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The poster child for the international movement to end child soldiering is a dark-skinned pre-pubescent boy with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder, a victim of abuse who goes on to victimize members of his community through acts of atrocity, a weapon of the adult who forcibly recruited him and completely devoid of agency. Mark A. Drumbl, professor of law and director of the Transnational Law Institute at Washington and Lee University, aims in his book to dismantle this image and asks whether it accurately informs international legal and policy responses to this practice.
His findings reveal a dark reality - an emaciated body of international law and policy that has been fed for years by an unreal monolith portraying all child soldiers1 as "faultless passive victims". Accordingly, adult recruiters and users of child soldiers are the exclusive targets of international criminal prosecutions, while the prosecution of child soldiers for the commission of atrocities is discouraged. Further, transitional justice mechanisms are designed in a fairly uniform manner and often encourage local communities to forgive child soldiers en masse and unconditionally because it is assumed that their conduct as part of an armed force or group can never be voluntary. And yet while the practice of child soldiering has declined considerably in recent years, tens of thousands of children continue to be associated with armed forces or groups. In addition, many but not all efforts to rehabilitate and reintegrate child soldiers are successful. Why is this and what can be done? In impressive prose, Mark Drumbl critically examines the assumptions that underlie the dominant image of child soldiers to expose a vast array of subgroups. His premise is that only if international law and policy reimagine the practice of child soldiering in a manner that is more reflective of these �
