Child protection in armed conflict : norm transfer in the UN : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Politics and International Relations at Massey University, Manawatū, Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

In tracing the source of delivery failures in the United Nations framework (from hereon in known as the ‘framework’, ‘workstream’ or ‘infrastructure’) for protecting Children Affected by Armed Conflict (CaAC), scholars (Lee-Koo 2011; Carpenter 2016) have suggested that many of these problems stem from the effects of underlying conceptual norms about conflict-affected children that are at play both within and outside of the UN workstream. Yet such scholarship has engaged in analysis that is either broad or narrow but deep in analysing these norms – leaving room for a more comprehensive approach to identifying, mapping and understanding the influence of these norms. This thesis therefore contributes to the existing literature by marrying the broader, descriptive approach of existing critical feminist IR theory with an analytical methodological insight of Carpenter (2016), whose work suggested that systematic coding methods could be appropriate for the mapping of norms. This thesis employs systematic use of a comprehensive coding tree which is deployed as a methodological tool to produce a contextualised study of a particular section of the wider CaAC ecosystem. This code tree schematic traces and clarifies which norms are significant in a particular area of the CaAC workstream. This examination of language in policy material from specific offices in the CaAC UN infrastructure demonstrates that certain norms about conflict-affected children are present. Temporal patterns can be observed regarding the presence of these norms, and clues as to how they reach this area of the infrastructure from the wider CaAC infrastructure can be identified.