Africa and the “Child Soldier Crisis”
African Childhoods, Child Rights and the Evolution of Humanitarian Perspectives, c. 1940-2000
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51185/journals/rhca.2025.0905Keywords:
Child rights, Childhood, Soldier, Victimhood, War, YouthAbstract
Humanitarian campaigns in 1990-2000s fought against a ‘child soldier crisis’, depicting child soldiers as traumatized victims of adult abuse and the ‘barbarism’ of new, civilianized warfare. This article argues that child soldiering was not a new phenomenon, but that children were a significant presence in conflicts throughout the twentieth century in Africa (and elsewhere). The ‘child soldier crisis’ emerged in late 1980-90s because changing notions of childhood, child rights, human security and war rendered them visible as objects of humanitarian concern. The article shows how shifting constructions of ‘the African child’, and African childhoods, in (post-)colonial and global humanitarian discourse informed the obscuring and then the highlighting of children’s involvement in conflict.
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