CfP: Special issue entitled “Children and Armed Conflicts: Fates, Consequences, and Reflections”
From the twentieth century to the present day, armed conflicts have increasingly affected children and influenced their fates. Children have been forced to become direct participants in wars and other forms of violent conflict. The plight of children in armed conflicts mirrors that of the adult population in many respects. Children have been killed as the result of genocidal policies and forced to become killers themselves. Between these two extremes, armed conflicts and violence have had a wide range of impacts on children’s physical and mental health, education, and upbringing. Forced migration during or subsequent to such conflicts exacerbates children’s suffering, as it delays, complicates, or even makes it impossible to relieve their suffering. Migration transfers both the children themselves and the social issues associated with them to countries that may or may not be directly involved in war. Such countries are often ill-equipped to deal with the problems of child refugees materially, institutionally, or conceptually.
This call for papers solicits contributions covering a broad, heterogeneous number of topics connected with children and armed conflicts, in the context of North America, Europe, and post-Soviet Eurasia in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Proposed subtopics may focus upon, but are not limited to:
- forms of abuse of children in particular conflicts
- war propaganda and children
- children in the military and other armed groups
- social impacts of wars and other armed violence on children
- the life of children in war zones
- orphans produced by war
- war children
- migration, child displacement, and refugee issues connected with wars
- state-organized forced deportation and “re-education” of children
- the psychopathology of war-related trauma
- international humanitarian law, child protection, and armed conflicts
- crimes against children in the context of modern armed conflicts
- international efforts to support children in armed conflicts
- the victimization of children due to war in literature, the visual arts, and cinema
- methodological trends in the research on children and armed conflicts