The focus of attention in relation to "child soldiers" has tended to be on abducted children or those forced/coerced into fighting. However, when asked, many children and young people themselves say that they volunteered. In addition, when negotiating the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, some governments claimed the right to continue to recruit volunteers under the age of 18, and indeed still do so although others have raised their recruitment age.
If children and young people do volunteer, this suggests that demobilisation and reintegration programmes need to take this into consideration, in particular if demobilisation is to take place where conflict is ongoing or the situation remains unsettled/uncertain. It might seem obvious that if children are forced to join up and fight and subsequently are released, captured or escape and are offered demobilisation and reintegration, they will want to take this course. In practice, in individual cases, circumstances may have changed since, or as a result of, the original abduction, conscription or press-ganging, but the assumption remains generally valid that since they did not want to join they will want to leave if given the opportunity. By contrast, if the children volunteered, unless the reasons why they volunteered are identified and addressed, there is no logical reason to expect them to want to leave or not to rejoin even if they are demobilised.
Research demonstrates that there are five major factors in the decision of youngsters to join armed forces or armed groups without being abducted or physically forced. These are: war, poverty, education, employment and family. These are not, however, the only factors: ideology, ethnicity, the struggle for liberation (or against oppression), friends, and many other things can also play a part. Nevertheless all of these secondary factors are less universal and each becomes more significant when combined with and mediated, and thus amplified, through one or more of the five major factors identified.
This paper seeks to explore the factors underlying the active decision of children and young people to join armed groups. It concludes by emphasizing the use of these factors as a framework for policy and programmatic planning.
©Quaker United Nations Office
