The War on Children's Rights : Civilian Support and Rebel Groups' Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers

Sammanfattning: In an attempt to deepen the understanding of rebel groups' recruitment and use of child sodiers, this paper theorizes that a greater dependence on civilian support increases the cost of systematically recruiting and using child soldiers, leading to a decreased likelihood of them engaging in this recruitment pattern. This would be a result of rebel groups receiving resources mainly from a civilian supprt base, and therefore adjusting their conduct in order to obtain the support. In order to investigate this causal mechanism, a structured focused comparison is applied to the cases Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement (SPLM/A) between 2000 and 2011. Although the results provide some evidence for the proposed theory, more research should further test the causal mechanism by providing more data and applying it to other cases.