Child Soldiers as Agents of War and Peace

Review by SWARASHI JAIN (January 21, 2025): When envisioning a war-torn region, the plight of children often comes to mind—innocent victims of circumstances beyond their control rendered passive and powerless by the atrocities around them. In "Child Soldiers as Agents of War and Peace: A Restorative Transitional Justice Approach to Accountability for Crimes Under International Law" (Springer, 2017), Author Leonie Steinl challenges this conventional, passive narrative by exploring the agency of children who take on the roles of soldiers. Steinl advocates for recognizing child soldiers as active participants rather than passive victims to gain a more comprehensive understanding of their experiences. She emphasizes that these children, as “doers,” deserve dignity and respect rather than being viewed solely as victims of others’ actions. Central to her work are the legal and justice implications of their roles, particularly within transitional justice frameworks that grapple with addressing children’s involvement in armed conflict.

The book delves deeply into the complex roles child soldiers play during conflicts and the difficulties they face in reintegrating into society. Steinl underscores the importance of acknowledging these children as autonomous actors to ensure they receive the dignity and respect they merit during reintegration. Adopting a transitional justice approach, the book critically examines the duality of child soldiers as both victims and perpetrators of violence, offering insights to inform transitional justice practices. Steinl bravely confronts challenging questions, such as the conditions and circumstances that transform innocent children into perpetrators capable of committing violence—even against other children. This exploration of duality is central to the essence of her work.

Steinl introduces restorative transitional justice as a framework to achieve accountability that aligns with children’s developmental needs. This approach prioritizes reconciliation and reintegration over punitive measures, focusing on healing and rebuilding communities. The book lies at the intersection of human rights law, international law, and transitional justice, offering a multidimensional perspective on addressing the unique challenges posed by child soldiers.

Duality of Identity

The dual role of child soldiers—as both victims and perpetrators—is not merely a theoretical construct but a stark reflection of the grim realities they endure in conflict zones. This duality underscores the complexity of their lived experiences.

Victimhood: Child soldiers are often generalized as victims, given the dire circumstances under which they are recruited. Many are displaced, abandoned, or forcibly conscripted into armed groups during times of conflict. According to the United Nations, a child is defined as anyone under the age of 18. These children are frequently abducted from their homes or schools—if they are fortunate enough to have a stable home or access to education—stripped from their communities and subjected to radicalization. Viewing child soldiers primarily as victims is crucial for garnering international support for rehabilitation and reintegration programs. Such initiatives aim to provide them with the fundamental protection guaranteed under international law.

For instance, the Paris Principles emphasize that children associated with armed groups must be treated as victims under international law, reflecting their inability to make fully informed decisions. The coercive nature of their recruitment, often marked by abduction, indoctrination, manipulation, and violence, solidifies their victimhood. This recognition forms the basis for efforts to restore their rights and reintegrate them into society.

Perpetration: The identity of child soldiers becomes more complex when their roles as perpetrators are considered. A notable example is Dominic Ongwen, who was abducted and recruited into the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) as a child, highlighting his initial victimhood. However, he later ascended to leadership, becoming a commander and actively recruiting other children. This transition from victim to perpetrator illustrates the agency these individuals may exert, even within the coercive environments of armed groups.

The transformation from victim to perpetrator raises significant concerns about accountability. Traditional punitive approaches often fail to address the nuanced realities of child soldiers' dual identities. While transitional justice frameworks strive to reconcile these complexities, they face challenges in reintegrating individuals who are perceived as both innocent victims and culpable agents of violence.

This duality of identity complicates the discourse on accountability and agency in global politics. Many child soldiers experience both roles consecutively or simultaneously, challenging simplistic categorizations of "childhood" and defying binary narratives. Addressing this dichotomy requires international efforts to adopt a more nuanced and holistic approach. By acknowledging and integrating these overlapping identities, stakeholders can work toward solutions that balance justice, reconciliation, and the well-being of affected children.

Transitional Justice Framework

Steinl advocates for a restorative transitional justice approach, emphasizing the importance of acknowledging the dual identity of child soldiers and integrating this understanding into restorative programs. She supports mechanisms such as truth commissions and community-based reconciliation processes, which provide child soldiers with the opportunity to take accountability for their actions while addressing their victimhood. By recognizing both their roles as perpetrators and victims, these mechanisms aim to foster a more holistic acknowledgement of their experiences—balancing the actions they committed with the emotions and traumas they endured. This approach seeks to promote healing for all parties involved, including the child soldiers and those harmed by their actions, through dialogue and understanding rather than punitive measures or alienation.

Steinl critiques the current transitional justice framework as inadequate, arguing that it disproportionately emphasizes the victimhood of child soldiers while neglecting their role as perpetrators. This imbalance, she asserts, is unfair to the victims of these child soldiers and undermines efforts toward meaningful reconciliation. Moreover, such an approach often leads to ineffective reintegration, resulting in social stigmatization and exclusion. This further diminishes the limited sense of agency and dignity that child soldiers may have tried to reclaim through their actions, leaving them marginalized and unsupported.

The goal of the transitional justice framework is to provide a platform for victims while facilitating the reintegration of child soldiers into society. This involves judicial measures to enhance the accountability of perpetrators, as seen in historical examples like the Nuremberg Trials after World War II and the tribunals addressing the Rwandan Genocide and conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. Institutional reforms—such as restructuring the police and judiciary—are critical to preventing future abuses and ensuring adherence to international and domestic human rights standards.

Restorative initiatives, including truth commissions and programs for financial reparations, play a significant role in addressing the harm caused. Symbolic gestures, such as public apologies, serve to acknowledge the emotional distress experienced by child soldiers and reinforce their right to reparation. Memorialization and public deliberation are crucial tools for fostering dialogue about past atrocities, ensuring awareness, and promoting reconciliation. These efforts aim to heal historical wounds and work as preventive measures to safeguard against similar injustices in the future.

Restorative Transitional Justice

Restorative transitional justice seeks to integrate restorative justice principles into the broader framework of transitional justice, fostering healing and reconciliation within communities affected by armed conflict and violence. This approach aims to repair relationships, rebuild trust, and address the harms caused by human rights violations in a comprehensive and inclusive manner.

Central to the success of restorative transitional justice is acknowledging the harm experienced by victims. This acknowledgement serves a dual purpose: (a) it validates the feelings and experiences of victims, and (b) it raises societal awareness about past human rights violations. Facilitating dialogue between victims and perpetrators is critical to this approach, as it promotes mutual understanding, accountability, and reconciliation. Restorative transitional justice emphasizes a victim-centred approach, ensuring that victims’ emotions and experiences are validated and that trust is gradually rebuilt—a crucial step toward sustainable reconciliation.

This framework also highlights the importance of community involvement in restoring damaged social relationships and fostering a shared responsibility for healing. A practical example of restorative transitional justice can be seen in Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (SJP), which combines judicial processes with restorative practices. The SJP allows for public acknowledgement of responsibility by perpetrators while providing reparative measures for victims alongside appropriate sanctions for offenders. This balanced approach exemplifies how restorative transitional justice can work in practice to address both individual and collective harm.

Legal and Policy Recommendations

Steinl provides a range of legal and policy recommendations aimed at addressing the rights and needs of child soldiers while recognizing their unique challenges and experiences. These include:

• Peace Agreements: Ensuring that the needs of child soldiers are explicitly addressed in peace agreements through provisions for demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration (DDR) programs tailored to their specific requirements.
• Accountability Measures: Establishing mechanisms to hold local armed groups and rebel factions accountable for recruiting child soldiers. This includes explicitly mentioning such groups in peace agreements to deter future recruitment.
• Comprehensive Reintegration Initiatives: Advocating for robust international support for reintegration programs that provide psychological, educational, social, and economic assistance to child soldiers, enabling them to rebuild their lives.
• International Standards: Emphasizing the importance of prohibiting the recruitment of individuals under 18, in line with international norms.
• National Action Plans: Recommending the development of National Action Plans for post-conflict countries to institutionalize child protection measures and ensure long-term support.
• Awareness and Training: Highlighting the need for peacebuilding training programs and widespread awareness campaigns to prevent future violations and support the reintegration of child soldiers.

These recommendations underscore the importance of a holistic approach that addresses both the systemic causes and the individual consequences of child soldier recruitment and reintegration.

Conclusion

Leonie Steinl’s thesis represents a significant departure from the traditional victim-centered narrative of child soldiers. By acknowledging their multifaceted realities—as both victims and perpetrators—Steinl emphasizes the need for dialogue, reconciliation, and restorative justice. Her advocacy for restorative transitional justice offers a balanced approach to accountability and reintegration in post-conflict societies, challenging the conventional punitive models of justice.

Steinl’s argument reflects a paradigm shift in how we perceive agency, dignity, and justice for child soldiers. Her emphasis on context and nuance provides a vital roadmap for addressing one of the most morally complex issues of our time. By advocating for restorative practices that prioritize healing and community restoration, Steinl illuminates a path toward more inclusive and transformative justice frameworks.

In an era marked by pressing challenges in post-conflict reconstruction, Steinl’s work is a powerful testament to the potential of thoughtful scholarship to guide meaningful change. Her call to expand the boundaries of justice beyond courtrooms and punitive measures is both timely and necessary, offering a restorative, inclusive, and transformative vision of justice.

SWARASHI JAIN (Research Intern, Society for the Study of Peace and Conflict, New Delhi (December 01, 2024-January 15, 2025).