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Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This study explores how selected West African war novels employ non-realist narrative modes to portray disruptions in the child’s development into adulthood. The novels considered are Chris Abani’s Song for Night (2007), Ahmadou Kourouma’s Allah is Not Obliged (2006), Uzodinma Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation (2005) and Delia Jarrett-Macauley’s Moses, Citizen and Me (2005). These novels strain at the conventions of realism as a consequence of the attempt to represent the disruptions in child development as a result of the upheavals of war. A core proposition of the study is to present why the authors in question are obliged to employ non-realist modes in representing disrupted childhoods that reflect the social and cultural disorder attendant upon war. The dissertation also asks pertinent questions regarding the ideological effect of these narrative strategies and the effect of the particular stylistic idiosyncrasies of each of the authors in figuring childhood in postcolonial Africa. The novels in question employ surrealism, the absurd, the grotesque and magical realism, in presenting the first person narratives of children in war situations, or the reflections of adult narrators on children affected by war. This study further analyses the ways the aesthetic modes employed by these authors underscore, in particular, children’s experiences of war. Through strategic use of specific literary techniques, these authors highlight questions of vulnerability, powerlessness and violence on children, as a group that has been victimised and co-opted into violence. The study further considers how these narrative transformations in the representations of children in novels, capture transformations in ideas about childhood in postcolonial Africa.

This paper investigates the view that non-governmental organizations have on childhood and child soldiers, and what its implications on the rehabilitation and reintegration of former child soldiers can be. Four documents produced by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers are examined by using qualitative discourse analysis. Postcolonial theory and new sociology of childhood are the main theoretical frameworks applied to the study. The study finds that the documents share a certain view of childhood, and that the aim of rehabilitation is to reproduce the child in that image. As the discourse may not be shared with local community, it is necessary to become aware of the different discourses and attempt to reconcile them.

Recently, narrating the experience of the underage soldier in the Second World War has become a major part of the discourses about the Second World War. Particularly, an empathetic approach to the experience of the underage soldier during the war is a new means of understanding the war. This thesis examines this development in two novels comparing and contrasting the German and the African collective memories of the war: Ralf Rothmann’s "Im Frühling Sterben" (2015) and Biyi Bandele’s "Burma Boy" (2006). Whereas, the thesis can show differences in how the child soldier topic contributes to each cultural memory of the war, e.g. it allows for the entry of the West African story of the war into public discourse, the child soldier topic links both discourses by emphasizing universal human tendencies in war, which can be seen in concepts such as sympathy and empathy, guilt and responsibility, as well as multidirectional memory. / February 2017

The main purpose of this thesis was to give a general overview of the problem of child soldiers and their protection among international law conventions and among regional law agreements with the focus on the African continent. The use of child soldiers in armed conflict is qualified as one of the worst forms of child labour.The majority of child soldiers are active in Africa and, to a lesser extent, in the Middle East and Asia. Besides introduction and conclusion, the study consists of five chapters. The first chapter describes the protection of child soldiers on the international level. Therefore it is focused on individual conventions, especially on Geneva Conventions, Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on a Communications Procedure, but as well on the International Labour Convention No. 182 or the Rome Statute. The soft law represents Paris principles. Discussed is particularly the question of the age limit for child participation in armed conflict. The second chapter is concerned with the international control mechanisms, resulting from the above-mentioned...

This work is devoted to international law, particularly humanitarian law and human rights with emphasis on international legal instruments governing the position of children serving in the armed forces. In this work are discussed various international conventions, as well as mechanisms for the protection of child soldiers. The first chapter defines the position of child soldiers and the specifics of their involvement in military conflicts. The decisive criteria for the involvement of children in government armed forces or non-state army is age. Furthermore there is described into more details the mechanism of conscription into the army. There is difference between voluntary and forced recruitment of child soldiers. The various international legal instruments are analyzed more in detail in chapter two. The issue of Child soldiers is addressed with both the rules of humanitarian law, specifically the Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions and Human rights conventions. Special attention is paid to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict. Analyzed is the only regional convention addressing the problem of child soldiers -the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. The issue of child recruitment is also...

Personnage de l'entre-deux mettant à mal les frontières communément admises entre l'enfance et l'âge adulte, entre la puissance et la vulnérabilité, entre la victime et le bourreau, l'enfant-soldat est une figure marquante de notre contemporanéité. Il n'est donc guère étonnant de le voir devenir un personnage littéraire. Cette étude a cherché à déterminer, dans une approche comparatiste, quel traitement les oeuvres littéraires réservaient à ce personnage et la manière dont elles en faisaient une figure singulière. Loin de simplement reprendre un répertoire exogène de significations et prolonger la figure médiatique de l'enfant-soldat, loin de miser uniquement sur la violence de son hybridité, les romans africains anglophones et francophones construisent une figure de témoin. Ce que l'étude a souhaité rendre visible, ce sont alors les visions tant historiographiques, éthiques que politiques que porte l'enfant-soldat témoin des guerres civiles africaines / As an in-between character questioning the usually admitted borders between childhood and adulthood, power and vulnerability, victim and executioner, the child soldier is a gripping figure of our contemporaneity. It is thus not surprising he became a literary character. In a comparative approach, this study has sought to determine the literary works treatment of this character and how they turn it into a singular figure. Far from simply resorting to an exogenous list of significations and extending the media figure of the child soldier, far from only focusing on the violence of its hybridity, English and French African novels build a figure of a witness. This study has therefore been interested in revealing the historiographicalas well as the ethical and political visions of the child soldier who experiences African civil wars

in English - The Status of Child Soldiers in International Refugee Law The main aim of this thesis is to investigate to what extent the international refugee law protects children who flee from armed forces recruitment. The chosen problem was solved using the question whether it is possible to grant a refugee status according to the 1951 Refugee Convention, or a status complementing the refugee status according to regional regulatory instruments, to a child who flees from armed forces recruitment. The conception of the refugee status was divided into constituent elements and it was considered whether children who flee from recruitment into armed forces and former child soldiers comply with attributes of these elements. The first examined element is the inclusion clause. In this part, the thesis examined the following questions: Is recruitment of children into armed forces and their use in hostilities a form of persecution? Can such children be considered a particular social group? Can rejection of participation in armed forces by such children be considered holding a political opinion? Is there a causal link between persecution and membership to a particular social group or between persecution and holding a political opinion in the context of children who flee from recruitment into armed forces?...

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The research aims to understand how female former child soldiers describe the ones who had power over them in the bush of Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) to understand how patriarchal beliefs in a society affect vulnerable women. The researcher wishes to enhance the importance of working against patriarchal beliefs and stopping child abductions for the sake of young women’s empowerment. The impact of the deep-rooted problem of patriarchy should be researched concerning child soldiers since they are vulnerable and are also the future female population. How they get affected by power relations early in their lives should be examined since they are a part of the future which needs to be brought into empowerment and gender equality and not enhance the patriarchal beliefs. Therefore, the attitudes of former female child soldiers have been examined through a qualitative single case study to see how the gender gap and patriarchal beliefs mirror their experiences in the bush and could affect their empowerment. The patriarchal theory, feminist theory and empowerment theory will help analyze and discuss the findings of the data. The data was collected from stories of four female former child soldiers which were coded, memo written and interpreted. By doing this research the consequences of patriarchal beliefs are enhanced through how hidden parts of society are exposed to gender exploitation due to their vulnerability. The findings show that women’s attitudes towards the ones in power do affect to what extent they experience exploitation and gender-based violence. The result implies that women in developing patriarchal societies are having different attitudes towards empowerment. Ugandan society and other societies need help to transition out of patriarchal beliefs which could lead to potential peace and eventually develop a secure and equal society.