ABSTRACT
According to widely cited reports from the relevant United Nations agencies and NGOs, millions of children have died in or as a result of wars over the last 20 years; many more have been grievously maimed and traumatised. Children are the main victims of war. They are also some of its actors: at the time of writing, it is estimated that there are several dozens of thousands of child soldiers worldwide, some of whom commit atrocities. Notwithstanding the crimes which they commit, those children too are victims. We can all agree with the rough and ready intuition that the victimisation of children in war is morally egregious – more egregious still than the victimisation of adults. My aim in this paper is twofold: to provide strong philosophical support for this intuition, and to highlight some important ethical issues arising from children’s involvement in and exposure to war. I defend the view that killing children, whether intentionally or not, is morally worse, other things equal, than killing adults. I then tackle the torturously difficult issue of child soldiers: I defend the standard prohibition on child enlistment (whether forcible or not), and argue that, once children have been enlisted, it is morally permissible to kill them in self- or other-defence if they commit wrongful killings.
