Challenging the Attempt to De-legitimize the Human Rights Claims of Child Soldier Victims of Genocidal Forcible Transfer

There is, in this author’s estimation, among segments of the contemporary academic legal and social science community, NGOs such as Amnesty International and certain others in the field working on human rights/humanitarian relief efforts; a growing tendency toward attempting to de-legitimize to an extent the human rights claims of children who have (in violation of Article 2(e) of the Genocide Convention) been forcibly transferred to armed groups committing mass atrocities and/or genocide. This is implicit in the attribution of: (1) volition and (2) criminal liability (regardless the recommendation of judicial or non-judicial accountability mechanisms for these children) to certain of these child soldiers for their commission of conflict-related atrocities perpetrated as part of armed groups committing mass atrocities and/or genocide. This trend has, on the view here, reached a point where it has erroneously become considered more politically correct, more au current academically; more astute and informed; as well as more objective and dispassionately empirically informed to maintain that child soldiers who perpetrated atrocities are, in some instances at least, fully culpable from an international criminal law perspective.