Children, War and World Disorder in the 21st Century: A review of the theories and the literature on children's contributions to armed violence

The notion that young people, specifically young males, are inherently more inclined towards aggression and unrest has led some to claim that armed conflict is more likely in a society with a high proportion of young people. This paper evaluates this claim through a review of different literatures concerning young people, aggression and conflict, particularly focusing on findings from Africa.

The paper observes that there are a variety of problems with much of the literature:

• definitions of "youth" vary
• while there may be correlation between youth and other factors, many of the analyses fail to establish causality
• data is not adequately disaggregated by age and gender
• there is a tendency to impose Western or adult conceptions of children to interpret their actions.

The analysis then considers the contributions of numerous different theoretical frameworks to understand youth violence. These include naturalist ideas of young humans' innate aggression and cognitive incompetence, as well as environmentalist ideas of environmental stimuli, processes of socialisation, and the interaction between structural conditions and human agency.

The paper concludes that the literature suffers from the fact that most analyses tend to utilise the insights of only one of these perspectives. The author suggests that understanding of the relationship between young people and violence might be advanced through the development of theories that are able to draw these theories together to take account of social power, ideational and structural forms, and emotional and cognitive processes.