This dissertation explores theory and practice in post-conflict demobilization, rehabilitation, and reintegration programs for former child soldiers in the country cases of Sierra Leone, Colombia, and Mozambique. The study examines aspects of war and violence as they impact socio-cultural norms, values, and practices, focusing on how individuals and groups interact with violence and how that interaction alters individual and group norms, values, and practices as a result. This process, termed social militarization, can lead to violence becoming a regular component of socialization. When this occurs, particularly in a context of protracted social conflict or civil war, children and youth use their agency to make sense of their environment and their options. In many cases, these young people enter the adult world of violence and gain, for the first time in their lives, the power and resources previously denied them. Moving from child responsibilities to those of the adult through violence is posited as adult/child domain shifts.
When the fighting stops, former child soldiers are expected to shift out of the adult and violent domain and re-enter the nonviolent world of the child. The peace processes aimed at child soldiers take this as their main task. The young people must then learn to reorganize themselves and their actions around peaceful norms, values, and practices, termed in the study social demilitarization. How well the post-conflict panoply of programs assist children and youth in this goal are examined and evaluated. The study details some of the problems faced by the young in the post-conflict environment, suggesting alternatives that could give these individuals power and agency through peaceful strategies. The underlying tensions between the categories of child, youth, and adult - in times of war and in times of peace - are examined throughout the text.
The country cases serve to highlight the theories of protracted social conflict, social militarization, and adult/child domain shifts. The ongoing post-conflict construction of peace as more than just not war underscores the difficulties faced by former child soldiers as they struggle to demilitarize the body, heart, and mind in uncertain, and often unforgiving circumstances.