1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910808044003321

Autore

Honwana Alcinda

Titolo

Child Soldiers in Africa / / Alcinda Honwana

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Philadelphia : , : University of Pennsylvania Press, , [2011]

©2006

ISBN

1-283-21227-7

9786613212276

0-8122-0477-8

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (212 p.)

Collana

The Ethnography of Political Violence

Disciplina

355.0083096

Soggetti

SOCIAL SCIENCE

Children's Studies

Child soldiers - Africa

Children and war - Africa

Children and violence - Africa

Political violence - Africa

Social Welfare & Social Work

Social Sciences

Child & Youth Development

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Civil Wars in Mozambique and Angola -- 2. Historical and Social Contexts -- 3. Recruitment and Initiation -- 4. Young Women -- 5. Healing Child Soldiers and Their Communities -- 6. Looking to the Future and Learning from the Past -- Notes -- Index -- Acknowledgments

Sommario/riassunto

Young people have been at the forefront of political conflict in many parts of the world, even when it has turned violent. In some of those situations, for a variety of reasons, including coercion, poverty, or the seductive nature of violence, children become killers before they are able to grasp the fundamentals of morality. It has been only in the past ten years that this component of warfare has captured the attention of the world. Images of boys carrying guns and ammunition are now



commonplace as they flash across television screens and appear on the front pages of newspapers. Less often, but equally disturbingly, stories of girls pressed into the service of militias surface in the media.A major concern today is how to reverse the damage done to the thousands of children who have become not only victims but also agents of wartime atrocities. In Child Soldiers in Africa, Alcinda Honwana draws on her firsthand experience with children of Angola and Mozambique, as well as her study of the phenomenon for the United Nations and the Social Science Research Council, to shed light on how children are recruited, what they encounter, and how they come to terms with what they have done. Honwana looks at the role of local communities in healing and rebuilding the lives of these children. She also examines the efforts undertaken by international organizations to support these wartime casualties and enlightens the reader on the obstacles faced by such organizations.