Child Soldier Narratives and the Underrepresentation of Females in Fighting Forces

Abstract

Although different scholars have underscored the inadequacy of the concept of ‘child soldier’ for various reasons, its inherently discriminatory implications against girl soldiers have not attracted the required scholarly attention. Thus, in this article, I examine two African child soldier narratives with a view to analysing their representations of the idea of the child soldier. The texts I analyse are Uzodinma Iweala's Beasts of No Nation (2005) and Ahmadou Kourouma's Allah Is Not Obliged (2007).