From Heroes to Victims: An Analysis of the Mutation of the Social Meaning of Child Soldiering

Abstract

Although a considerable body of scholarship on children and armed conflict has developed, little sociological, conceptual and historical analysis has been proffered to help our understanding of the dynamics of meaning-change to the current social conception of child soldiering. This article analyses the evolution of the prevailing ‘social meaning’ of child soldiering. To this end, it recognises the historical and current role of transnational agents in the mutation of the conception of child militarization and universalisation of its negative meaning. The article discusses how the meaning has influenced the legal construction of and regulation of such meaning through instruments in extant international and regional child law. The conviction and imprisonment of Democratic of Republic of Congo (DRC) rebel leader Thomas Lubanga by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2012 represented a concretization of the globalized opprobrious social perception of child soldiering through the penal process.