Youth, peace and security

Especially since the 1990s, when concepts such as “human security”, “new wars” and “Responsibility to Protect” became central, children and youth have emerged as a particularly vulnerable group. Thus, essentially represented as objects of international protection, the possibility of imagining and handling children and youth as agents of political relations is still quite marginalized. Aiming to explore the relation between childhood/youth, violence and the production of security, this line of research proposes to go beyond the focus on the victimization of this group. The studies proposed here approach issues related to the rights of children and their limits, the militarization of childhood and youth, and the participation of children and youth in peace processes, which emerge as critical aspects in an analysis both of the international politics of protection and of the production of security and peace. Specifically, this line of research focuses on three interrelated goals: (i) studying the development of an international regime of children’s rights and the articulation of an universal childhood and its multiple silences; (ii) investigating the processes of militarization of childhood and youth; and (iii) analyzing the initiatives, challenges and dilemmas relative to the inclusion of children and youth in peace processes.