 Reintegrating Young Combatants: do child-centred approaches leave children—and adults—behind?Jaremey McMullin Third World Quarterly, 2011, vol. 32, issue 4, 743-764 Abstract: This article uses recent experience in Angola to demonstrate that young fighters were not adequately or effectively assisted after war ended in 2002. The government's framework excluded children from accessing formal disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programmes, and its subsequent attempts to target children have largely failed. More critically the case of Angola calls into question the broader effectiveness and appropriateness of child-centred DDR. First, such targeting is inappropriate to distinct post-conflict contexts and constructs a ‘template child’ asserted to be more vulnerable and deserving than adult ex-combatants, which does little to further the reintegration of either group, or the rights of the child in a conflict context. Second, child-centred reintegration efforts tend to deny children agency as actors in their own reintegration. Third, such efforts contribute to the normalisation of a much larger ideational and structural flaw of post-conflict peace building, wherein ‘success’ is construed as the reintegration of large numbers of beneficiaries back into the poverty and marginalisation that contributed to conflict in the first place. Date: 2011 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:32:y:2011:i:4:p:743-764 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2011.567006 Access Statistics for this article Third World Quarterly is currently edited by Shahid Qadir More articles in Third World Quarterly from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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