CDC Students may use these slides as an introduction to the key issues in relation to children and conflict.

1. Children and Conflict
Introduction to key issues
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2. Learning Outcomes
• Identify the roles of children in various types of conflict
• Describe the ways in which childhood is constructed through conflict
• Discuss the consequences of conflicts on children and childhood
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3. Relief of Mafeking
• Relief led by Baden-Powell
• Mafeking Cadets • Boys 12-15
• Messengers, postmen,
stretcher bearers
• 12 yr old Sergeant-Major
Warner Goodyear immortalised
on penny stamp
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4. The Great War
• Minimum age for enlistment - 18
• Minimum age for posting
abroad - 19
• Boys lied about age and name
• Enlistment officer accused of
turning a ‘blind eye’
• Markham’s campaign
• Conscription
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5. World War II Germany
• Hitlerjugend & Bund Deutscher
Mädel
• Conformity and military
discipline
• Compulsory membership 1939
• Penalties for non-attendance
• Dominated by middleclasses
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6. World War II Germany
• Edelweißpiraten
• Concentrated in
industrialised areas
• Resistance to the HJ
• Threat to the Gestapo
• Severe punishment - e.g.
Cologne 1944
• Other anti-Nazi youth groups
including Leipzig Meuten and
Swing Kids
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7. World War IIEngland
• Operation Pied Piper
• September 1939 - 3,000,000
people evacuated from towns &
cities
• Billeting
• Romantic view - better living
conditions in the countryside
• Foster, Davies and Steele (2003)
found 8% of their study had
been sexually abused as
evacuees
• Cadet Forces
• 1938 - Air Defence Cadet Corps
- aimed at “numbers of
youngsters definitely trained to
take an active part should war
break out” (Adley, 2011: 68)
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8. 21st Century Conflicts - Child Soldiers
• Focus on African countries, but child soldiers found in Asian countries, Latin
America, Europe and the Middle East
• Children may be recruited, ‘volunteer’, or be kidnapped.
• Nature of war has changed - within state borders civilians in the battlefield
(Honwana)
• Vindevogel et al (2011: 521) “child soldiering can be considered as one of the
worst practices of institutionalized child abuse”
• Ugandan child soldiers spent an average of 1 1/2 years in captivity during
which time they were exposed to warfare
• UK, only nation in Europe which recruits to regular armed forces at age 16
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9. 21st Century Conflicts - War on Terror
• Naqib Ullah - youngest Guantánamo detainee
• Captured 2003 aged 14
• Kidnapped and conscripted to fight for Taliban - victim of war
• Belief he had intelligence justified detention in Cuba
• Omar Khadr youngest person convicted of war crimes since Dachau trials
(Rudolf Merkel aged 16)
• Classified as a ‘child soldier’ by head of United Nations - US “refused to apply
universally recognized standards of juvenile justice” (Human Rights Watch,
2010)
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10. 21st Century Conflicts - Palestine
• Palestinian children living in Israeli occupied territories
• Palestinian exposed to political violence
• Palestinian children held in Israeli prisons
• Subject to frequent arrests, violence, shooting, and being awoken from sleep
and photographed in Israeli mapping exercise
• Curfews imposed by Israeli forces prevent children from going to school
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11. Children in Conflict - Considerations
• Conflict
• Wars, including internal warfare, international conflict
• Armed conflict
• Political resistance
• Terrorism
• Organised crime i.e. trafficking
• Avoid conflating war with conflict
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12. Children in Conflict - Considerations
• Roles of Children
• Combatants
• Soldiers
• Casualties
• Targets
• Activists
• Propaganda tools
• Indirect contributors
• Roles of children are dynamic and vary by context
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13. Children in Conflict - Considerations
• Ways in which children become involved
• Conscripted
• Recruited
• Abducted
• Volunteer
• Exposed to conflict as part of everyday life
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14. Importance of considering cultures
• Gaze on the 3rd (majority) world
• Naturalises 1st (minority) world cultures
• Juxtapose with our own society
• Be aware of the limitations of juxtaposition
• Western history is not problem free
• Militaristic culture permeates lives of young people
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15. References
• Adley, P (2011) ‘‘Ten thousand lads with shining eyes are dreaming and their dreams are wings’: affect,
airmindedness and the birth of the aerial subject’, Cultural Geographies, 18, 1, 63-89
• Commonwealth War Graves Committee (2012) Horace Iles [online image] Available at:
http://www.cwgc.org/education/imp_pop/horace.htm [Accessed 27 November 2012]
• Foster, D; Davies, S; Steele, H. (2003) ‘The evacuation of British children during World War II: A preliminary
investigation into the long-term psychological effects’, Ageing & Mental Health, 7:5, 398-408
• Honwana, A (2008) ‘Children’s Involvement in War: Historical and Social Contexts’, The Journal of the History of
Childhood and Youth, 1, 1, 139-149
• Human Rights Watch (2010) Omar Ahmed Khadr [Online] http://www.hrw.org/news/2010/11/02/omar-ahmedkhadr [Accessed 9th November 2011]
• Vindevogel, S; Coppens, K; Derluyn, I; De Schryver, M; Loots, G; Broekaert, E (2011) ‘Forced conscription of
children during armed conflict: Experiences of former child soldiers in northern Uganda’, Child Abuse and
Neglect, 35, 551-562
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