Reimagining Child Soldiers in International Law and Policy

Reimagining Child Soldiers in International Law and Policy PDF Author: Mark A. Drumbl
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199592659
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
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.

Reimagining Child Soldiers in International Law and Policy

Reimagining Child Soldiers in International Law and Policy PDF Author: Mark A. Drumbl
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199592659
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
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.

Child Soldiers

Child Soldiers PDF Author: Michael Wessells
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674032551
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
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.

Research Handbook on Child Soldiers

Research Handbook on Child Soldiers PDF Author: Mark A. Drumbl
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1788114485
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
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.

Armies of the Young

Armies of the Young PDF Author: David M. Rosen
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813535685
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
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.

Innocents Lost

Innocents Lost PDF Author: Jimmie Briggs
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0786738502
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
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.

Super Red Riding Hood

Super Red Riding Hood PDF Author: Claudia Davila
Publisher: Kids Can Press Ltd
ISBN: 177138283X
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 35

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Book Description
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.

Child Soldiers: From Recruitment to Reintegration

Child Soldiers: From Recruitment to Reintegration PDF Author: Alpaslan Özerdem
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230342922
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
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.

Child Soldiers

Child Soldiers PDF Author: Leora Kahn
Publisher: powerHouse Books
ISBN: 9781576874554
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
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.

Child Soldiers in the Age of Fractured States

Child Soldiers in the Age of Fractured States PDF Author: Scott Gates
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822973596
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
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.

Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination

Child Soldiers in the Western Imagination PDF Author: David M Rosen
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813572894
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
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.