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Reasons for the use of children in conflict are examined together with international protocols against their use including the Optional Protocol to the CRC and the Cape Town Principles. There are macro, mezzo and micro level reasons why this occurs including the glorification of combat and poverty on all system levels. Some children volunteer while others are forcibly recruited. The conflicts in three countries are examined as case studies: Uganda (Lord’s Resistance Army), Colombia (FARC) and Sri Lanka (Tamil Tigers). The experience of girls involved with armed groups is examined in detail as this group historically did not receive enough attention. Services for former child soldiers are analyzed, as well as the long-lasting impacts of child soldiering. Suggestions for reducing the use of child soldiers are discussed.

This is a case study of child-volunteers ‘adopted’ by the regular forces. It traces the children's motivations, the means with which they negotiated their way to the front, their routine experiences, and their combat motivations. Children were not formally allowed at the front. However, from the beginning of the war, their presence in the field was a widespread yet spontaneous phenomenon, which the state was unable to control, relinquishing the problem of dealing with the adolescents to military commanders. The child-volunteers' assistance was often indispensable, allowing the freeing up of adults for combat duties, as well as partially compensating for serious deficiencies in communications and intelligence gathering, not to mention keeping up morale among the troops. The issues raised here include juvenile delinquency, vagabondage, economic dislocation, female combatants, and exploitation of children for military purposes.

This chapter focuses on the lack of recognition for female soldiers in Sierra Leone. Despite ample evidence that females participated in the conflict, policy makers in Sierra Leone largely refused to acknowledge these women as beneficiaries, or as subjects worthy of policy attention. The resistance to recognizing female participation in war has mainly resulted from gendered norms and assumptions associated with conjugal order, including the idea that women are naturally peaceful due to their life-giving roles, and the notion that men, as heads of households, are the decision makers and the sole political actors within armed movements. As such, female soldiers in Sierra Leone were (re)constructed as “wives,” “camp followers,” or “sex slaves” in order to desecuritize, silence, and distinguish them from securitized male soldiers.

This introductory chapter argues that female soldiers are perhaps one of the most underrepresented categories of “war-affected” citizens. In Sierra Leone—the book's case example—stories of conflict, reflected in the literature, media accounts, and international nongovernmental organization (INGO) and nongovernmental organization (NGO) reports, largely omit the participation of female soldiers. Narratives tend to focus on violent men being disarmed. These depictions of conflict stood in stark contrast to the narratives of the individuals interviewed in the country. Local social and aid workers, government officials, volunteers, and leaders of women's organizations uncovered alternative versions of the war and of the post-armed conflict period; these consistently featured female soldiers. Female soldiers dislocate predictable and simplistic gendered representations of war: they displace the typical characterization of an “African rebel” as well as perceptions about disempowered and victimized African women.

This chapter presents the ways in which empowerment is used by development and aid agencies, focusing on the reintegration programs for female soldiers of Sierra Leone as a case study. Neoliberal ideals such as individualism, responsibility, and economic discipline have shaped empowerment initiatives to a far greater extent than considerations of local input, marginalized groups, or representation. Moreover, projects advertising themselves as sources of women's empowerment—including the reintegration process in Sierra Leone—are informed by liberal understandings of conjugal order and serve to discipline subjects with explicit messages about appropriate gendered social order and legitimate behaviors. The chapter also remarks on broader issues surrounding neoliberal, largely Western-led development.

This chapter summarizes the main conclusions of the book. It argues that the evidence from recent operations suggest the appearance of a new kind of professional cohesion. However, the chapter argues that this does not mean that there is no solidarity in the professional force or that relations between soldiers are not ones of intense emotion. The chapter argues on the contrary that, typically uniting around their drills, soldiers form ‘core’ groups which are very closely bonded and whose teamwork is essential to combat performance. The chapter considers the question of female accession to ground combat roles in the light of this new cohesion. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future lines of research, highlighting logistics, the reserves, and headquarters as potentially valuable subjects of investigation.

The soldier’s language is replete with names for body parts: dick, balls, boobs (breasts), etc. Continuing an analysis of Kayla Williams’ memoir from her Iraq deployment the author asks what the ritualized repetition of certain names for body parts (“morphological marks”) does or produces in the life of the soldier. She concludes that, for the male soldier, it produces a kind of comfort, a home in language, while the same names leave the female soldier out in the cold.