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Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank Faye Donnelly, Robert Feldman, Mats Hammarstrom, Henrí Levrier, and Jacob Zenn.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Singer also mentioned the hard/soft dichotomy more than ten years ago in “Terrorists Must Be Denied.”
2. Tynes, Tools of War, 8.
3. Bloom, “Child Soldiers in Armed Conflict.”
4. Jenkins, “Options for Dealing,” 12.
5. On child soldiers and securitization, see for example Beier, “Children, childhoods”; and Plowright, “Securitization of Child Soldiers.”
6. There is, for example, the ongoing discrepancy between state and non-state armed forces regarding the minimum age limit for participation in hostilities. For a discussion on the special protections under-15s are entitled to under IHL and HRL, see Fox, “Child Soldiers and International,” passim but especially 31-36.
7. Paris Principles: https://www.unicef.org/mali/media/1561/file/ParisPrinciples.pdf
8. Ibid, §2.1.
9. Wessells further elaborates on the estimated population figures in his Child Soldiers: From Violence,” 9-10. For the 2006 estimate of 250,000, see “Report of the Special Representative” by Special Representative to the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict.
10. This discrepancy was noted even from more than ten years ago; see Gates and Reich, “Introduction,” 10-11; and Happold, “Protecting Children,” 360. More recently, see https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/01/22/the-zombie-claim-that-300,000-children-are-used-as-child-soldiers/
11. See Bakaki and Hinkkainen, “Do Child Soldiers Influence.”
12. This is covered extensively in Watkin & Looney’s “The Lions of Tomorrow”; an internet search for images of ‘child soldier’ also bears this out. Even in Paul Rich’s Cinema and Unconventional Warfare, he reviews films which include child soldiers, resulting in either cursory, unrealistic coverage and some box-office success, or ‘stark realism’ which was too difficult for most audiences; Rich, Cinema and Unconventional, 144-46.
13. A search of JSTOR and Taylor and Francis from 2010-2020 for ‘child soldiers’ produced 14,782 results; for the same period a search of Taylor and Francis resulted in 27,659 articles.
14. Ventre, 578.
15. Wessells, Child Soldiers: From Violence.
16. Singer, Children at War, 108-115, 109.
17. Gates and Reich, Child Soldiers.
18. Drumbl, Reimagining Child Soldiers.
19. See fn. 3.
20. Drumbl, Reimagining Child Soldiers, 11.
21. McCue “The Islamic State Long Game,” passim; Horgan , “From Cubs to Lions,” Almohammad, “ISIS Child Soldiers in Syria”; and Morris & Dunning, “Islamic State schooled children.”
22. Regarding central Africa and Southeast Asia, see for example Mahtani , “Understanding the New U.S. Terrorism Designations in Africa”; Henkin , “Southeast Asia after the Caliphate”; Bloom, “Child Soldiers”; Morris and Dunning, “Islamic State Schooled Children”; and Wembi & Goldstein, “ISIS Claims First Attack.”
23. Aboulenein, “Iraq Holds Victory Parade”; and New York Times Editorial Board, “Islamic State.”
24. New York Times Editorial Board, “Islamic State”; Gossman, “Afghanistan Taliban Child Soldier”; Humanium, “Mali’s Child Soldiers”; and UN News, “Yemen: UN Verifies.”
25. Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers (2008), 299.
26. Overseas Security Advisory Council, “Sierra Leone 2019 Crime.”
27. Humphreys & Weinstein, What the Fighters Say.
28. See Human Rights Watch, “Afghanistan: Taliban Child Soldier”; Human Rights Watch, “Somalia: Al-Shabab Demanding Children”; and Humanium, “Mali’s Child Soldiers.”
29. Banholzer’s 2014 research on DDR programs for the German Development Institute, however, does take a more careful look and notes some ‘impressive achievements’ as well as those that ‘may fail despite immense efforts’. Banholzer, “When Do Disarmament, Demobilisation,” 15-16.
30. Haer also finds this to be the case, along with little variation on the dependent variable; Haer, “Children and Armed Conflict,” 78-79.
31. Mazurana & McKay, Where Are the Girls?
32. Haer and Böhmelt, “Child Soldiers as Time Bombs?” and “Could Rebel Child Soldiers.”
33. Lasley and Thyne, “Secession and legitimacy”; Tynes and Early, “Governments, Rebels”; and Bakaki and Hinkkainen, “Do Child Soldiers Influence.”
34. Haer and Böhmelt, “Child Soldiers as Time Bombs,” 424.
35. Ibid, 340.
36. Ibid.
37. Ames carefully lays out the problems of large-N studies in “Methodological Problems,” 14-24.
38. Lahoud observes jihadist groups are so different that they represent ‘a complete rupture’ from other terrorist groups; and Lahoud, The Jihadis’ Path,” 14.
39. Kaspersen, for example, has offered a soldier typology which includes under-18s; “New Societies, New Soldiers? A Soldier Typology.”
40. See Central Intelligence Agency, “The Youth Bulge”; Sommers, “Governance, Security and Culture”; and Urdal, “A Clash of Generations?”
41. Haer, “Rebel Funding and Child Soldiers.”
42. Steinmetz, “Small Arms in the Hands”; and Florquin, “Documenting Weapons in Situations.”
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M.J. Fox
M.J. Fox is an independent researcher with previous teaching positions at Georgetown, St. Andrews and Uppsala universities. Topics of interest involve issues around political culture, child soldiers, violent non-state actors and international humanitarian law. Publications include The Roots of Somali Political Culture (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2015) and articles in peer-reviewed journals on the topics listed above.