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Neither war nor peace: children and youth in organised armed violence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Luke Dowdney*
Affiliation:
Viva Rio / ISER (Instituto de Estudos da Religião), Ladeira da Glória, 98, Glória, CEP: 22211-120, Rio de Janeiro – RJ, Brazil, email [email protected]
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Abstract

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The international community has been slow to appreciate the growing problem of the participation of armed children and youths in non-political disputes, encountered in both developed and developing countries, from Haiti to Northern Ireland. While there is widespread recognition of the issue of ‘child soldiers’ (e.g. www.childsoldiers.org/) there are also many children who participate in organised armed groups that function outside traditionally defined war zones. Nowhere is this issue more acute than in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. There may be more people (and specifically children) dying from small-arms fire in Rio de Janeiro than in many armed conflicts elsewhere. Most are bound up in the relentless conflicts involving factions of drugs traffickers fighting within and between Rio's favelas, or shanty towns, and their burgeoning drugs trade.

Type
Thematic Paper – Trauma and the Mental Health of Children
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 2003

References

Amnesty International (2002) Killing the Future: Children in the Line of Fire. Available at http://web.amnesty.org/ Google Scholar
de Souza, J. A. (2001) Socibilidades emergentes – Implicações da dominação de matadores na periferie e traficantes nas favelas. , Universidade Federale de Rio de Janeiro.Google Scholar
Dowdney, L. T. (2002) Crianças Combatentes em Violěncia Armada Organizada: um estudo de crianças e adolescentes envolvidos nas disputas territoriais das facções de drogas no Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: ISER (Instituto de Estudos da Religião).Google Scholar
Dowdney, L. T. (2003) Children of the Drug Trade: A Case Study of Organised Armed Violence in Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Viva Rio/ISER (Instituto de Estudos da Religião).Google Scholar
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