United Nations’ Naming and Shaming of Children’s Rights Abusers in Conflict: A Critical Assessment

Abstract: Naming and shaming is a widely used strategy by the transnational advocacy network (TAN) to prevent human rights abuses and increase compliance to international humanitarian law (IHL). However, existing research demonstrates controversial results about the efficacy of naming and shaming as a method to increase compliance to IHL. To add new insights to the ongoing IR debate, this paper investigates United Nations’ (UN’s) naming and shaming of children’s rights abusers in conflict. A quantitative analysis of UN’s Annual Reports on Children and Armed Conflict between 2013-2018 provides an assessment of the assumed link between public condemnation of state actors and armed non-state actors (ANSAs) who commit children’s rights violations in conflict, and an increase in compliance to IHL and protection of children. This paper aims to investigate the results of UN’s shaming policy through the theoretical framework of Constructivism and thus provide a critical assessment of the issue. The results of this thesis indicate that there seems to be a convincing link between the number of state actors listed on UN’s “lists of shame” and the number of parties who put in place measures to improve protection of children and increase compliance to IHL. On the other hand, the link seems to be weak when it comes to the number of publicly exposed ANSAs who subsequently commit to UN action plans and increase compliance to IHL.