Child Prisoners in War

In recent years children’s recruitment and use to participate in hostilities has become a matter of increasing international concern. Yet the rules specifically governing their participation, including those regulating their treatment when captured by an adverse party to a conflict, are sparse. A disinclination to face the fact that, despite the increasingly stringent legal prohibitions governing their recruitment into armed forces and groups, children continue to take part in hostilities may lie behind the paucity of legal rules governing their participation. Moreover, the fact that most use of child soldiers takes place in non-traditional armed conflicts and is by non-State actors can give rise to difficulties regarding the rules applicable to such conflicts and the legal status of child combatants within them. This paper analyses the current legal regulation of the treatment of child prisoners in war, before examining how child soldiers have in practice been treated in the ongoing global « war on terror ».