Abstract
This article contributes to a critical discussion of practices of child soldier reintegration and scholarship on the topic. Child soldiers' lived experience of reintegration is characterized by an interconnection between their child and adult worlds resulting from their conflict experience, social transition to adulthood and identity. The article provides a primary source of data based on 30 semi-structured interviews with former child soldiers, both boys and girls, from the former Communist Party of Nepal—Maoist. This article makes both practical and theoretical contributions. Firstly, reintegration practices assume that children and adults should be separated based on altogether different needs. However, a child soldiers' reintegration experience is framed by an important social interconnection between their child and adult worlds. Secondly, by theoretically engaging children as both a subject and an agent, this article contributes to a nuanced theorization of identity and agency that defies simplistic categories of victimhood and childhood. Finally, the article advances a new framework called ‘post-conflict identity’ that consists of three interconnected subject positions—victim, participant and political agent—to account for the complex ways that former child soldiers negotiate and respond to different life events and transitions across their conflict and post-conflict lives.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1211-1230 |
| Number of pages | 20 |
| Journal | International Affairs |
| Volume | 99 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 May 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:A key priority of the international community was the rehabilitation and reintegration of child soldiers through a process of the UN Interagency Rehabilitation Programme (UNIRP) from 2010–2013. UNIRP provided four sectoral rehabilitation options: vocational skills training, micro-enterprise development, education, and health-related training. Child soldiers identified as verified minors and late recruits (VMLRs) had the option of accessing the education or training packages within twelve months of their discharge. Of the 4,008 child soldiers identified through the UN verification process, only approximately 500–550 participated in the programme, while many others self-demobilized without sufficient support or resources. UNIRP represented a new generation of child-specific reintegration programmes animated by international child protection standards, which was supported by the UNICEF-led Children Associated with Armed Forces and Armed Groups (CAAFAG) Working Group. These emphasize the victimhood of children, and the need to incorporate practices that cater for the specific needs of children, as distinct from adults. As articulated in The Paris Principles, child soldier reintegration practices regard children as subjects qualitatively distinct in identity and programmatic needs from adults, and therefore should be separated through programmatic rehabilitation delivery, among other measures. In practice, the UNIRP programme's child protection objectives fell short as, by the time the programme was implemented, many children had become adults. The study of child soldier reintegration experiences in Nepal provides important lessons regarding reintegration practices, and the study of child soldiers in general.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Institute of International Affairs. All rights reserved.
