Prohibiting the Use of Child Soldiers: Contested Norm in Contemporary Human Rights Discourse

Kononenko, Iuliia

doi:10.1080/18918131.2016.1200293

Cited by 3 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…A child, as Jenks Chris suggests, is as familiar as it is strange (2-3). Two broadly diametrically dissimilar perspectives stand out in arguments over what a child is: one universalist; the other relativist/local (Kononenko 2016). They go by other nomenclatures such as "naturalist" and "social constructivist" models (Boyden 2007), and "caretaker" and "free-ranger views" (Huynh 2015).…”

Section: Dominant Conceptions Of "Child" and "Child Soldier" In Human...mentioning

confidence: 99%

A tale of two fighters: images of child soldiers in Jewish and African child soldier narratives

Adesola

2022

Journal of the African Literature Association

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This dissertation examines the representations of African child soldiers in selected contemporary African narratives with a view to mapping the dominant factors that writers privilege in their depictions of child soldiering in sub-Saharan Africa. In its engagement with the African child soldier genre, this study posits that critical discussions of African child soldier literature have depended on the interpretive frameworks supplied by Western humanitarian discourses which oversimplify and de-historicize experiences of war in Africa. Such reductive decontextualizations of war realities, I argue, serve to champion a narrow vision of war in African contexts centred on a moral and humanitarian urge for Western intervention. Regardless of whether the casus belli legitimating those wars are genuine or not, those conflicts (and children's involvement in them) are understood within the same racist colonial and ethnocentric stereotypes about Africa that have been privileged in Western thought and the Western moralpolitical imagination for centuries.Thus, in studying African child soldier narratives, I focus on novels whose settings feature African ethnopolitical conflictssuch as in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Congo-Brazzaville, Nigerianotable for their exploitation of children for military ends. I maintain that these works are significant in the varying ways they reify and challenge the Western ideas of "child" and "childhood," as well as privilege child soldiers as social actors whose intricate makeups disavow being simply understood as innocent victims or irredeemable perpetrators of atrocities.Moreover, I contend that these works also participate in age-old Afropessimistic depictions of a homogenous Africa where it is dangerous to be children, where human lives have no meaning, and where wars are waged senselessly.Overall, my textual-interpretive analyses of the selected novels in this study emphasize the importance of some works belonging to the African child soldier canon to ongoing campaigns against the mobilization of child soldiers and the rehabilitation processes employed by international organizations and transnational NGOs concerned with children at war. In this regard, my critique of African child soldier narratives reveals that the understanding of prewar conditions is vital to initiating viable policies for the protection of children.iii AcknowledgementsIn reflecting on the trajectory of my doctoral program and its culmination in this dissertation, I am once again reminded of the appreciative mindfulness of Niyi Osundare's speaker in his poem entitled "People Are My Clothes," one of the poems from the book on the poet's experience of Katrina -City Without People (2012). Like the grateful speaker in that verse, I too have cause to celebrate the matchless kindness and unconditional generosity of different people towards me while undertaking this research. In varying but consistently impactful ways these people paid attention to me. They cared for me. All that they joyously did for me contributed significantly to t...

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Section: Dominant Conceptions Of "Child" and "Child Soldier" In Human...mentioning

confidence: 99%

A tale of two fighters: images of child soldiers in Jewish and African child soldier narratives

Adesola

2022

Journal of the African Literature Association

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“…As a result, if condemning the participation of child soldiers is linked to their incompetence (Kononenko , 2016;Quenivet, 2017), that incompetence needs to be properly delineated. The question arises how 'child' in 'child soldier' should be interpreted.…”

Section: Lack Of Competence As the Driving Indicator To Condemn Child...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Anthropological research underpins the claim that a plurality of childhoods exists, varying along e.g. age, ethnicity, gender (Qvortrup, 2005;Kononenko, 2016).…”

Section: Anchoring Childhood In a Legal Framework: Twisting The Kalei...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is more restrictive in labelling children as child soldiers. Kononenko aptly concluded that children are caught in the development of the normative framework of two competing corpuses of law (Kononenko, 2016). Depending on using either an international humanitarian law or an international criminal law perspective, the kaleidoscope will be twisted differently and paint a different picture of who qualifies as a child soldier and when child soldiering is problematic.…”

Section: Cultural Perspectives On Labelling Of Children As Child Sold...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, children were engaged by the Nazi regime, or during the Gulf war or the Spanish Civil War (Orwell, 1952;Maher, 1989;Furley, 1995;Wessells, 2002). More recently terrorist organisations such as Boko Haram and Islamic State have equally recruited child soldiers (Oladeji, 2014;Kononenko, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Child Soldiers Caught in a Cultural Kaleidoscope

Bondt¹

2022

Int. J. Child. Rights

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Child participation in armed conflicts continues to challenge societies. Many diverging opinions and (perceived) legislative inconsistencies can be brought back to cultural differences spread over three axes. First, the recognition of child competence and their right to decide to participate in an armed conflict, differs significantly across and even within cultures. Second, the notion of “child” in child soldiers is conceptualised differently. Third, questions concerning their criminal liability for acts committed whilst being a child soldier continue to be fiercely debated. The question arises whether it is possible to draft a solid legal framework, recognising the vast cultural diversities.

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Children’s rights in Somalia

Regilme,

Spoldi

2024

Children’s Rights in Crisis

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Prohibiting the Use of Child Soldiers: Contested Norm in Contemporary Human Rights Discourse

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

A tale of two fighters: images of child soldiers in Jewish and African child soldier narratives

A tale of two fighters: images of child soldiers in Jewish and African child soldier narratives

Child Soldiers Caught in a Cultural Kaleidoscope

Children’s rights in Somalia

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