Abstract
AbstractWe typically see child soldiers as not morally responsible because of their age and/or because they are victims of adult exploitation. Work on child soldiers and their moral responsibility is relatively sparse within just war thinking and political philosophy (Thomason inEthical Theory Moral Pract, 19:115–127, 2016a; Thomason in Seeing child soldiers as morally compromised warriors [Online]. The Critique. Available:http://www.thecritique.com/articles/seeing-child-soldiers-as-morally-compromised-warriors/[Accessed 2 April 2020], 2016b), and instead focuses mostly on whether child soldiers are liable to attack (McMahan, in Gates, Reich (eds)Child soldiers in the age of fractured states, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA, 2010; Vaha inJ Military Ethics, 10:36–51, 2011). This paper brings these two areas together. Many of us have the intuition that combatants should exercise at least some constraint when fighting against child soldiers. I will argue that, contra McMahan (2010), exercising restraint in this way is a requirement of justice. I will argue that agents can be more or less liable to attack (liability to attack is on a spectrum) in defensive killing cases depending on how morally responsible they are for the threat they cause. I will outline how, whilst child soldiers are not wholly responsible for the threat they cause to combatants, their responsibility is also not completely diminished. I will argue that child soldiers are therefore liable to attack, but to a lesser extent than fully responsible agents. I will show that combatants fighting against child soldiers are therefore required, as a matter of justice, to use the most proportionate method of attack which may not always be to kill the child soldier. I will conclude that combatants are therefore required, as a matter of justice, to exercise a degree of restraint when fighting against child soldiers.
Funder
Arts and Humanities Research Council
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Reference41 articles.
1. Bazargan, S. 2014. Killing minimally responsible threats. Ethics 125: 114–136.
2. Boyden, J. 2003. The moral development of child soldiers: What do adults have to fear? Peace and Conflict 9: 343–362.
3. Dickerman, K. & Korniyenko, E. 2020. What it’s like in the Russian cadet schools where young people receive military training [Online]. The Washington Post. Available: https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2020/03/09/what-its-like-russias-cadet-schools-where-young-people-receive-military-training/. Accessed 20th March 2022.
4. Drexler, M. 2011. Life after death: Helping former child soldiers become whole again [Online]. Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health. Available: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/child-soldiers-betancourt/. Accessed 12 March 2022.
5. Drumbl, M. A. 2012. Child soldiers and clicktivism: Justice, myths, and prevention. Journal of Human Rights Practice 4: 481–485.