Recruiting the Most Vulnerable: What Explains the Use of Child Soldiers?

What factors influence the use of child soldiers in armed conflict? The recruitment of child soldiers is widespread in modern conflict, with at least 300,000 children believed to be serving as soldiers until recent years. A growing body of analysis looks at this question but there is a limited amount of systematic research. The existing literature focuses on factors such as poverty, the youth population, and the availability of lightweight weapons as factors behind child recruitment, but other explanations seem likely. To better understand this important issue, this dissertation examines two under-examined factors – international humanitarian regulation and external support – and uses quantitative analyses to test resulting hypotheses. The first chapter addresses the impact of the international humanitarian regulations on governments and rebel groups’ child recruitment. An important finding is that the existing regulations do not seem to reduce governments and rebel groups’ forced recruitment. The second and the third chapters focus solely on rebel groups’ child recruitment. These two chapters suggest external support is a crucial factor in rebel groups’ child recruitment. More specifically, the second chapter examines how different types of external support can affect rebel groups’ child recruitment and argues that rebel groups that receive territorial support are more likely to recruit children than rebels that do not. The third chapter investigates how two different types of external supporters can influence child soldiering by rebel groups. The results indicate that rebel groups that receive support from different rebel groups are more likely to recruit children than those that do not. Overall, this dissertation contributes to debates on child soldiering, rebel group dynamics, international humanitarian regulation, and related topics. Doing so, it sheds light on previously unexamined factors behind this important phenomenon, providing contributions to both theory and policy.