Child Soldiers in Sri Lanka: Issues and Response

By Sukanya Podder
SSPC Paper No. 8, December 2006

Read full text

Brief

One of the alarming trends of recent warfare pertains to the widespread use of children as soldiers. In an oft-quoted estimate children today are said to be participating as active combatants in over seventy five percent of the world’s armed conflicts. Child soldiers are generally defined as “persons under the age of eighteen years engaged in organized and politically directed violence as part of an armed group.” The problem also increasingly defies gender boundaries. Girls serve not only as soldier-wives but also as part of fidayeen or suicide squads given that they look relatively harmless and less suspicious than men. While this co-option of youth for armed violence is not an entirely new phenomenon, a disturbing trend lies in the fact that, while earlier, child soldiers were recruited only when the supply of adult soldiers ran short, today society’s youngest are often recruited as a matter of preference.

About the Author

Sukanya Podder is Research Assistant at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi and concurrently doctoral candidate in Disarmament Studies, CIPOD, SIS, JNU. Her research interests pertain to issues of non-traditional security, peace process, security sector reform, disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) of ex-combatants particularly child ex-combatants. Her articles have been published in Strategic Analysis, Journal of Peace Studies and for newspapers and websites.