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While the use of child soldiers has declined in recent years, it has not ended entirely. Children remain front-line participants in a variety of conflicts throughout the world and are actively recruited by armed groups and terrorist organizations. Reports of children involved in terrorism have become all too common. Boko Haram has repeatedly selected women and girls as their primary suicide attackers, and, in Somalia, the United Nations reported that al-Shabaab was responsible for recruiting over 1,800 children in 2019. In Iraq and Syria, children were routinely featured in the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) propaganda, and the group mobilized children as “cubs” to fight for the so-called Caliphate. Unfortunately there is a myriad of reasons why terrorist organizations actively include children within their ranks: children can be proficient fighters, and they are easy to train, cheaper to feed, and harder to detect. Thus, recruiting and deploying children is often rooted in “strategy” and not necessarily the result of shrinking numbers of adult recruits. Drawing from the robust literature on child soldiers, there are areas of convergence (and divergence) that explain the pathways children take in and out of terrorist organizations and the roles they play. Focusing on two cases, al-Shabaab in Somalia and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, we argue that there are three distinct but overlapping processes of child recruitment, including forced conscription (i.e., kidnapping), subtle manipulation and coercion (i.e., cultures of martyrdom), and a process of seemingly “voluntary recruitment,” which is almost always the result of intimidation and pressure given the children’s age and their (in)ability to provide consent. The concepts of consent and agency are key, especially when weighing the ethical and legal questions of what to do with these children once rescued or detained. Nonetheless, the children are first and foremost victims and should be awarded special protected status in any domestic or international court. In 2020, countries were seeking to balance human rights, legal responsibility, and national security around the challenge of repatriating the thousands of children affiliated with ISIS and still languishing in the al-Hol and Al Roj camps.

While early private military and security companies (PMSCs) were likened to mercenaries, as of the 21st century, PMSCs have become regular actors in many nations and conflicts. Typically organized as legal corporate entities, they provide a wide range of military and security services, including transport, logistics, and maintenance to military and police training, demining, intelligence, risk analysis, armed and unarmed protective services, antipiracy measures, border protection, drones, and cyber operations. Not only have PMSC services diversified since the 1990s but so has their client base. Industrialized countries, autocratic regimes, failed states, international organizations, transnational corporations, and even humanitarian organizations hire PMSCs. There are several explanations for the rise of the industry. Functional explanations see the proliferation of PMSCs as a rational response to military capability gaps and increased demand for international security. Ideational and constructivist approaches attribute the outsourcing of military and security services to changing beliefs and norms about the appropriate relationship between states and markets. The consequences of using PMSCs for accountability, effectiveness, control, gender and racial equality, the location of political authority, and the provision of public and private security in conflict environments are key areas of research, as is the question of suitable forms of regulation for the industry, ranging from national and international laws to industry self-regulations, multistakeholder initiatives, and standard setting schemes. Finally, the privatization of military and security services raises concerns about a fundamental transformation in modern warfare.