Child soldiers as contemporary slaves: A human rights approach

Abstract Despite surging attention to child soldiers and modern slavery over the past decades, their links remain politicized and neglected. This study develops a human rights approach that deepens application of international slavery law; exposes child soldiering as a neglected slavery issue; and confronts underlying legal, political, and ethical challenges. It addresses challenges of using slavery law to identify contemporary cases, then analyzes global data on child soldiering specifically, revealing patterns and trends with robust equivalencies to slavery. Ethical challenges are addressed by confronting slavery myths that distort legal discussions and intersectional elements of child soldiering. These legal, empirical, and ethical arguments reveal international law on child soldiering as deeply insufficient and support a paradigmatic shift in thinking toward antislavery rights as appropriate legal, moral, and programmatic tools to end child soldiering. This, in turn, demonstrates how a rights-based approach helps fulfill the promise of anti-slavery law even in politicized cases.