ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the issue of children’s rights of self-defence and armed resistance in the context of mass violence such as genocide, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries millions of people – men, women, and children – have been murdered in genocides and other forms of mass violence. In all these instances state actors and or their proxies conduct widespread and systematic acts of murder against vulnerable groups. These actions are often accompanied either by the collapse or the complete distortion of civil institutions that might otherwise serve to protect children. Many communities which have been targets of mass violence have often resorted to self-help, often organising resistance groups, militias, guerrilla groups, and other modes of armed resistance. These resistance groups have frequently contained youngsters, usually teenagers. But despite the fact that these youngsters are targeted for death, their involvement in self-defence, especially armed self-defence, is typically regarded as a violation of laws that prohibit recruiting child soldiers. All this raises the issue of exactly what rights children have to participate in their own self-defence, and if such rights exist, what are the individual and/or organisational frameworks in which these rights can be appropriately exercised.
