Samenvatting

In the current literature on child soldiers, many assumptions are made about the use of child soldiers worldwide. The duration of conflicts and thus increasing number of battle related deaths would influence the use of child soldiers. Another assumption is that child soldiers are mainly used in civil wars. In this article, these assumptions are tested empirically and the characteristics of conflicts in which child soldiers are used and conflicts in which they are not used are compared. However, conducting quantitative research on child soldiers is not easy. Many data are obtained through interviews and are based on unconfirmed reports and observations, which raises questions about how the data should be assessed. This study is an explorative study into the possibilities of testing some of the current assumptions.