WRI creating new resource on countering military recruitment

WRI’s programme Countering the Militarisation of Youth (CMoY) aims to spread information, inspiration and practical tips on challenging youth militarisation. One important aspect of this is countering the recruitment of young people by militaries. Today, across many countries where there is no more conscription, militaries are running more and more sophisticated strategies to reach out to young people and convince them to join their ranks. Meanwhile recruitment of young people by paramilitary and other armed groups continues to be an issue in many other contexts. In response, various grassroots groups are running campaigns to counter the recruitment efforts of militaries and armed groups. Affiliates of WRI have said it would be helpful to have more information on counter-recruitment campaigns, so we plan to make a short resource on this theme in the form of a booklet.

Purpose of the resource

We hope that the booklet will provide ideas and practical guidance for groups running counter-recruitment initiatives, and groups who want to start doing this work. To fit with this, the resource will be a mostly practical guide to counter-recruitment. It will draw on WRI affiliates’ experiences of countering recruitment in different contexts and share this knowledge within the network. The booklet give an introduction to countering military recruitment, share case studies of various counter-recruitment initiatives from different regions, and analyse what we can take from these experiences.

We plan to have a first version ready in time for WRI’s conference in Columbia in late July 2019 so the booklet can be handed out to delegates there. However, it might be developed beyond that point into a longer resource depending on WRI’s capacity and the demand.

Contribute to the resource

We invite anyone involved in efforts to counter military recruitment to contribute to the booklet by sharing your experiences with us. To discuss contributing please get in touch: email cmoy@wri-irg.org and charlotte@wri-irg.org.

We welcome submissions of articles, but there are a variety of other ways to contribute so please do get in touch. If you do want to submit an article, please send it to us by early June 2019 and aim for between 500 and 1000 words.