The Child Soldier in Modern Humanitarian Discourse

The concept of the “child soldier” seems to be the conflation of two contradic­tory and incompatible terms. The first, “child,” typically refers to a young person between infancy and youth and connotes immaturity, simplicity, and an absence of full physical, mental, or emotional development.

Distaste for the idea of the child soldier is most clearly expressed in cur­rent attempts by humanitarian groups to create an international ban on the recruitment of child soldiers. Most of these groups have adopted the so- called Straight 18 position that defines childhood as beginning at birth and ending at age 18 and defines the child soldier as any person under 18 years of age who is recruited or used by an army or armed group.¹⁰ Humanitarian groups have succeeded in altering the military recruiting policies of many countries and, perhaps most importantly, in bringing about changes in international humanitarian law, the so-called laws of war, so as to make the recruitment of children below the age of 15 a crime.

Part of the problem is the very novelty of the modern concept of the child soldier. The “Straight 18” position is a prime example of how a new political agenda can be represented as an existing cultural norm. It mandates an international acceptance of two major principles: first, that childhood be universally defined as beginning at birth and ending at age 18, and second, that childhood is incompatible with military experience.

Humanitarianism and literature tend to narrate the experience of child­hood in antithetical ways. Humanitarian law codifies bright-line distinctions between childhood and adulthood that are largely indifferent to context; literature understands context as informing virtually all narratives about children, including distinctions of age. Humanitarian discourse on the vic­timization of children also contrasts with literary conventions that set chil­dren into roles as active players and participants in society. Most modern literary forms, including the novel, force a focus on individuals and their engagement with surrounding psychological or social forces. Indeed, the development of modern literature and the development of character go hand in hand. By way of contrast, humanitarian rhetoric and reporting about child soldiers work against character as they strive to create essentialist categories with universal applicability. As a result, humanitarian narratives tend to be breathtakingly superficial and thin and bear scant relationship to the experience of children at war traditionally found in literature, anthro­pology, or history.

Anthropologists have long been aware that there is no fixed single chrono­logical age at which young people move from childhood to adulthood and enter into the actions, dramas, and rituals of war.¹² Warfare draws in the young and the strong. The transition to warrior probably turns on a wide variety of practical issues since young people, mostly boys, would have to be in a position to personally demonstrate their physical and emotional fit­ness for these roles. The overall picture suggests that chronological boundar­ies between childhood, youth, and adulthood are highly varied and rooted into the historical experience of each society and culture. Indeed, it is hardly clear whether all societies even make use of these or similar concepts of childhood.

Similar issues arise in Western societies. Until recently, the armies of Western Europe and the United States were filled with “boy soldiers.” Boy soldiers have been routinely recruited into the British military since the Middle Ages, and by the late nineteenth century, various institutions emerged that organized and systematized their recruitment.¹³ A wide variety of data also indicate the presence of the very young on the American side of the Revolutionary War.¹⁴ Until the twentieth century, most military service in the West was voluntary, but even with the emergence of conscription, the recruitment of child soldiers continued as schools and military appren­ticeship programs continued to channel boys into the military.

The Civil War in the United States was a war of boy soldiers. Throughout the Civil War, youngsters followed brothers, fathers, and teachers into war. They often had support roles, but quickly graduated into combat roles. They were sometimes recruited at school and, when necessary, used weap­ons that were cut down and adapted for use by younger people. Numerous examples of famous boy soldiers abound: David Baily Freemen, “Little Dave,” enlisted in the Confederate army at age 11, first accompanying his older brother as an aide-de-camp and then as a “marker” for a survey team, before finally fighting against Sherman's army.¹⁵ Avery Brown enlisted at the age of eight years, 11 months, and 13 days in the Ohio Volunteer Infantry.

Of equal importance is how the participation of boy soldiers in war was understood. Writings about boy soldiers in the aftermath of the Civil War constitute a hagiographic genre celebrating the nobility and sacrifice of young boys in battle. The existence of developmental differences between boys and men were recognized in this literature but understood rather dif­ferently than they would be today. Although young boys were regarded as impulsive and less mature than older men, these qualities were recast as grand and heroic. Testimonials collected by Susan Hull in 1905 describe boy soldiers as enduring battle with “patience and gaiety” and those who died as having “made their peace with God.” Equally important, the experi­ence of battle, however horrific, was not understood as destroying the lives of children but as ennobling them. Boy soldiers who survived intact were described as respected citizens whose contribution to civic life was enhanced by their experience of war.¹⁷ While it may not be possible to verify the accuracy of these accounts, they are conspicuous precisely because they put forward radically different views of children in battle than those contained in contemporary humanitarian accounts.

There is no doubt that hagiographic accounts also mask the brutality to which young people are (and were) exposed during war. Nevertheless, these not-so-distant descriptions of boy soldiers make it apparent that current humanitarian views of children at war are very different from the way this was understood in America and Europe in earlier times. The current view of the child soldier, as an abused and exploited innocent, is a radically new concept that is linked to the deeply entrenched but equally modern view of the child as pure and unspoiled and as the ultimate victim of war.