Child Soldiers in Africa

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In Child Soldiers in Africa Alcinda Honwana brings her first-hand experience with former child soldiers of Angola and Mozambique to shed light on how children are recruited, what they encounter, and how they come to terms with what they have done. Honwana looks at the role of local communities in healing and rebuilding the lives of these children. She also examines the efforts undertaken by international organizations to support these wartime casualties and enlightens the reader on the obstacles faced by these organizations. Young people have been at the forefront of political conflict in many parts of the world, even when it has turned violent. In some conflicts, for a variety of reasons, including coercion, poverty, or the seductive nature of violence, young children become killers before they are able to grasp the complexities of morality. Yet it has been only in the past ten years that this component of warfare has captured the attention of the world. Images of boys carrying guns and ammunition are now commonplace as they flash across television screens and appear on the front pages of newspapers. Less often, but equally disturbingly, stories of girls pressed into the service of militias surface in the media. A major concern today is how to reverse the damage done to the thousands of children who have become victims but also agents of wartime atrocities. In Child Soldiers in Africa Alcinda Honwana brings her firsthand experience with children of Angola and Mozambique as well as her study of the phenomenon for the United Nations and the Social Science Research Council to shed light on how children are recruited, what they encounter, and how they come to terms with what they have done. Honwana looks at the role of local communities in healing and rebuilding the lives of these children. She also examines the efforts undertaken by international organizations to support these wartime casualties and enlightens the reader on the obstacles faced by such organizations. Alcinda Honwana is Program Director at the Social Science Reseach Council, Children in Armed Conflict Program.