Child Soldiers in Colombia: The Recruitment of Children into Non-state Violent Armed Groups

Ingunn Bjørkhaug ()
Additional contact information
Ingunn Bjørkhaug: Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies

No 27, Research Working Papers from MICROCON - A Micro Level Analysis of Violent Conflict

Abstract: Based on in-depth interviews with former child soldiers in Colombia, this article presents the findings from fieldwork conducted among demobilized child soldiers in Colombia. The findings add to the state of knowledge by going in-depth into the circumstances surrounding the processes and mechanisms of recruitment of children and adolescents into armed groups. The former child soldiers had generally joined the armed groups voluntarily. However; one of the challenges with a strong division between ‘voluntary’ and ‘coerced’ recruitment, is that it indicates a sharp dichotomy between two very different situations. This article argues that most cases of recruitment takes place in the grey zone between voluntary and coerced recruitment. However, the demobilization policies work under the assumption that even when the children classify themselves as voluntarily recruited it is considered force due to children’s inability to make a free or conscious choice. This indicates that demobilization programs are based on an assumption that is incorrect. The former child soldiers, both girls and boys, were affected by their involvement in the conflict. They did not, however, constitute a homogeneous group of passive victims, but rather a group of vital agents each one with their choices shaped by their particular experiences and circumstances.

Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2010
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-mic
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.microconflict.eu/publications/RWP27_IB.pdf First version, 2010 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.microconflict.eu/publications/RWP27_IB.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.microconflict.eu/publications/RWP27_IB.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mcn:rwpapr:27

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Research Working Papers from MICROCON - A Micro Level Analysis of Violent Conflict Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by John Spall ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).