Child Soldiering Process

This book is a criminological approach on an understanding of a specific aspect of modern warfare. Children havce been conscripted in several war torn countries where armed groups abduct children to force them to fight for their causes. Our analysis focuses on the process from which normal children enter armed group up to the moment they become gross human right violators. The question here is not to determine what they do as child soldiers or whether they are responsible or nor, but rather to broaden the understanding of the entire process that transforms normal kids into criminals. For this, different psychological theorie help us to comprehend the roles of different steps of the transformation and how those steps shape the understanding as well as the behavior of the children. An important attention is devoted to showing the specificities of the child soldier's training since it aims to infuse extreme obedience and fear into them. We analyse the extend to which psychological mechanisms such as rationalization or cognitive dissonance affect the recruited children's psyche and how this impacts their behavior.