Insurgency Produces Child Soldiers: The Case of Sri Lanka

After the fall of Berlin wall in 1989 and the dissolution of Soviet Union in 1990, the post-cold war period, it was highly hoped, will be more peaceful, stable, tension-less, and war-less. But surprisingly, the emergence of insurgency, the product of cold war in the opinion of many, in different parts of the globe, particularly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America is posing threats to peace and security at national, regional, and global level in the 21st century. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, wounded, and displaced in especially conflicting zones. Political, economic, and social development processes are facing a lot of obstacles. Violence and insecurity are dominating the international discourse. But the most concern for the international community is the recruitment of children in national army as well as insurgent groups. The number of child soldiers whose age is under 15-18 is engaged in some 36 wars with the estimated number between 200,000 and 500,000. This paper will examine the hypothesis: insurgency leads to rise of child soldiers. In this paper, we shall try to answer three fundamental questions: (i) what factors are responsible for child soldiering in Sri Lanka? (ii) How does insurgency contribute to rise of a large volume of child soldiers? (iii) How can child soldiering be prevented? We have taken the case of many countries to assess the hypothesis but specially focusing on the case of Sri Lanka, which has been experiencing insurgency since 1983and where the use of child sliders is very high.