International Criminal Accountability and the Rights of Children

Children and young persons are increasingly being targeted for trafficking, sexual exploitation, recruitment as child soldiers, and other abuses. Children prove to be particularly vulnerable in situations of armed conflict, such as Darfur, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Philippines, Nepal, and Colombia. A rich combination of practitioners (including ICC, ICTY and SCSL prosecutors) and academics explore to what extent international law instruments and international criminal accountability mechanisms are useful for countering violations of children's rights during and after armed conflicts. They also analyze to what extent the tendency of profiling children's rights much more strongly than before (mainly under the umbrella of the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and in the form of child rights-based approaches) converges with the features of international criminal accountability mechanisms such as the International Criminal Court, the Yugoslavia and Rwanda Tribunals, and the Special Court for Sierra Leone.