Save the war child: how donor gaze and affect economy frame the representation of child soldiers on Western NGO websites

In the post-Cold War period, child soldiers have captured the attention of the humanitarian sector, international law, policy makers, child rights proponents, and news media. The man-ner in which child soldiers have been and continue to be represented in media and by other stakeholders involved in prevention of their recruitment and rehabilitation have come to shape not just perceptions about them but also material responses to them. In this research paper, I explore how certain Western NGOs who work with child soldiers frame their online content about such children, and their work in general, in a manner that is guided by the donor gaze and affect economy. I argue that representations which seek to fulfil the demands of the donor gaze and aim to induce affect are limiting in nature, thereby obscuring those aspects of child soldiers’ realities that do not hold affective capital and are not considered worthy of donor’s funding. I reflect on how these limiting representations can restrict more accurate interventions for child soldiers in particular, and what they tell us more broadly about the manner in which the aid sector functions.