Constructing and Deconstructing Child Soldier Narratives

Abstract

This article looks at how research on child soldiers has been undertaken, especially during the 2000s which marked a time of significant humanitarian interest and intervention by NGOs especially in West Africa. It is argued here that despite inroads into children's rights and new understandings about children's agency, these research relationships illustrate a largely asymmetrical dynamic, in which short term gains by individual children diminish the return for the majority and in effect help further victimise or disempower children affected by armed conflict. Furthermore, `drive by' interventions which source primary narratives of children often fail to take into account the complexity of their childhood and the manoeuvres that they may be performing in order to survive.