Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism

Humanitarian groups characterize these new wars not as authentic political movements, but as "irrational and atavistic explosions of hatred" (162, f.n. 35), terrorism targeting civilians, in which children are deliberately manipulated by adults to join armed conflicts for the first time in history. International treaties emerged beginning with the Rome Statute of 1998 criminalizing the recruitment of child soldiers, and in 2000 with the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child banning child soldiers as lawful combatants, extending prisoner-of-war status to captured children, and protecting captured children who served as unlawful combatants (in internal conflicts within states) from the most severe legal punishments. Another double standard was created in 1977, when the Geneva Convention's Protocol I Additional was modified to create a class of privileged insurgents by giving combatant status to those fighting against colonial domination, alien occupation, and racist regimes.