Graca Machel, UNICEF's special rapporteur, also scrutinises sexual crimes in time of war, the fate of orphans, the disproportionate suffering of children endure in civil wars, and their special vulnerability to such side-effects of conflict as famine, disease and social fragmentation. "The Impact of War on Children" is an urgent call to action-for the commitment and tenacity needed to protect children from the atrocities of war. Children present a uniquely compelling motivation for mobilisation, and an opportunity to confront the problems that cause their suffering. This book is complemented by 16 evocative photographs by Sebastiao Salgado, a documentary photographer of world renown, covering Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Rwanda and elsewhere.

Societal turbulence, state collapse, religious and ethnic conflict, poverty, hunger, and social exclusion all underlie children's involvement in armed conflict. Drawing from empirical studies in eleven conflict-ridden countries, including Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Colombia, Uganda, Palestine, Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, and South Sudan, Children Affected by Armed Conflict crosses cultures and contexts to capture a range of perspectives on the realities of armed conflict and its aftermath for children. Children Affected by Armed Conflict upends traditional views by emphasizing the experience of girls as well as boys, the unique social and contextual backgrounds of war-affected children, and the resilience and agency such children often display. Including children who are victims of, participants in, and witnesses to armed conflict in their analyses, the contributors to this volume highlight innovative methodologies that directly involve war-affected children in the research process. This validates the perspectives of children and ensures more effective outcomes in postwar reintegration and recovery. Deficits-based models do not account for the realities many war-affected children face. The alternative approaches presented in this edited collection—which acknowledge the realities of both trauma and resilience—aim to generate more effective policies and intervention strategies in the face of a growing global public health crisis.

Children at War is the first comprehensive book to examine the growing and global use of children as soldiers. P.W. Singer, an internationally recognized expert in twenty-first-century warfare, explores how a new strategy of war, utilized by armies and warlords alike, has targeted children, seeking to turn them into soldiers and terrorists. Singer writes about how the first American serviceman killed by hostile fire in Afghanistan—a Green Beret—was shot by a fourteen-year-old Afghan boy; how suspected militants detained by U.S. forces in Iraq included more than one hundred children under the age of seventeen; and how hundreds who were taken hostage in Thailand were held captive by the rebel "God's Army," led by twelve-year-old twins. Interweaving the voices of child soldiers throughout the book, Singer looks at the ways these children are recruited, abducted, trained, and finally sent off to fight in war-torn hot spots, from Colombia and the Sudan to Kashmir and Sierra Leone. He writes about children who have been indoctrinated to fight U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan; of Iraqui boys between the ages of ten and fifteen who had been trained in military arms and tactics to become Saddam Hussein's Ashbal Saddam (Lion Cubs); of young refugees from Pakistani madrassahs who were recruited to help bring the Taliban to power in the Afghan civil war. The author, National Security Fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of the Brookings Project on U.S. Policy Towards the Islamic World, explores how this phenomenon has come about, and how social disruptions and failures of development in modern Third World nations have led to greater global conflict and an instability that has spawned a new pool of recruits. He writes about how technology has made today's weapons smaller and lighter and therefore easier for children to carry and handle; how one billion people in the world live in developing countries where civil war is part of everyday life; and how some children—without food, clothing, or family—have volunteered as soldiers as their only way to survive. Finally, Singer makes clear how the U.S. government and the international community must face this new reality of modern warfare, how those who benefit from the recruitment of children as soldiers must be held accountable, how Western militaries must be prepared to face children in battle, and how rehabilitation programs can undo this horrific phenomenon and turn child soldiers back into children.

Explore the lifelong psychological impact of war and violence on children This book should stab the conscience of the world. No one can read its gripping account of the terrifying impact on children of modern war and remain unchanged. --George McGovern, former U.S. Senator, South Dakota and 1972 Democratic presidential nominee

This book provides an overview of theoretical, empirical, and clinical conceptualizations of mental health following exposure to human rights violations (HRV). There are currently hundreds of millions of individuals affected by war and conflict across the globe, and over 68 million people who are forcibly displaced. The field of refugee and post-conflict mental health is growing exponentially, as researchers investigate the factors that impact on psychological disorders in these populations, and design and evaluate new treatments to reduce psychological distress. This volume will be a substantial contribution to the literature on mental health in refugee and post-conflict populations, as it details the state of the evidence regarding the mental health of war survivors living in areas of former conflict as well as refugees and asylum-seekers.

Finding meaning in trauma work, as a traumatized healer yourself. The act of caregiving is physically exhausting and emotionally draining, yet caregivers describe it as rewarding and gratifying. Prolonged exposure to human suffering, however, is not without risks?caregivers report high rates of burnout and poor quality of life. Many care providers believe that their feelings do not matter; that they should ignore their pain, brush off their trauma, wipe away their tears, and just “suck it up.” Here, Omar Reda a Libyan-born American psychiatrist who, as an emergency physician and trauma counselor provided care for medical staff caring for victims of trauma, calls upon other healers to break free from cycles of secrecy, toxic stress, and silent suffering so they can continue to empower and inspire those in their care. Filled with poignant first-person stories and clinical case studies, this book is an impassioned plea for psychosocial trauma care that prioritizes the health of both client and healer.

This book explains the effects of war and armed conflict on individual children and their family system, and how culturally responsive social work practice should take into account the diversity and heterogeneity of their needs and lived experiences. Unpacking social work practice with children and families affected by war and migration, the volume provides a valuable toolkit for practitioners, educators, researchers, and service-providers that work with war-affected populations around the globe. The contributions suggest that fostering a family approach, allotting careful attention to context and culture, and linking the arts and participation with social work practice, can all be vital to enhancing the research, education, and practice around working with children and families affected by armed conflict. Providing a critical reflection of social work education and practice, this book will be of interest to practitioners in the field of social work, as well as researchers studying the social effects of migration. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Family Social Work.

This volume presents research from an international, interdisciplinary, and intersectoral research project in which 15 doctoral researchers explored a range of issues related to the life-course experiences of children born of war in 20th-century conflicts. Children Born of War (CBOW), children fathered by foreign soldiers and born to local mothers during and after armed conflicts, have long been neglected in the research of the social consequences of war. Based on research projects completed under the auspices of the Horizon2020-funded international and interdisciplinary research and training network CHIBOW (www.chibow.org), this book examines the psychological and social impact of war on these children. It focusses on three separate but interrelated themes: firstly, it explores methodological and ethical issues related to research with war-affected populations in general and children born of war in particular. Secondly, it presents innovative historical research focussing specifically on geopolitical areas that have hitherto been unexplored; and thirdly, it addresses, from a psychological and psychiatric perspective, the challenges faced by children born of war in post-conflict communities, including stigmatisation, discrimination, within the significant context of identity formation when faced with contested memories of volatile post-war experiences. The book offers an insight into the social consequences of war for those children associated with the ‘enemy’ by virtue of their direct biological link.

This innovative book reveals children's experiences and how they became victims and actors during the twentieth century's biggest conflicts.

Despite inventing the juvenile court a little more than a century ago, the United States has become an international outlier in its juvenile sentencing practices. The War on Kids explains how that happened and how policymakers can correct the course of juvenile justice today.