Children’s Wartime Agency and Child Protection in UN Peacekeeping

UN peacekeeping child protection involves a range of practices, from highly militarized ones such as the use of force, to civilian-oriented ones like community engagement. Training, policy, and discourses on these practices, and on children and war more broadly, construct children in need of protection as agency-less victims of adult wars. However, children in these situations exercise agency, navigate challenges, and engage in resistance. This article explores how peacekeeping child protection policy and practice depend on and reproduce constructions of children as lacking agency, yet the design of these practices is often implicitly premised on children having agency. This mismatch between explicit and implicit constructions of children in policy and practice may impact the effectiveness and legitimacy of peacekeeping child protection.