Children are defined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child as people under the age of 18. Youth, although commonly used to describe the age group between 15–25, is not a term recognized in legislation designed to protect children. It has, however, become a concept employed by regimes and rebels alike to mobilize Africa’s young population for political and military ends. African youth are caught in the chasm between childhood and the unattainable social, political and economic status that would define them as adults. Deprived of educational opportunities and livelihoods, youth are actively mobilized by politicians and armed groups alike, who recognize that their alliance is valuable and their enmity dangerous. The militarization of disaffected young people, of which the problem of child soldiers is only a small part, originates with the idea that youth constitute “potential”: a commodity that can and has been plundered alongside natural resources and public funds to serve the agendas of warfare.
This essay is a brief exploration of the ways in which youth are mobilized to support political and military agendas, and how the construct of youth has been employed for political change. It suggests that a clearer understanding of these dynamics is necessary if peace-building interventions such as disarmament, demobilization and reintegration and post conflict recovery efforts are to be sustainable. It also recommends that demobilization (or more accurately demilitarisation), in effect, needs to refer back to mobilization and specifically to the structural conditions that turn young populations into seemingly bottomless recruitment pools. The conclusion is that youth have been perceived as a commodity for plunder, and that the only way for this problem of ‘instrumentalization’ to be corrected is to both guarantee children’s rights and ensure meaningful participation of children and youth in decision-making.
©African Security Review