The Boundaries of the Future: Child Protection as a Promise of Peace for the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Abstract Child protection is a well-known imperative of multidimensional United Nations (UN) peace operations, especially its stabilization operations. However, as illustrated by the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), protection is guided by a political imaginary that places children affected by conflict in a place and time devoid of political agency: childhood. Resisting the universalizing and seemingly incontestable nature of this space-time, this study is guided by the following question: How do child protection mechanisms in the context of MONUSCO simultaneously reproduce and inform a universalizing conception of childhood and of the child as passive and irrational? Our central argument is that a number of pillars form the basis of the ways child protection mechanisms reflect and inform this conception of childhood: reintegration into the family, promotion of physical health, the assurance of education, and the assurance of leisure. However, this last pillar was found to be absent from MONUSCO documents. Consequently, leisure becomes dependent on the mission fulfilling its security objectives and peace becomes no more than a promise that is repeatedly made and deferred by the UN to Congolese children and to the DRC.