Return to War in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains

This brief looks at what is driving the fighting in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains. With Sudan facing financial collapse, economic normalization must be part of negotiations with Khartoum to end the war in the Nuba Mountains and promote democratization throughout Sudan. Summary points: 1. The response to the renewed war in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains has been • driven largely by a human rights and humanitarian crisis. 2. The crisis will continue indefinitely without a political agreement that acknowledges the Nuba rebellion is self-sustaining and reflects a wider malaise within the new Republic of Sudan. 3. With Sudan facing financial collapse, economic normalization must be part of negotiations with Khartoum to end the war in the Nuba Mountains and promote democratization throughout Sudan. Readmore

Selective Outrage: The Dangers of Children's DDR in Eastern DRC

This article offers a critique of the dominant approach to children’s disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Drawing on narratives of young people who were formerly associated with armed groups, the article highlights some of the mistaken assumptions of the discourse and practice of children’s DDR, and shows how far removed they are from young people’s actual experience. I argue that the global outrage against the “child recruitment” phenomenon is dangerously selective, and that it obscures the entrenched structural violence, which deeply and negatively affects the lives of young people in eastern DRC today. Since the mid-1990s, the use and recruitment of children by armed groups is an issue that has dominated international discourse on children’s experience of violent conflict. From the 1996 report by Graça Machel on the impact of conflict on children,1 to the 1998 adoption of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute) codifying the use and recruitment of children under the age of 15 years as a war crime, to the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict (OPAC), adopted in 2000, global attention has mobilized forcefully behind the “child soldier” phenomenon Readmore

Gender-Based Insecurity and Opportunities for Peace: Supporting the Reintegration of Young War-Affected Mothers

In conflicts throughout the world, armed forces and groups recruit children to fight, maintain their camps, perform labor and be used for sexual purposes. The experiences of children associated with armed forces and groups (CAAFAG) are not uniform, nor can there be a uniform approach to helping them when the conflict is over. This article examines the gendered experiences of girls prior to recruitment, during their time with the fighting forces, through disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) processes, and in their communities after formal DDR has ended. We also present some of the experiences of the Participatory Action Research (PAR) Study with Young Mothers in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Northern Uganda—a study conducted predominantly with former CAAFAG which used a highly participatory methodology to help participants attain community-based reintegration. In the PAR study young mother participants took a central role in the design and implementation of their reintegration process. A mixture of self-help style psychosocial support and livelihood support were critical to their success. As this population had exceptionally low social status, lacked confidence and self-respect, and did not have rudimentary economic skills at the start, social support and community mobilization were critical in laying the groundwork for livelihood activities and facilitating the sustainability of these activities. Readmore

The International Legal Framework for the Protection of Children in Armed Conflict

The protection of children in armed conflict has always been high on the international political agenda. The Security Council has a special working group which pays specific attention each year to the most serious violations of children’s rights in armed conflict: the recruitment and use of children by armed forces or armed groups, the killing and maiming of children, rape and sexual violence, abduction, attacks on schools and hospitals, and the denial of humanitarian access by parties to armed conflict. Read more