Cyclical Youth-Led Conflict as an Early Warning Indicator

Michelle Legassicke, a PhD candidate at Dalhousie University, analyses how children were used in increasingly violent cattle raiding leading up to the outbreak of civil war in South Sudan in December 2013, allowing them to be easily mobilized as child soldiers once fighting started.

“However, the militias that were mobilized were not created during the conflict; rather child and youth cattle raiding groups were co-opted once the civil war broke out.”