Reintegrating Young Combatants: do child-centred approaches leave children—and adults—behind?

Abstract

This article uses recent experience in Angola to demonstrate that young fighters were not adequately or effectively assisted after war ended in 2002. The government's framework excluded children from accessing formal disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programmes, and its subsequent attempts to target children have largely failed. More critically the case of Angola calls into question the broader effectiveness and appropriateness of child-centred DDR. First, such targeting is inappropriate to distinct post-conflict contexts and constructs a 'template child' asserted to be more vulnerable and deserving than adult ex-combatants, which does little to further the reintegration of either group, or the rights of the child in a conflict context. Second, child-centred reintegration efforts tend to deny children agency as actors in their own reintegration. Third, such efforts contribute to the normalisation of a much larger ideational and structural flaw of post-conflict peace building, wherein 'success' is construed as the reintegration of large numbers of beneficiaries back into the poverty and marginalisation that contributed to conflict in the first place.

Violent Extremist Disengagement and Reintegration: Lessons from Over 30 Years of DDR

“…Research in Angola shows that portraying children as more vulnerable than adults and focusing on child protection "did not lead to specialized assistance: it led to no assistance." 434 Children, even as old as sixteen or seventeen, like women, were "de-politicized" as a security threat and "rendered invisible." 435 In other cases, DDR support for children was underfunded and unsuitable.…”

“…434 Children, even as old as sixteen or seventeen, like women, were "de-politicized" as a security threat and "rendered invisible." 435 In other cases, DDR support for children was underfunded and unsuitable. 436 Though support has improved in recent years, children under eighteen are still usually ineligible for financial packages or vocational training as a part of DDR and are instead offered a formal education.…”

Which standards from which disciplines? A test of systematic review for designing interdisciplinary evaluations

“…Evaluators come from different academic disciplines, each of which has its own, at times contested, set of theories, methods, measures and standards (Barakat et al 2002;Berg Harpviken et al 2003;Buhmann et al 2010;Levermore 2011;McMullin 2011;Roberts et al 2010), thus complicating agreement on a single set of standards (Buhmann et al 2010;Weaver and Roberts 2010). As such, evaluation, rather than providing clarity over contested development strategies, is itself a contested topic (Barakat, Chard, and Jones 2005;Brown 2009;Levermore 2011).…”

“…Further, the instability of the non-laboratory conditions in which interventions are observed may complicate the generation of adequate data (Barakat, Chard, and Jones 2005;Barakat et al 2002;Fenn 2012). The use of 'placebo' development interventions as control groups raises ethical and practical issues (Gutlove and Thompson 2006), and the structural tendency of evaluations to focus on an intervention on the terms specified by its funder encourages insensitivity to aspects of the context that were not anticipated to be relevant at the outset of a project and to miss relevant dynamics whose timeframe exceeds that of the intervention(s) studied (Barakat, Chard, and Jones 2005;Levermore 2011;McMullin 2011).…”

“…Funders' interest in verifying 'what works' has encouraged the partial emergence of an evidence-based paradigm in development, evidenced for example, in the interest in the evaluation of development projects and useful methods to do so (Berg Harpviken et al 2003;Gauster and Isakson 2007;McMullin 2011;Percival and Sondorp 2010;Roberts et al 2010). One trend in the methodological debate highlights the establishment of the evidence-based paradigm in the medical and health sciences, based on a thorough testing of CONTACT Peter A. Tamás peter.tamas@wur.nl Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.…”