Author Archives: Stacey Hynd

About Stacey Hynd

Stacey Hynd is senior lecturer in African History and co-director of the Centre for Imperial and Global History at the University of Exeter. She has previously worked on crime, punishment, and the death penalty in British colonial Africa. Her current research is on histories of child soldiering in twentieth-century Africa, with recent work published in Comparative Studies in Society and History, Gender and History, and Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry.

Constructing the Child Soldier Crisis: Violence, Victimhood, and the Development of Transnational Advocacy against the Recruitment and Use of Children in Conflict, circa 1970–2000

Abstract: This article explores why the figure of the child soldier as an abused and exploited victim of war erupted to the forefront of humanitarian and human rights advocacy in the 1990s, arguing that a humanitarian calculus of concern constructed this “child soldier crisis.” It analyzes the structural and contingent factors that drove the development of transnational advocacy from initial concerns in 1969–71 to the 2000 Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict. The article highlights the successful campaigning tactics of these Continue reading → Continue reading →