Children and Violence Agency, Experience, and Representation in and beyond Armed Conflict

Chapter 1. Introduction, Christelle Molima Bameka, Mohamed Kamara, and Mark A. Drumbl  Part I: Joining and Leaving Armed Fights  Chapter 2. Safeguarding Futures: Rethinking Preventative Approaches to Protect Minors from Recruitment and Use in Colombia, María Paula Espejo, Yadira Lizama-Mué, and Juan Luis Suárez  Chapter 3. From Child Soldiers to Struggling Citizens: Children and Youth in a Broken and Uneven Social Contract in Conflict and Post-Conflict Democratic Republic of Congo, Sylvie Bodineau  Chapter 4. Former Child Soldiers, Persistent Conceptions of Childhood, and the Long Road of Transitional Justice in Uganda, Kirsten J. Fisher  Chapter 5. Sulh as Restorative Justice for Child Soldiers, Yousra Hasona  Part II: Cross-Overs: Fights Beyond Conventional Armed Conflict  Chapter 6. Children and Cyberconflict: (Re)assessing Harm and the Capacity of Legal Instruments to Protect, Melissa Hollobon, David Hughes, and Panthea Pourmalek  Chapter 7. Guilty Victims or Not? Non-Punishment of Child Trafficking Victims and Child Soldiers Under International Law, Silvia Scarpa  Chapter 8. Children as Informers and Denouncers, Barbora Holá and Mark A. Drumbl  Chapter 9. Afghanistan’s Bacha Posh Girls: Unspoken Gender-Based Violence and Psychological Trauma Within the Broader Context of an Armed Conflict, Ingeborg Gruenwald  Part III: Imagining Children and Fights: Representation, Ethics, Aesthetics  Chapter 10. Childhood, Victimhood, and Agency in Namina Forna’s The Gilded Ones and Kim Nguyen’s War Witch, Mohamed Kamara  Chapter 11. Tools of War, Tools of State: Stories of the Child Combatant in Global North-South Relations, Jana Tabak  Chapter 12. Children Born of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in Rwanda: In Search of Recognition and Advocacy, Myriam Denov  Chapter 13. Child Soldiers and the Right of Self-Defence, David M. Rosen and Sarah M. Rosen

Biography

Christelle Molima Bameka is Scientific Coordinator of the Law and Society Initiative of the University of Lausanne (Switzerland). She is the author of Enfants soldats et reinsertion socio- communautaire. Questions de responsabilité pénale en droit international et national congolais (2022).

Jastine C. Barrett is an independent human rights consultant, international lawyer, and academic based in the United Kingdom. She is the author of Child Perpetrators on Trial: Insights from Post- Genocide Rwanda (2019) and co- editor of the Research Handbook on Child Soldiers (with Mark A. Drumbl, 2019).

Mohamed Kamara is Professor of French and Africana Studies and chair of the Romance Languages department at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. He is the author of When Mosquitoes Come Marching In: A Play in Spectacles (2021) and Colonial Legacies in Francophone African Literature: The School and the Invention of the Bourgeoisie (2023).

Karl Hanson is Director of the Centre for Children’s Rights Studies and Full Professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Geneva in Switzerland.

Mark A. Drumbl is the Class of 1975 Alumni Professor at Washington and Lee University, School of Law, where he also serves as Director of the University’s Transnational Law Institute. He is the author of Atrocity, Punishment, and International Law (2007), Reimagining Child Soldiers in International Law and Policy (2012), and Informers Up Close: Stories from Communist Prague (2024, with Barbora Holá); and co- editor (with Jastine Barrett) of the Research Handbook on Child Soldiers (2019) and of Sights, Sounds, and Sensibilities of Atrocity Prosecutions (2024, with Caroline Fournet).

‘I highly recommend this important volume, which examines how children are actors in different kinds of fights and struggles. Interconnecting areas of violence that are often fragmented and bringing forward voices from diverse countries, it sheds new light on children’s agency and ability to navigate and shape complex environments.’

Michael Wessells, Professor Emeritus, Program on Forced Migration and Health, Columbia University, USA

‘How do children fight? That is, how do young people experience concerted violence, whether it is called armed conflict, cartel criminality, cyberwar, or something else? Seeking answers through multidisciplinary research by authors from around the globe, this rich collection opens paths for an empirically grounded, fully inclusive child rights practice.’

Diane Marie Amann, Regents’ Professor of International Law, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and Faculty Co-Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center, University of Georgia School of Law, USA

‘This multi-disciplinary, multi-faceted, and multi-regional volume is a welcome contribution to scholarship on child-related violence. It offers important insights on violence in various forms and contexts, ranging from armed conflict, cyber warfare, and trafficking to economic, gendered, and racialized violence, among others. Taken as a whole, the chapters in this edited collection enrich, reframe, and expand debates on the relationship between childhood and violence.’

Hedi Viterbo, Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Law, Founding Director of the Childhood, Law & Policy Network (CLPN), Queen Mary University of London, UK

'Children and Violence makes a vital contribution to the study of international law, human rights, childhood studies and conflict resolution in the context of children affected by violence beyond armed conflict. ... This volume is not only academically rigorous but also accessible, making it a valuable resource for scholars, researchers, practitioners, policymakers and stakeholders alike.'

Kai Chen, Children & Society, 2025

'Children and Violence constitutes a substantial contribution to the understanding of juvenile participation in conflict among academics, politicians, and military strategists. Its strength lies not simply in documenting varied experiences across nations but also in examining the conceptual foundations that support counter-insurgency doctrine.'

Hengki, Small Wars & Insurgencies, June 2025