No Longer Invisible: Girl Soldiering and the Consequences for Conflict

• In Event: Gender and Violence

Abstract

Until recently, studies on the recruitment and use of child soldiers have largely ignored the gender of child recruits. This is surprising as independent assessments have identified that upwards of 40 percent of all rebel groups include girl soldiers. Further, while scholars have begun to examine the consequences of child soldiering by non-state armed groups, our understanding of how variation in the types of child recruits might impact the dynamics of civil conflict remains under-explored. The following research offers a novel contribution to the literature by examining the effects of girl soldiering on civil conflict duration, severity, and outcome. We argue that girls are uniquely vulnerable during civil war and that those conflicts which see girl soldiers are likely to lead to more negative outcomes than civil wars where they are absent in rebellion. Employing newly available data on girl soldiering across 321 conflict-dyad-periods from 1989-2013 we show that those conflicts which see girl soldiers used by rebels are longer than those which see only boy soldiers or no child soldiers at all. In addition, conflict severity increases when girls are used in direct combat roles. Lastly, we identify that girl soldiering decreases the probability that rebel groups will reach a negotiated agreement with the state. Our findings underscore the importance of considering gender in the child soldier literature and offer important policy implications for the study of armed conflict and human security.

Authors

• Christopher Michael Faulkner, United States Naval War College

• Jaclyn m Johnson, University of Kentucky