Mark Drumbl and Mohamed Kamara Publish New Book on Children’s Fights The book takes an innovative look at children and violence and features contributions from numerous W&L professors and visiting scholars.

By Law Communications
April 4, 2025

An international conference at Washington and Lee University in April 2023 has led to the publication of a new book exploring children ensnared in violent situations, including the “fights” in which they can become involved.

The book is titled “Children and Violence: Agency, Experience, and Representation in and beyond Armed Conflict” (Routledge, 2025). Coedited by W&L Law professor Mark Drumbl, W&L French professor Mohamed Kamara, former W&L visiting scholars Christelle Molima Bameka and Jastine C. Barrett, and Karl Hanson, Director of the Centre for Children’s Rights Studies and Professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, this multi-disciplinary volume provides an innovative approach to children and violence, looking beyond the existing literature that focuses on child soldiers in the “Global South.”

Harnessing 12 expert contributions from scholars worldwide, this book examines the relationship between children and violence, with a focus on children ensnared in military conflict and embroiled in criminal gangs. It analyses how children join fights, how they fight, and what happens to them after fighting officially ends.  Throughout, the book underscores the need to respect the agency and dignity of children and youth, to build cultures of juvenile rights, to appreciate security concerns, and to think critically of the place of the child amid global power politics.

Professor Drumbl helped organize the 2023 conference and said one goal of the event and the subsequent publication was to better understand children’s fights in order to improve reintegration and rehabilitation and to also build a vibrant culture of juvenile rights.

“Too often, children in conflict are seen as helpless and hapless,” said Drumbl. “This book presents them instead as citizens, underscores their dignity and capability while acknowledging the pain they have endured, and leverages recognition of past harms as a basis for future empowerment.”

“Children and Violence,” available for free through Open Access, is among three new books published by Professor Drumbl in the last year. He also published “Sights, Sounds, and Sensibilities of Atrocity Prosecutions,” an edited collection (with University of Exeter law professor Caroline Fournet) that features 29 expert authors examining the dynamics of the five human senses in how atrocity is perceived, remembered, and condemned. In addition, Drumbl authored “Informers Up Close: Stories from Communist Prague,” (Oxford University Press, 2024) in collaboration with former W&L scholar in residence and chaired professor of international law at the Free University Amsterdam, Barbora Holá. The book unearths what fuels informers to speak to the secret police in repressive times and considers how transitional justice should approach informers once repression ends. A fourth co-edited volume, titled “The Character of International Law,” is set to be published by Bloomsbury Publishers (London) in October 2025.

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