| dc.description.abstract | This master thesis explores how international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) and transnational advocacy networks (TANs) sought to persuade the international community between the mid-1940s and 2000 of the urgent need to prevent children’s involvement in armed conflict through international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL). To address this question, the analysis draws upon John Kingdon’s policy streams model and the concept of framing. Three periods are studied, consisting of the decades preceding the adoption of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, its 1977 Additional Protocols and the 2000 Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (OPAC). The analysis of each period is divided into three parts. First, the relevant provisions of the policy document in question are addressed and subsequently related to previously existing provisions. Second, the most important INGOs and TANs are identified, along with the non-discursive means they employed to generate attention for the issue. Lastly, the frame used by these INGOs and TANs is analysed.
The thesis concludes that the frame used by the actors, as well as the employed non-discursive means, remain generally consistent over time. The used frame draws upon an image of innocent and vulnerable children, who constitute a danger to long-term peace if they were to be affected by war. The findings provide a starting point to understand how power relations were constructed and maintained in the field of protecting children from their involvement in armed conflict. In order to deepen this understanding, this thesis calls for more in-depth research into this subject by (1) analysing the role of other (non-state) actors, (2) looking at how the subject was taken on by the UN from 1989 onwards and (3) examining the success of the
used frame(s) by non-state actors. Critically assessing how INGOs and TANs use language also lays out how they exert influence in the international policy making community. Understanding the power of language and how it is used by non-state actors is paramount and will become increasingly crucial in the near and distant future given the rising influence of non-state actors in contemporary international politics. | |
