In order to see if the factors identified in Chapter 3 have the predicted effect, I created four measures of child soldier use. This approach proxies the level of norm violation in regards to recruitment. Using any child soldiers is normatively bad, but using a small number of 17 year olds is qualitatively different than routinely recruiting
thousands of pre-teens. This multi-faceted approach makes possible a more nuanced evaluation of norm violation.
Definition of a Child Soldier
The definition of a child soldier is surrounded by debate and fraught with
difficulty. In order to capture the strongest signal of appropriate behavior, I use the most widely agreed upon concept in the IO/NGO framework. The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (OPCAC) was adopted by the UN General
Assembly in 2000, and entered into force in 2002. The protocol sets the minimum age for recruitment at 18, but offers some leniency (such as time and resource considerations) for states that recruit over the age of 15. More recently, the Paris Commitments and
Principles was a major international conference sponsored by UNICEF and the Secretary General's Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict. The resulting
agreement, "Paris Principles," offers a comprehensive definition that recognizes standard age thresholds and the a wide variety of roles for youths. I adopt this definition as most
appropriate. It is the definition used in the Coalition reports, although they readily admit that "there is no precise definition" (Coalition 2008: 411). As precise conceptual
definitions are crucial for systematic analysis of a phenomenon, I use the words contained in the most recent report:
Any person below the age of 18 who is a member of or attached to government armed forces or any other regular or irregular armed force or armed political group, whether or not an armed conflict exists. Child soldiers perform a range of tasks including: participation in combat, laying mines and explosives; scouting, spying, acting as decoys, couriers or guards; training, drill or other preparations; logistics and support functions, portering, cooking and domestic labour. Child soldiers may also be subjected to sexual slavery or other forms of sexual abuse (411).
Operationalization
Child soldier use is difficult to capture objectively (Pederson and Sommerfelt 2007; Ames 2010). Therefore, I do not claim to rule out child soldier use, only that there either is or is not enough evidence to conclude a group is violating a critical international norm. The primary dependent variable explored here is child soldiers, which is a
dichotomous measure that indicates whether or not there is evidence (0=not
used/mentioned, 1=used/mentioned). This process revealed 8 rebellions that were not mentioned in the Coalition Reports at all. After careful secondary source research on each rebellion, and in light of the thoroughness of the Coalition reports to identify all
documented cases of child soldier use by armed groups, these 8 rebellions were coded 0. An additional process produces the three remaining variables that capture norm violation. If child soldier use was documented, I record the youngest reported age of the
children. Age is a continuous variable ranging from 5-17 years. If there was no mention of a youngest age whatsoever, the datum is coded as missing.22
Going beyond the Coalition's definition, the third measure records if children were used at a lower age threshold: younger than 15. This cutoff is consistent with the original text of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (UN 1991) and the 2008 Child Soldier Accountability Act (US Congress 2008), which define child soldiers as persons fourteen years old or younger. Based on this information, I estimated the typical age at which children were being recruited. Child soldiers-15 is coded as "1" if the typical age was less than 15, or "0" if either child soldiers were not used or if the age appeared to be 15 or above. For example, concerning the RUF, the Coalition reports, “[o]ver 50 percent of people who suffered forced recruitment were abducted at the age of 15 or younger, and over 28 per cent at the age of 12 or younger" (2008: 299). I coded this as "1." Afghanistan’s Northern alliance was coded at the higher age threshold. While they used soldiers younger than 15, this does not appear to be the norm given the information reviewed. “Boys between the ages of 14 and 18 were used as spies, messengers, porters, security guards and cooks” (Coalition 2004: 162). This is an imperfect system, as I was only able to estimate the typical age if at least some age was given (51.5%). Thus, if there was no information on ages and child soldier use occurred, I can only say that evidence existed for soldiers under the age of 18. Table 1 offers a summary of the descriptive statistics for the dependent variables.
--Table 1 here--
22 One consistent concern with using age as a threshold for determining child soldier use is the notion age
is culturally subjective. In some cultures, children are considered adults much sooner (Pederson and Sommerfelt 2007). While this concern is valid, a quick look at the within-country variation reveals that many instances of rebels using child soldiers occur in the same country where other groups do not recruit children, where voting ages are high (18 years) or age of consent matches global standards (16-18 years).
I include an ordinal variable child soldiers-ord to measure the extent of the violation. This variable was coded as "0" if there was no documented evidence that the group used child soldiers. If there was evidence of child soldier use but no reported age, this variable was coded as 1 to indicate that the entry at least met the Coalition's
definition of a child soldier as a person under the age of 18. Reported usage of under 15 was recorded as 2, which represents the more extreme cutoff. If the youngest reported age seemed like an aberration and did not represent the typical age category of the children being used, I made the decision to recode this as "1." For example, the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) in Nepal were reported to use child soldiers, "the youngest being 12 years old." However, I felt it necessary to consider "[t]he general practice of the PLA was to enroll children above the age of 16" (Coalition 2008: 274). In total, 14 similar decisions were made. This should not be problematic because the average discrepancy was 2.5 years away from the 15-year objective cutoff. The mode was just one year. Also, this alteration works against finding significance for my hypotheses as groups using low children at lower ages will more likely be counted at the higher threshold if there is a problem. The PLA example was the most extreme subjective recoding. Figure 4 provides a general summary of the evidence uncovered.
As a final measure of child soldier use and norm compliance, I include a measure that records the lowest reported age if child soldiering is observed. This variable, age, ranges from 5 to 17 years with a mean of 11 and standard deviation of 2.9. There are 53 observations. From this measure I can determine, beyond dichotomy, the extent to which the norm against child soldier use is being violated.