Children and armed conflict: Introduction and overview

Abstract

Worldwide, children suffer a diverse and toxic array of effects of armed conflict, which increasingly are protracted and intermixed with problems such as terrorism. To support war-affected children, it is necessary to understand how children have been affected by war and to use appropriate conceptual analyses to inform the design of effective interventions. This paper introduces 2 thematic Special Issues of this journal that are devoted to children and armed conflict. The present Special Issue focuses on the task of understanding how children are affected by war, whereas the second Special Issue will focus on how to intervene on behalf of war-affected children. This paper situates the empirical papers in the present Special Issue in the context of recent changes in the developing study of children and armed conflict. Featuring the rise of systems thinking evident in ecological frameworks and child protection systems, it emphasizes resilience approaches and the movement away from deficits frameworks that underscore disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It also identifies numerous obstacles to achieving a comprehensive understanding of war-affected children. Primary among these are a weak evidence base, insufficient attention to contextual diversity, use of nonholistic approaches, and the marginalization of children's agency. Against this backdrop, it provides an overview of each of the 6 papers in this Special Issue, and concludes with a brief overview of the second, companion issue on children and armed conflict to be published in this journal.