Child Soldiers, Justice and Peacebuilding: A Dialectical Analysis of the Conventional Criminal Justice System and African Indigenous Jurisprudence

Justice processes involving childrenChildren accused of war-related crimes and other violations of international humanitarian and human rightsHuman rights laws, as a result of their participation in hostilities, often end in contested outcomes because of the child soldiersChild soldiers’ paradoxical portrayals as victims, perpetrators and heroes. Similarly, the lack of justiceJustice endangers security and peacePeace processes in war-affected communities. While domestic and international legislation set to adjudicate accusations levelled against children associated with hostilities grapples with striking a balance between the violations of the child’s rights (unlawful recruitments), serving the interests of justice for victims of child soldiers’ violent acts, and child soldiers’ criminal responsibility, some countries in Sub-Saharan AfricaSub-Saharan Africa have made headway in holding child soldiersChild soldiers accountable, attaining justiceJustice for victims via traditional and restorativeRestorative approaches and paving the way for community post-conflict sustainable peacePeace with child soldiers. The refusal of the ICC to consider the Ugandan traditional mechanisms of accountability in the sentencing of Dominic OngwenDominic Ongwen, the abducted child soldier of the Lord’s Resistance Army who perpetrated war crimes and crimes against humanityHumanity, has raised serious concerns about the future of traditional or indigenous jurisprudence in handling justice for former child soldiersChild soldiers. This chapter engages a dialectic argument drawn from literary research to argue for a justice model that takes into account cultural context, traditional values and the precedent of African jurisprudence, a compounded interplay of restorativeRestorative retributivism and restorative sanctions against the logic of the mainstream conventional criminal justice systemConventional criminal justice system.