Prosecuting international crimes against children: prospects for intergenerational justice in international security

In my contribution to the 2015 special issue (Jacob Citation2015),Footnote1 I argued that security studies are structured on themes of statehood, power, and sovereignty in ways that foreclose theoretical space to integrate children’s experiences and contributions. I called for a practice-based reading of the ‘field’ of security in which children’s presence in the wider social-political landscape could be researched. I argued that theorising childhood as a bounded category would abstract the research agenda from the wider contours of conflict and insecurity and restrict our view to narrow themes such as child soldiers and war victims. Furthermore, violent conflict represents a ‘radical realignment of the entire social space’ in which children’s constitutive presence cannot be extricated (Jacob Citation2015, 24). These insights, I believe, still hold, and I briefly consider more recent developments in the application of international law in armed conflict to illustrate...