Children's Involvement in War: Historical and Social Contexts

Alcinda Honwana, a scholar of international development, has just completed a book on the use of child soldiers in conflicts around the world. Her work focuses on Mozambique and Angola and points to aspects of neoliberalism and structural adjustment programs that have disrupted the abilities of families and communities to introduce children to and train them in the responsibilities of young adulthood. Societies with large numbers of children drawn into militias have the usual terrible post-conflict problems, but, in addition, have to reintegrate into useful life a potentially nihilistic generation of young people whose de facto rites of passage have been nothing short of diabolical.-M.S.