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Reintegrating and Healing Child Soldiers

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Child Soldiers and Restorative Justice

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Abstract

Intervention programmes aimed at addressing the plight of child soldiers are multiple and diverse. Most deal with a post-conflict context, after belligerent children have exited fighting factions and are returned to their families and society at large. This is a result of ongoing conflict that sustains the demand for military personnel and shatters the chance of underage fighters leaving military operations. The following aspects of interventions are explored here: the general Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) perspectives, DDR in the DRC and its challengers, the phenomenon of self-demobilisation, and the impact of healing in prevention of reoffending.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The concept of “Secret society members” refers to elements of the community that constitute the custodians of traditional and ancestral customs that ought to be observed by all community members.

  2. 2.

    Mato Oput is a process of administering bitter roots to ex-combatant perpetrators in order to cleanse them from the impurities of war and help them reintegrate into society.

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  1. International Centre of Nonviolence, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa

    Jean Chrysostome K. Kiyala

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Kiyala, J.C.K. (2019). Reintegrating and Healing Child Soldiers. In: Child Soldiers and Restorative Justice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90071-1_4

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