The Pitfalls and Potential of the Systematic Collection of Data on Child Soldier Recruitment

Abstract

The recruitment of children to be used as soldiers by conflict actors continues to be a regular occurrence globally and is associated with numerous negative effects. The debatable efficacy of current efforts to combat child recruitment gives rise to the idea that scholars and policymakers should cultivate preventive tools, including the development of early warning systems. However, such development has been hampered by the difficulties associated with collecting precise and systematic large-scale data. In this study, we discuss three important pitfalls related to data collection and provide several potentials for overcoming these challenges in the development of early warning alerts.