Child Soldiers on the Global Agenda

September 21, 2008 UPDATE

After class discussion, I came to have a better understanding of how to tell whether or not global norms have changed for an issue. If countries have some kind of identifiable feelings of shame (that they didn't have before) with regard to the issue, then the norms are changing. For example, a state might try to hide their use of child soldiers, or justify it. The feelings and openness levels are changing . . . a stigma is applied, even if behavior is not actually changed.

As early as 2002 Burma was denying the use of child soldiers (even thought this was clearly not true).

In 2007 Sierra Leone, Liberia, Congo, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Sudan and Somalia were some of 58 countries that approved the "Paris Commitments" which commits them to ending child soldiering and recruiting. Of course, approving this pledge may not actually change any behaivior, but these states are interested in appearing as if they are capitulating which suggests serious norm changes.

I will continue searching the internet looking for other such examples.

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The issue of child soldiers is on the global agenda, and some political change has already been achieved. A campaign led by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers (which includes such major international human rights and humanitarian organizations as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Save the Children, and others) successfully negotiated the adoption of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child which raises the age of compulsory recruitment to 18, and the age of voluntary recruitment to 16. Please read through the “timeline” blog entry below for an overview of legislation and activism on the child soldiers issue. This timeline is a work in progress and I hope to develop it as my research continues. For now it will provide you with a framework to understand the discussion.

In class we created our own “global agenda-cycle” which incorporates ideas from all of our readings on TANs (transnational advocacy networks) and agenda setting. We came up with general a general structure for how a “problem” turns into political change:

Social/Political Conditions --> Problem Definition --> Issue Definition --> Issue Adoption --> Advocacy/Campaign --> New Global Norms --> Political Change

I argue that Child Soldiers is concurrently in the New Global Norms and Political Change stages of the global agenda-cycle. Extensive campaigns, coalitions and advocacy in the 1990s led to political changes in the late 1990s and the early 2000s. While political change has come about (namely the raising of the age of compulsory recruitment from 15 to 18), the behavior of many groups using child soldiers has not changed. In addition, there has been little enforcement of the new policies adopted. Keck and Sikkink describe the way advocacy creates new global norms as such, “When a state recognizes the legitimacy of international interventions and changes its domestic behavior in response to international pressure, it reconstitutes the relationship between the state, its citizens, and international actors (K&S, 37).” If we accept this as the way that global norms change, and we use “state” interchangeably with parties participating in conflicts, then we can see that global norms are in the process of changing for the issue of Child Soldiers.

Child Soldiers began to be prominent in the 1990s as the UN and NGOs picked up the cause and began to try and negotiate what age would define a “child” soldier. This led to changes in international law, and to a global norm shift. The Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court now defines conscription of children under the age of 15 into direct participation in hostility as a crime. The Optional Protocol has been adopted. Does this mean that the global norms have changed? Have states changed their domestic behavior? Unfortunately the UN Security Council is still scrambling to pass resolutions that will try to monitor continued child soldiering, because not every state has changed its behavior. New Global Norms are still being sought after and enacted, and it may be awhile before things have truly changed.

How salient is the issue of child soldiers? On the cluster map of link connections (shown below) of the Child Soldiers network, the South African Government website has a link in the network but no other governments show up. Compared with the AIDs/HIV cluster map which has at least 4 major governments showing up on the link map, this is a significantly lower figure. Governments are not linking to the child soldier campaign, so clearly domestic behavior has not changed as much as with regard to AIDs/HIV. I would argue that this makes the issues of Child Soldiers slightly less salient than AIDs/HIV and other issues (for example, those that are on the UN’s list of Millennium Goals). However, the progress and importance of the child soldier issue is quite high and is focused on quite prominently in the Children and Armed Conflict category. The link network is dense, and the advocacy network is active and involved.

As I stated in my comment on our CIVIC blog I believe that CIVIC is approaching the Issue Adoption stage, but needs to refine its Problem and Issue Definitions. Luckily issues do not appear to need to follow a linear path, and re-framing can be a constant. At the moment the salience of the issue of “child soldiers” is much higher than that of amends to civilians or civilians in conflict more generally. CIVIC is much earlier in the process and their issue has not had the chance to gain such renown.