impeccably researched, and compellingly told, Innocents Lost is the fullest, most personal and powerful examination yet of the lives of child soldiers.
Download or read book Becoming Men of Some Consequence written by John A. Ruddiman and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2014-12-15 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Young Continental soldiers carried a heavy burden in the American Revolution. Their experiences of coming of age during the upheavals of war provide a novel perspective on the Revolutionary era, eliciting questions of gender, family life, economic goals, and politics. "Going for a soldier" forced young men to confront profound uncertainty, and even coercion, but also offered them novel opportunities. Although the war imposed obligations on youths, military service promised young men in their teens and early twenties alternate paths forward in life. Continental soldiers’ own youthful expectations about respectable manhood and their goals of economic competence and marriage not only ordered their experience of military service; they also shaped the fighting capacities of George Washington’s army and the course of the war. Becoming Men of Some Consequence examines how young soldiers and officers joined the army, their experiences in the ranks, their relationships with civilians, their choices about quitting long-term military service, and their attempts to rejoin the flow of civilian life after the war. The book recovers young soldiers’ perspectives and stories from military records, wartime letters and journals, and postwar memoirs and pension applications, revealing how revolutionary political ideology intertwined with rational calculations and youthful ambitions. Its focus on soldiers as young men offers a new understanding of the Revolutionary War, showing how these soldiers’ generational struggle for their own independence was a profound force within America’s struggle for its independence.
Download or read book Young Soldiers written by Rachel Brett and published by International Labour Organization. This book was released on 2004 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is estimated that more than 300,000 children are involved in armed conflicts throughout the world, the vast majority through forced labour. This publication contains the personal views and experiences of child soldiers, highlighting a number of factors contributing to their participation, including the socio-economic and political environment, and their vulnerable personal circumstances, as well as how diverse risk factors interact. These personal stories also draw attention to the gender dimensions of the problem, and to concept of child soldiers 'volunteering' in armed conflict situations. The book then goes on to explore key factors in the development of a comprehensive strategy to tackle the problem, including addressing issues of breakdown of law and order, availability of weapons, extreme forms of social exclusion including poverty and inequality, lack of educational opportunities, widespread child abuse and child labour. The publication includes profiles of conflict situations in Afghanistan, Colombia, the Congo, Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Sri Lanka.
Download or read book They Fight Like Soldiers They Die Like Children written by Roméo Dallaire and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-05-10 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It is my hope that through the pages of this remarkable book, you will discover groundbreaking thoughts on building partnerships and networks to enhance the global movement to end child soldiering; you will gain new and holistic insights on what constitutes a child soldier; you will learn more about girl soldiers, who have not been fully considered in the discussion of this issue; you will discover methods on how to influence national policies and the training of security forces; and you will find practical steps that will foster better coordination between security forces and humanitarian efforts."-Ishmael Beah As the leader of the ill-fated United Nations peacekeeping force in Rwanda, Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire came face-to-face with the horrifying reality of child soldiers during the genocide of 1994. Since then the incidence of child soldiers has proliferated in conflicts around the world: they are cheap, plentiful, expendable, with an incredible capacity, once drugged and brainwashed, for both loyalty and barbarism. The dilemma of the adult soldier who faces them is poignantly expressed in this book's title: when children are shooting at you, they are soldiers, but as soon as they are wounded or killed, they are children once again. Believing that not one of us should tolerate a child being used in this fashion, Dallaire has made it his mission to end the use of child soldiers. Where Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone gave us wrenching testimony of the devastating experience of being a child soldier, Dallaire offers intellectually daring and enlightened approaches to the child soldier phenomenon, and insightful, empowering solutions to eradicate it.
Download or read book True Stories of Teen Soldiers written by Kristin Thiel and published by Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 2017-12-15 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Around the world, young people under the age of eighteen serve in militaries and as part of armed groups. Their experiences vary from carefully controlled, such as the stories of sixteen-year-old soldiers in the British Armed Forces, to harrowing, such as the cases of teens who are forced to take up arms or face violence to themselves or their families. This book spans the globe, looking at the experiences of young soldiers to contextualize their role in world events, relate the circumstances of their daily lives, and help readers understand how teen soldiers' lives are similar to other teens' in ways both big and small.
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 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 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 Girl Soldier written by Faith J. H. McDonnell and published by Chosen Books. This book was released on 2007-06-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For several decades a brutal army of rebels has been raiding villages in northern Uganda, kidnapping children and turning them into soldiers or wives of commanders. More than 30,000 children have been abducted over the last twenty years and forced to commit unspeakable crimes. Grace Akallo was one of these. Her story, which is the story of many Ugandan children, recounts her terrifying experience. This unforgettable book--with historical background and insights from Faith McDonnell, one of the clearest voices in the church today calling for freedom and justice--will inspire readers around the world to take notice, pray, and work to end this tragedy.
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 Boy Soldiers of the American Revolution written by Caroline Cox and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2016-02-10 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1819 and 1845, as veterans of the Revolutionary War were filing applications to receive pensions for their service, the government was surprised to learn that many of the soldiers were not men, but boys, many of whom were under the age of sixteen, and some even as young as nine. In Boy Soldiers of the American Revolution, Caroline Cox reconstructs the lives and stories of this young subset of early American soldiers, focusing on how these boys came to join the army and what they actually did in service. Giving us a rich and unique glimpse into colonial childhood, Cox traces the evolution of youth in American culture in the late eighteenth century, as the accepted age for children to participate meaningfully in society--not only in the military--was rising dramatically. Drawing creatively on sources, such as diaries, letters, and memoirs, Caroline Cox offers a vivid account of what life was like for these boys both on and off the battlefield, telling the story of a generation of soldiers caught between old and new notions of boyhood.
Download or read book Child Soldiers From Recruitment to Reintegration written by Alpaslan Özerdem and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-08-29 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Children at War written by P. W. Singer and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2006-04-10 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From U.S. soldiers having to fight children in Afghanistan and Iraq to juvenile terrorists in Sri Lanka to Palestine, the new, younger face of battle is a terrible reality of 21st century warfare. Indeed, the very first American soldier killed by hostile fire in the “War on Terrorism” was shot by a fourteen-year-old Afghan boy. Children at War is the first comprehensive examination of a disturbing and escalating phenomenon: the use of children as soldiers around the globe. Interweaving explanatory narrative with the voices of child soldiers themselves, P.W. Singer, an internationally recognized expert in modern warfare, introduces the brutal reality of conflict, where children are sent off to fight in war-torn hotspots from Colombia and the Sudan to Kashmir and Sierra Leone. He explores the evolution of this phenomenon, how and why children are recruited, indoctrinated, trained, and converted to soldiers and then lays out the consequences for global security, with a special case study on terrorism. With this established, he lays out the responses that can end this horrible practice. What emerges is not only a compelling and clarifying read on the darker reality of modern warfare, but also a clear and urgent call for action.
Download or read book Super Red Riding Hood written by Claudia Davila and published by Kids Can Press Ltd. This book was released on 2014-08-01 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
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.
