Paper short abstract:

This communication presents the results of a study - based on written documents related to child soldiers in the DRC - which highlights the figures of childhood within the discourse of humanitarian child protection actors, and explores the evolution of recommended policies and programs.

Paper long abstract:

Through this communication, I will present the results of a research I realized recently on child protection in the framework of humanitarian aid and development intervention, on the specific case of "child soldiers" in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Based on an analysis of key documents elaborated by international and national organizations involved in child protection - such as international and national legal framework, United Nations security council resolutions, International Criminal Court trial minutes, DDR National Programme, programmatic guidelines, training manuals, assessment and evaluation reports, etc. - the study highlights the various stakes and values that frame the interventions, the representations of war and childhood to which the stakeholders refer, as well as the recommended policies and programs. The exploration of actor's discourses is done on two modes: one that bears a synchronic perspective and shows the paradigms of intervention, another one that bears a diachronic perspective and shows the evolution of policies and programs according to their level of success or failure and to the local and global socio-political contexts. Emerge from these discourse: on one hand, evolutive figures of childhood associated with representations of child soldiers, and stakes and values of child protection actors (from the vulnerability attached to the figure of victim to the agency allowed by a rights-based approach); on the other hand, diverse evolutive modalities of intervention that form a "praxis" of children's rights in this specific context.