Supplementary memorandum submitted by
the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford
CHILDREN AFFECTED
BY ARMED
CONFLICT AND
FORCED MIGRATION
Addressing:
Issue—1 Development, Poverty reduction
and Migration,
Issue—5 Conflict, Refugees and Migration
and Issues
Issue—7 Development Coherence and Policy
on Migration.
The protection of young people affected by armed
conflict and forced migration
War leads not just to widespread death, but
also to extensive displacement, overwhelming fear and economic
devastation. It divides communities, destroys trust, weakens social
ties, threatens household survival and undermines the family's
capacity to care for its most vulnerable members. Every year it
kills and maims countless numbers of young people, undermines
thousands of others psychologically and deprives many of the economic,
educational, health and social opportunities which most of us
consider essential for children's effective growth and wellbeing.
During the course of the twentieth century there
was a significant growth in the frequency of armed conflicts internationally.
This has left a terrible legacy at the dawn of the twenty-first
century, in which political hostilities have become firmly entrenched
in many parts of the world. Most modern conflicts occur within
states and are associated with extreme inequity in the distribution
of resources; repressive and unjust governance; failed development;
burgeoning black economies fuelled by the trade in arms and drugs;
sectarian strife and other massively destabilising forces. One
of the chief characteristics of this kind of warfare is that the
elimination of civilians is the prime military objective, with
civilian casualties rising sharply in recent conflicts as a proportion
of the total so that in all present conflicts they form the majority.
The fact that most modern hostilities are internal
presents a special risk to young people. Fighting takes place
in homes, fields and streets, and involves acts of extreme brutality
and personal violence. The categories "civilian" and
"combatant" are blurred, with children and youth, their
families, neighbours and communities emerging as both victims
and perpetrators. Because they are generally more agile, impressionable
and expendable than adults, the young are actively recruited by
many military units. Since they can carry, clean, reload and fire
modern light arms with ease, the spread of small weapons in recent
decades has exacerbated this trend. While many are engaged directly
in combat, an even greater number are involved in ancillary functions,
such as intelligence gathering, the delivery of food to the front
line, road and bridge maintenance and repair, that are essential
to the military endeavour. The distinction between civilian and
combatant becomes especially confused with the prevalence of these
kinds of quasi-military roles.
In such situations, children and adolescents
are jeopardised not merely as random casualties but also because,
as active agents of violence or members of military support teams,
they are viewed as legitimate objects of attack. In addition,
the political, criminal or military activities they engage in
during war may bring them into conflict with the law, especially
where emergency legislation is invoked. During flight or in post-conflict
settings, involvement in such activities may result in denial
of refugee status and exclusion from the benefits accruing to
that status. Children are also vulnerable to atrocities because
the mistreatment of the young undermines adult resistance: for
example, children may be tortured, slaughtered or used as human
shields to force parents to relinquish information. Finally, in
the general climate of lawlessness and impunity that is so often
associated with political conflict, many children are also exposed
to raised levels of criminal violence. And as families come under
increasing pressure from many different kinds of adversities,
so children also become prone to greater domestic abuse.
Hence, during conflict and forced migration,
the protection of the young should be a key priority for policy
and practice. However, it is important not to make assumptions
about child protection. For example, parents and other family
members are not always best placed to identify how to help for
they do not always understand the real difficulties children confront
and sometimes the solutions they devise add to the jeopardy. For
example, families often favour early marriage for girls as a way
of protecting them against trafficking and forced recruitment.
Yet girls often experience these arranged marriages as oppressive
and/or abusive. Similarly, there is clear evidence that many of
the hazards experienced by children during conflict and displacement
originate not from violence committed by enemy forces but from
exploitation, treachery and similar violations perpetrated by
members of their own families and communities. This implies the
need to:
— learn about the specific risks that
children confront in specific situations. These risks will vary
with gender, age and social group and may involve a broad range
of concerns, from sexual violence, to forced recruitment, trafficking
or hazardous labour;
— find out about the resources and
sources of support, formal and informal, children have access
to. Complementing and reinforcing these local systems of support
is a more appropriate way of protecting children than introducing
specialist measures run by outsiders and based on outsider expertise
that bears little or no relation to local conditions and reality;
— identifying means of assisting children
that are respectful of cultural norms and values and of children's
own perspectives and capacities.
Social protection has not traditionally been
a priority of emergency intervention. But given its importance
in terms of child survival, wellbeing and development, this policy
should be reviewed and revised.
The importance of adopting appropriate psychosocial
models for conflict-affected and displaced children and adolescents
There is a long tradition in areas affected
by armed conflict of interventions that are built on a universalized
view of childhood as a period of economic and social dependence
and vulnerability. Children are treated as victims, removed from
their social and cultural context and served with specialist measures
based on centralized policies and the prior identification of
need. Typically, physical and, more recently, psychological needs
predominate over those that are social and economic. Medical science
is the professional arena considered most appropriate to the healing
of children's suffering, and social work the most effective for
the social reintegration and support of children in exceptional
situations, especially those separated from their families. Too
often, interventions take the form of remedial treatment based
on a one-to-one, case-by-case approach in which structural causes
and effects of adversity are ignored.
Conceiving of childhood as a decontextualised
and universalized and yet at the same time also highly individualized
life phase, ignores the diversity of children's experiences of
adversity and the multiplicity of their responses. Children in
different societies and social categories are raised in different
ways and with different expectations. They thrive, and indeed
flourish, in widely contrasting conditions and circumstances and
have different capacities and needs, to which a universal child
protection model—which is based on only one type of childhood—is
not sensitive. Understanding that the culture in which children
live shapes the way they are perceived and treated, the way they
experience childhood, and the actual competencies they develop
is an important departure from traditional policy based on universalist
values, in which the process of growing up is conceived of as
the same for all children.
In most war zones expert medical intervention
is privileged in the healing of sickness and suffering over measures
built on local resources, strategies and understandings. However,
suffering must not be privatised within therapies for the focus
on individual pathology disregards the social and political dimensions
of misfortune. The shared search for meaning, the social recognition
and validation of distress and common effort towards overcoming
adversity and reinstating normalcy are all an essential part of
integrating experience and healing in individuals. Individualised
remedial treatments based on "expert" scientific skills
and knowledge can pose a direct threat to such processes. If policy
is to support healing effectively it must allow different cultures
to express, embody and give meaning to distress in different ways.
It must be open to integrating alternative systems of health care,
situating healing strategies within their social and cultural
context, and using local resources whenever possible. It is also
vital that social and cultural understandings be founded on systematic
social and ethnographic research, using pre-conflict studies where
they exist.
While it is important to acknowledge the painful,
humiliating and profoundly debilitating experiences that many
children suffer during periods of political violence, it has to
be recognised that the dominant discourse of vulnerability, sickness,
crisis and loss has the potential for seriously undermining children's
wellbeing. A focus on problems and deficits as opposed to available
resources, coping mechanisms and risk reduction strategies has
the potential to undermine children's resilience and pathologise
their lives.
The relationship between young people's involvement
in violence and conflict and their meaningful participation in
social action.
Research has shown that children, particularly
12-18 year olds, living amidst political and military conflict
are often at risk from under or unemployment, frustration, isolation
and hopelessness. The provision of opportunities for participation
in meaningful social action should, therefore, be considered by
donor governments as an emergency measure and not merely as an
option to be explored when conflict has ceased and circumstances
improve. Prioritising funding for initiatives that encourage young
peoples positive participation in their political and social environment
is recommended as a means of reducing the appeal of recruitment
to armed forces and ultimately preventing or reducing episodes
of armed conflict and forced migration.
Increasing participation is also seen to have
a peace-building function. Youth groups often serve as a focal
point around which issues that lie as the heart of many conflicts
(for example discrimination, exploitation, poor governance and
the lack of adequate and accessible services) can be addressed.
Participatory programming that enables children and young people
to contribute towards fundamental changes by opening up the space
for input into evolving systems of governance and decision-making
processes can serve to promote peace, whilst at the same time
contributing to the development of their individual skills.
Meaningful participation requires:
— international agencies to develop
participatory programmes based on a sound grasp and negotiation
of the historical, cultural, political and social conditions and
sensibilities (especially with respect to the involvement of the
young in social action and decision-making processes) that prevail
at the local level;
— clear criteria for evaluating the
capacity of implementing agencies to undertake participatory programming
(where capacity needs to be built this should be done through
a sustained relationship between the funder and partner agency);
— a strong organisational consensus
on the related ethics, methods, and concepts, as well as the associated
practicalities of participation.
Policy Lessons from an assessment of children
affected by armed conflict in South Asia.
South Asia is a region profoundly affected by
armed conflict and forced migration, with grave implications for
the survival, development and wellbeing of children. It is noticeable
that many of the situations of conflict covered by the research
project do not have an international profile, in large part due
to government-imposed constraints on investigation and reporting.
In Pakistan, Bhutan, India and Bangladesh, governments do not
openly acknowledge conflict-related problems within their borders.
Access is often denied to international and national monitoring
groups such as the press and human rights organisations. Those
who attempt to probe regions of disturbance can face threats and
coercion. Such reluctance to admit to political instability stems
in part from the strong ideology of national sovereignty prevailing
in South Asia, where international interference in internal affairs
is met with deep suspicion.
Also related is the fact that those affected
by conflict commonly belong to marginal, minority groups who do
not have strong representation in systems of government. Political
power in countries of the region is effected either through multi-party
democracy dogged by corruption, or through the rule of an unelected
leader or e«lite. In both cases certain ethnic or class-based
groups dominate the political scene. There is often little opportunity
for the concerns of minorities to be voiced or addressed.
For any advances to be made in South Asia, and
elsewhere, in the prevention of armed conflict and displacement,
or the protection and care of children thereby affected, considerable
effort must be made to engage directly with governments, specifically
in the following matters:
— They must be encouraged to acknowledge
conflict where it exists and helped to understand the full consequences
nationally and locally and for children in particular;
— They must be convinced of the importance
of ratifying and implementing all the relevant instruments of
international law, which, in turn, implies the need for much improvement
in leadership, governance and accountability to the citizenry;
— They should be reminded of their
obligation under international law to ensure agreed standards
of child protection and equitable access to services, development
and other measures for all sectors of the population, including
those in conflict zones;
— Greater equity in the division of
resources and power is a major priority, implying the introduction
of a range of redistributive mechanisms and the monitoring and
assessment of economic and development policies for their impact
on minority communities.
This is not to suggest that the state should
be expected to meet all the needs of war-affected populations.
It does mean, however, that greater effort should be made than
at present to convince governments to allocate funds to the social
sector and to civilian protection rather than to issues of national
security alone. It also implies that non-governmental bodies must
be given unimpeded access to all civilian groups, regardless of
ethnic, religious or other social status. Finally, given that
the widespread impunity enjoyed by perpetrators of violence of
many forms in South Asia is a major factor in the perpetuation
and escalation of conflict, measures must be taken to bring this
situation to an end. Considerable effort is needed to encourage
governments to improve systems of law enforcement and justice
and bring an end to impunity for the perpetrators of violence
generally and violations of children's rights more specifically.
November 2003
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