Could rebel child soldiers prolong civil wars?

Abstract

While we know why rebels may recruit children for their cause, our understanding of the consequences of child soldiering by non-state armed groups remains limited. The following research contributes to addressing this by examining how rebels' child recruitment practice affects the duration of internal armed conflicts. We advance the argument that child soldiering increases the strength of rebel organizations vis-à-vis the government. This, in turn, lowers the capability asymmetry between these nonstate actors and the incumbent, allowing the former to sustain in dispute. Ultimately, the duration of armed conflicts is likely to be prolonged. We analyze this relationship with quantitative data on child soldier recruitment by rebel groups in the post-1989 period. The results confirm our main hypothesis: disputes are substantially longer when rebels recruit children. This work has important implications for the study of armed conflicts, conflict duration, and our understanding of child soldiering.

Rebel funding and child soldiers: Exploring the relationship between natural resources and forcible recruitment

“…Taking this into account, we decided to extend the existing Child Soldier Data Set (CSDS) by Haer and Böhmelt (2016a, 2016b, 2017). The CSDS captures the use of child soldiers by rebel groups in conflict periods as identified by the Non-State Actors in Armed Conflict Dataset (NSA) (Cunningham et al, 2009, 2013).…”

“…As the CSDS data set (Haer and Böhmelt, 2016a, 2016b, 2017) does not include the mode of child soldier recruitment, we undertook the task of coding information on the practice and degree of rebels’ forced recruitment of children. We relied on independent reports from various sources including Child Soldiers International (formerly the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers), Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the US Department of State, the International Labour Organization, and various academic sources and independent news outlets in different languages (Dutch, English, French, German, and Spanish).…”

“…12 Fourth, although we made significant efforts to ensure the accuracy of the data, there are potential sources of bias. Some organizations might have incentives to over-report the number of child soldiers who were violently recruited into rebel groups in an effort to increase attention to their mission (Haer and Böhmelt, 2017). Further, in certain instances, rebels (and governments) may hide their activities to avoid negative consequences and stigmatization by the international community.…”

“…This variable also comes from the NSA data set (Cunningham et al, 2009(Cunningham et al, , 2013 and accounts for other temporal dependencies. 18 Third, some scholars have suggested that when rebel groups endure significant battle losses, they will forcibly recruit children in an attempt to replenish their numbers (Haer and Böhmelt, 2017;Singer, 2006). To control for this desperation effect, our models include a measure of the natural logarithm of Battle-related deaths from the UCDP Battle-Related Deaths Dataset (Gleditsch et al, 2002).…”

“… 9. Following UNICEF (2007), Haer and Böhmelt (2016a, 2016b, 2017) define child soldiers as “any person below 18 years of age who has been recruited or used by an armed force or armed group.” Although this age threshold is not without controversy (Tynes and Early, 2015), it was used in the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (United Nations, 2000: Art 1), in addition to other documents (Machel, 1996). …”