(Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies) J. Marshall Beier, Jana Tabak - Childhoods in Peace and Conflict-Palgrave Macmillan (2021)

RETHINKING PEACE AND CONFLICT STUDIES
SERIES EDITORS: OLIVER P. RICHMOND · ANNIKA BJÖRKDAHL ·

GËZIM VISOKA
Childhoods in Peace
and Conflict
Edited by
J. Marshall Beier
Jana Tabak
Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies
Series Editors
Oliver P. Richmond, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
Annika Björkdahl, Department of Political Science, Lund University,
Lund, Sweden
Gëzim Visoka, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland
This agenda-setting series of research monographs, now more than a
decade old, provides an interdisciplinary forum aimed at advancing inno-
vative new agendas for peace and conflict studies in International Rela-
tions. Many of the critical volumes the series has so far hosted have
contributed to new avenues of analysis directly or indirectly related to the
search for positive, emancipatory, and hybrid forms of peace. Constructive
critiques of liberal peace, hybrid peace, everyday contributions to peace,
the role of civil society and social movements, international actors and
networks, as well as a range of different dimensions of peace (from peace-
building, statebuilding, youth contributions, photography, and many case
studies) have been explored so far. The series raises important political
questions about what peace is, whose peace and peace for whom, as well
as where peace takes place. In doing so, it offers new and interdisci-
plinary perspectives on the development of the international peace archi-
tecture, peace processes, UN peacebuilding, peacekeeping and mediation,
statebuilding, and localised peace formation in practice and in theory. It
examines their implications for the development of local peace agency
and the connection between emancipatory forms of peace and global
justice, which remain crucial in different conflict-affected regions around
the world. This series’ contributions offer both theoretical and empir-
ical insights into many of the world’s most intractable conflicts, also
investigating increasingly significant evidence about blockages to peace.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14500
J. Marshall Beier · Jana Tabak
Editors
Childhoods in Peace
and Conflict
Editors
J. Marshall Beier Jana Tabak
Department of Political Science Department of International Relations
McMaster University State University of Rio de Janeiro
Hamilton, ON, Canada Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies

ISBN 978-3-030-74787-9 ISBN 978-3-030-74788-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74788-6
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For the young people navigating peace and conflict
Acknowledgments
A debt of gratitude is owed to the many people without whom this

volume would not have been possible. As with all such projects, it is
founded on the strength of vast and intricate webs of relationships that
exceed the possibility of their being mapped. Not least among these
are the connections (whether literal or figurative) that oftentimes bind
us to those about whom we research and write. They include also the
growing number of colleagues working at the emerging nexus between
Critical Childhood Studies and Peace and Conflict Studies, Critical Secu-
rity Studies, and disciplinary International Relations more broadly. From
the outset, we have benefitted from the insights and encouragement of
students and colleagues alike. Like those further afield in the vibrant and
expanding networks of scholarship, activism, and communities of practice
around issues of children and childhoods in varied contexts of peace and
conflict, valued members of our home departments bear special mention
for their interest in and support of our work on this and other projects.
It simply is not possible to recognize everyone we would like to here, but
all have left indelible impressions with their ideas, perspectives, support,
and encouragement. We continue to learn from our participation in these
networks and hope to contribute to them in return.
In more direct connection with the book itself, we are grateful to the
contributors for answering our initial open call for papers with original and
deeply intriguing proposals, for following through on the submission of
full chapters that delivered on this promise, and for carrying out revisions
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
to schedule while juggling the many new and competing demands occa-
sioned by a global pandemic. Challenging times beget changing expecta-
tions around commitments earlier made and we recognize the extraordi-
nary effort needed in many cases to follow through in spite of them. It
has been our genuine pleasure to work with and learn from each of you
through this process and we look forward to continuing conversations
with hopes of further collaborations in the future.
We are very pleased to have the volume included in the Rethinking
Peace and Conflict Studies series and thank the series editors, Oliver P.
Richmond, Annika Björkdahl, and Gëzim Visoka, for their support and
for drawing the book into such good company. At Palgrave, Anca Pusca
and Katelyn Zingg ushered our proposal through the process of approval
and acceptance, while two anonymous reviewers for Palgrave gave excel-
lent and engaged feedback from which we have all gained much. We are
grateful to them all for their enthusiasm, their clear and supportive edito-
rial guidance, and for input into the framing and scope of the volume—
the final product is much stronger for all of it. Ashwini Elango provided
excellent project coordination, seeing us through the production process
and to publication swiftly and professionally.
And, as always, we are indebted to our families. Their love and support,
their patience as we tend to commitments, and the often-profound
insights they inspire are contributions in their own right, in this and in
all else we do.
January 2021 J. Marshall Beier

Jana Tabak
Contents
1 Other Childhoods: Finding Children in Peace

and Conflict 1
J. Marshall Beier and Jana Tabak
Part I Ontologies of Children in Peace and Conflict

2 Children as Soldiers or Civilians: Norms and Politics
in the United Nations Monitoring and Reporting
Mechanism on Children Affected by Armed Conflict 23
Vanessa Bramwell
3 Voices of Ex-Child Soldiers from the War in Bosnia
and Herzegovina: Between Public and Private
Narratives 43
Dalibor Savić, Rusmir Piralić, and Aleksandar Janković
4 ‘I Have the Right’: Examining the Role of Children
in the #DimeLaVerdad Campaign 65
Diana Carolina García Gómez
Part II Pedagogies of Children in Peace and Conflict

5 Children, Internationalism, and Armistice
Commemoration in Britain, 1919–1939 85
Susannah Wright
ix
x CONTENTS
6 Childhood, Education, and Everyday Militarism

in China Before and After 1949 103
Haolan Zheng
7 Primary Education and the French Army During
the Algerian War of Independence 123
Brooke Durham
8 Militarizing Citizenship in Ukraine: “Strategy
for the National-Patriotic Education of Children
and Youth” in Social Context 143
Vita Yakovlyeva
Part III Contingencies of Children in Peace and Conflict

9 More Than a Victim: Childhood Resilience in Malik
Sajad’s Munnu 165
Suniti Madaan and Cijo Joy
10 Children and Childhood on the Borderland of Desired
Peace and Undesired War: A Case of Ukraine 183
Urszula Markowska-Manista and Oksana Koshulko
11 Production of ‘Safe’ Spaces for Adivasi Children
and the Armed Conflict of Bastar, India 203
Rashmi Kumari
12 Raising the Empire’s Children? Everyday Insecurities
and Parenting the Privileged in the United States 223
Jennifer Riggan
Index 241
Notes on Contributors
J. Marshall Beier is a Professor of Political Science at McMaster Univer-

sity. In his current research, he investigates issues around children’s polit-
ical subjecthood, visual and affective economies of children in abject
circumstances, and imagined childhood as a technology of global gover-
nance. His publications include: Discovering Childhood in International
Relations, ed. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020); Childhood and the Produc-
tion of Security, ed. (Routledge, 2017); The Militarization of Childhood:
Thinking Beyond the Global South, ed. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, 2014).
He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Critical Studies on Security and his
work has appeared in journals including Childhood, Children’s Geogra-
phies, Contemporary Security Policy, Critical Military Studies, Global
Governance, Global Responsibility to Protect, International Political Soci-
ology, International Politics, International Studies Review, Journal of
Human Rights, Security Dialogue, and Third World Quarterly.
Vanessa Bramwell is a Ph.D. candidate at Massey University, New
Zealand, examining the role of norms in the UN infrastructure on child
protection in armed conflict. Her general research interest is in civilian
protections in conflict through the disciplinary lenses of politics, Interna-
tional Relations, and Security Studies, and in communicating across wider
disciplinary boundaries in the theorization of conflict-affected people. She
is working on contributions to several publications due in 2021, while
building academic teaching experience. She lives with her husband and
two sons in Wellington.
xi
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Brooke Durham is a Ph.D. candidate in Modern European History

at Stanford University. Her work focuses on the history of the French
Empire and decolonization in North and West Africa in the twentieth
century. She is completing her dissertation on social work, education, and
human development during decolonization in Algeria.
Diana Carolina García Gómez is a Ph.D. candidate in the Childhood
Studies Department at Rutgers University—Camden, New Jersey, USA.
Drawing from the fields of childhood studies, memory studies, decolonial
thought, and international relations, her research focuses on children’s
and youth political participation in peacebuilding, collective memory, and
social movements in post-conflict contexts, particularly in post-accord
Colombia. Her dissertation, Cultivating Hope: Children’s and Youth’s
Participation in Collective Memory Processes in Post-Accord Colombia,
centers children’s and youth participation in transitional contexts by
examining their engagement with collective memory processes in urban
and rural settings. She holds a B.A. in Political Science from Pontificia
Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia, and an M.A. in Cognition
and Communication from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Aleksandar Janković is an Assistant Professor at the University of Banja
Luka, Faculty of Political Sciences, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He special-
izes in theoretical sociology. His research interests are in the areas of
social inequalities, sociology of youth, post-socialist transformation and
ethno-nationalism, and social statistics.
Cijo Joy teaches English Literature as an Assistant Professor (Ad-hoc) at
the University of Delhi. He has an M.Phil. from the University of Delhi
in Adivasi folktales from the state of Jharkhand. In his research, he traces
shifts and changes of the Adivasi identity from precolonial to contem-
porary times and situates it in contestation with caste hierarchies as well
as the colonial and postcolonial state. His research was inspired from his
work with cultural groups focusing on archiving folk songs across India.
His activism has focused on issues of civil liberties and democratic rights.
He is currently working on the novel and textual articulation of tempo-
ralities in the city in South Asia. His research interests also include critical
theory and childhood.
Oksana Koshulko is an Associate Professor in the Department of Global
Economy at Alfred Nobel University, Dnipro, Ukraine. She has an M.A.
degree in Economy and Society from Lancaster University and a Ph.D.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xiii
in Economic Sciences. Her areas of research are Women’s Studies and

Migration Studies, including Refugees and Asylum Seeking, inspired by
the occupation and war in Ukraine since 2014. In 2019, she prepared a
master’s thesis for Lancaster University, entitled “Exploring patriotism of
women engaged in revolution and war in Ukraine.” She has published
over 140 scientific papers, books, and chapters in books in various coun-
tries, including the USA and the UK. Dr. Koshulko currently studies
women’s and children’s issues and society in general as impacted by the
occupation and war in Ukraine.
Rashmi Kumari is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Childhood
Studies at Rutgers University. As a scholar trained in Social Anthro-
pology, she also holds a Women’s and Gender Studies certificate from
Rutgers University. Her research engages with residential schools for
Adivasi (Indigenous) Children in Chhattisgarh, India. She is currently
conducting fieldwork for her dissertation entitled, “Shaping Indigenous
Girls as National Subjects: Role of Residential Schools in Central India.”
Her research explores the intersectionality of indigeneity, age, and gender
in the lives of Adivasi children living in highly militarized contexts.
She engages multimodal ethnographic fieldwork utilizing photography
and documentary filmmaking components. Through multimodal work,
Rashmi engages Adivasi youth in the ethnographic processes while also
disseminating filmmaking techniques. Rashmi’s field engagements can be
found at https://rashmish.xyz.
Suniti Madaan teaches English Literature as an Assistant Professor (Ad-
hoc) at the University of Delhi. She has a doctorate from Jawaharlal
Nehru University in the area of Indian comics, looking specifically at the
evolution of popular children’s comic, Tinkle, from the 1980s to contem-
porary times. In her doctoral work she reads caste, gender, and class poli-
tics in children’s comics as an expression of middle-class popular culture
in India. She has also translated a short story and some poems from Hindi
to English for the Sahitya Akademi journal, Indian Literature. She is
an active member of the Indian Association for Commonwealth Litera-
ture and Language Studies and has presented research papers in its inter-
national conferences. Her research interests include children’s literature,
childhood, Indian English writing, and popular culture.
Urszula Markowska-Manista field researcher and contemporary
nomad, is an Assistant Professor at the University of Warsaw, Faculty
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
of Education and Lecture & Program Co-Director of M.A. Child-

hood Studies and Children’s Rights, University of Applied Sciences,
Potsdam. She conducts field research on the everyday life and education
of children in culturally diversified environments, among Indigenous
communities (Central Africa), children “out of place” (the Horn of
Africa), national and ethnic minorities (the South Caucasus), as well
as children and youth with migrant and refugee backgrounds. She
researches, publishes, and teaches extensively on topics related to child-
hood and youth studies through Indigenous, postcolonial perspective,
nondiscrimination, and participatory approaches to research, chil-
dren’s rights, and education in pre-dysfunctional contexts and culturally
diversified environments.
Rusmir Piralić is an ex-child soldier participant of war in BiH. He
holds a bachelor’s degree in criminology from the University of Sarajevo,
Faculty of Criminal Justice, Criminology and Security Studies, Bosnia
and Herzegovina. Currently, he acts as president of War Veterans Asso-
ciation—Juvenile Volunteers of the War of Independence and Libera-
tion ’92-’95 Canton Sarajevo. He is a Peace Activist and an Independent
Researcher. He is presently involved in the “Children of War to Children
of Peace, Learning from the War Past” project—a youth ethnic reconcil-
iation project sponsored and provided by Visegrad Fund implemented in
BiH.
Jennifer Riggan is a Professor of International Studies at Arcadia
University. An educational and political anthropologist, her research and
publications focus on Eritrea and Ethiopia to explore: the relationships
between political identities and the state; teachers and political insta-
bility; and, displacement, containment, and temporality. She has held
fellowships from the Wolf Humanities Center (2020–2021), the Georg
Arnhold Program (2019), Fulbright (Addis Ababa University 2016–2017
and Asmara University 2004–2005), The Spencer Foundation/ National
Academy of Education (2012–2014), and the Social Science Research
Council (2004–2005). She is the author of The Struggling State: Nation-
alism, Mass Militarization and the Education of Eritrea (Temple Univer-
sity Press, 2016). She is presently co-authoring a book entitled, The
Hosting State and Its Restless Guests: Containment, Displacement and
Time Among Eritrean Refugees in Ethiopia.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xv
Dalibor Savić is an Assistant Professor at the University of Banja Luka,

Faculty of Political Sciences, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He specializes in
social science research methods. His research interests are in the areas
of applied sociology, sociology of youth, sociology of sport, and peace
studies. He is currently involved in the “Children of War to Children of
Peace, Learning from the War Past” project—a youth ethnic reconciliation
project sponsored and provided by Visegrad Fund implemented in BiH.
Previously, he was a research team member for the “Life Projects of Young
(Re)emigrants from Bosnia and Herzegovina” project.
Jana Tabak is an Assistant Professor in the Department of International
Relations at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. She is the author of The
Child and the World: Child-Soldiers and the Claim for Progress (Univer-
sity of Georgia Press, 2020). Her other publications include: a co-edited
special issue of Childhood: A Journal of Global Child Research; a book
entitled Organizações Internacionais: História e Práticas, 2nd edition, ed.
with Monica Herz and Andrea Ribeiro Hoffmann (Elsevier, 2015); and,
Modernity at Risk: Complex Emergencies, Humanitarianism, Sovereignty,
with Carlos Frederico Pereira da Gama (Lambert Academic, 2012). She
is the author of articles in the journals Contexto Internacional, Cultures et
Conflits, Global Responsibility to Protect, and The Hague Journal of Diplo-
macy. She has taught in the areas of international organizations, peace and
conflict studies, and children and war.
Susannah Wright is a Senior Lecturer and Postgraduate Research Tutor
in the School of Education, Oxford Brookes University, UK. She has
researched and published articles and a monograph on themes of chil-
dren, moral education, and citizenship in England in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. Her current research considers themes of
young people’s engagement with war and peace, and with internation-
alism and pacifism, from the 1920s to the 1960s. Until the end of 2019
she was co-editor of the journal History of Education and is now Hon.
Secretary of the History of Education Society (UK).
Vita Yakovlyeva holds a Ph.D. in Social Theory and Cultural Studies
and is currently a Research Associate at the Canadian Institute of
Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada. Her research
interests lie at the intersection of critical studies of childhood, its materi-
ality, and social memory. She has previously studied childhood memories
in relation to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the establishment of
xvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
independent Ukraine, focusing on the event of the Chernobyl nuclear

explosion as a formative socio-political framework still resonant in the
Ukrainian society.
Haolan Zheng is an Associate Professor of China studies at Keio Univer-
sity, Japan. She received a B.A. from Fudan University and a Ph.D.
from Keio University. She was visiting scholar at Stanford University in
2019–2020. Her research focuses on grassroots politics in modern and
contemporary China. Her first book, entitled Chinese Rural Society and
Revolution: The Historical Transformation of Jinggangshan’s Villages (in
Japanese), was awarded the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize in 2010. Her
works have been appeared in many academic journals and books in Japan.
Her co-edited book, Mao’s Campaign and Ordinary People’s Daily Life,
will be published in 2021. She is currently working on everyday politics
in socialist China, from the perspective of children and youth.
List of Tables
Table 3.1 Dominant discourses on ex-child soldiers in BiH 45

Table 3.2 Discourses on childhood 47
Table 3.3 Typical motives for joining the armed forces and their
characteristics 54
Table 3.4 List of interviewees 61
xvii
CHAPTER 1
Other Childhoods: Finding Children in Peace

and Conflict
J. Marshall Beier and Jana Tabak
Introduction
Childhoods intersect peace and conflict in myriad ways, though render-
ings of children in these contexts are all too often reduced to one of
two dominant, if quite distinct, framings: hapless victims or child soldiers.
While critical interventions of recent years have begun to work toward
the recovery of children’s agency and to sketch the complex hetero-
geneity of childhoods in both framings, the framings themselves remain
dominant. The contributors to this volume approach redress of this by
way of offering a collection of nuanced accounts of children and child-
hoods in varied contexts of peace and conflict across political time and
space, finding other childhoods constituted in and constituting interstitial
J. M. Beier (B)
Department of Political Science, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada
e-mail: mbeier@mcmaster.ca
J. Tabak
Department of International Relations, State University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio
de Janeiro, Brazil
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
J. M. Beier and J. Tabak (eds.), Childhoods in Peace and Conflict,
Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74788-6_1
2 J. M. BEIER AND J. TABAK
sites and practices. Organized according to three broad and overlap-

ping themes (ontologies, pedagogies, and contingencies), each chapter
explores the complexities of a particular case study, providing new insights
into the ways children’s lives figure in engagement, ambivalence, contesta-
tion, and resistance in and through the (re)production of political violence
and (anti)militarisms. Venturing beyond the well-worn paths of work
dominated by the iconic figure of the child soldier (in most conventional
renderings, typically prepubescent, male, African) and the objectified child
victim (exemplified in ubiquitous images of acutely vulnerable children in
circumstances of abjection), each urges us to glimpse other childhoods,
in places beyond those that have tended to draw most attention. They
do so from a variety of disciplinary, experiential, and (inter)relational
standpoints. Together, they bring into comparative perspective children’s
experiences of peace and conflict across a range of less familiar contexts
via original inquiries into specific cases of children and childhoods in
peace and conflict including, among others, classroom curricula on war
commemoration in the United Kingdom, pedagogy in the People’s
Republic of China, resistance movements in Colombia, the ongoing war
in Ukraine, and North American parenting practices. A further important
contribution is in foregrounding childhood agency, treating militarized,
conflict-affected, and peacebuilding subjects as more than ‘passive skin’
inscribed by others and recovering something of the ways in which they
perform, acquiesce in, and resist militarisms in their own everydays (de
Certeau 1984).
Children as victims appear primarily as the ‘emotional scenery’
(Brocklehurst 2015: 32) of conflict and security literatures, critical and
mainstream alike. Images of child soldiers or child victims of war similarly
manifest as potent political resources while also encoding much in the
way of claims about various peoples and contexts. Among other things,
the overwhelming focus—albeit with a few notable exceptions—on
sub-Saharan African contexts does the political work of reproducing
colonial relations of power (Macmillan 2009; Lee-Koo 2011) whilst
mystifying myriad intersections of militarisms with the everyday lives and
lifeworlds of children elsewhere. In particular, the militarized childhoods
of the comparatively privileged environs of the advanced (post)industrial
societies of the Global North are due more attention (see Beier 2011).
Of course, as Diana Carolina García Gómez reminds us in Chapter 4,
“Children and youth are more visible in war than they are in peace.” War
understandably draws our gaze, but looking only to the exceptional or
1 OTHER CHILDHOODS: FINDING CHILDREN IN PEACE AND CONFLICT 3
the spectacular confounds our notice of what may be equally instructive

in contexts more apt to register as mundane and quotidian (Beier and
Tabak 2020). Disturbing the sharp distinction between war and peace—
understanding them as imbricated and interpenetrated along practices
of war, war preparation, war commemoration, and more—helps us in
uncovering a more complicated picture and understanding a fuller range
of militarized childhoods. At the same time, we should take care to hold
these insights together with those to be gleaned from situations in which
children are more visibly—or perhaps more recognizably—affected by
war. As a collection, the chapters gathered in this volume make visible
a range of different contexts of children and childhoods in war and
peace. Together, they provide a rich case/empirical complement to the
existing literatures seeking to broaden our understanding of childhoods
in zones of conflict (Brocklehurst 2006; Jacob 2014; Huynh et al.
2015; D’Costa 2016), children as peacebuilders (McEvoy-Levy 2006,
2018; Pruitt 2013; Berents 2018), the child soldier as (de)constitutive
of global ideational orders (Tabak 2020), and theorizations of children
and childhoods in global political perspective more broadly (Benwell and
Hopkins 2016; Beier 2020).
The organization of the volume along themes of ontologies, pedago-
gies, and contingencies should not be taken to mean that each chapter
speaks to only one of these or that any of the three is not relevant to
all chapters. Rather, it reflects our reading of the sum of the chapters
in each part as an illuminating ‘constellation’ of insights that contribute
to complicating dominant knowledges, ‘common senses,’ and habits of
thought along lines of each particular theme. In the realm of ontolo-
gies, fundamental questions about the nature of childhood, central to
debates animating Critical Childhood Studies, are crucially at stake. Here,
childhood defined by deficit and understandings of children as preso-
cial “human becomings” (Uprichard 2008) have come under sustained
critique from a new sociology of childhood (Burman 1994; James et al.
1998) that places the accent on assets and abilities in its recovery of chil-
dren’s active and engaged political subjecthood in ways more consistent
with concomitant moves toward apprehending them as rights-bearing
subjects (Mayall 2000; Alanen 2010) meaningfully engaged in (re)making
the social worlds they inhabit. Still, the children and childhoods ‘called
into being’ by the sorts of ideas and practices of which these currents have
been critical are, nevertheless, among what we might call ‘actually existing
childhoods’ in the sense that they have social and political currency and
become the basis for ways of relating to and with children—inasmuch as

they remain dominant and hardened into ontology in the everyday gover-
nance of social worlds, they retain important relevance even as we work
to reveal their indeterminacies and the unequal relations of power they
sustain.
The second broad theme turns on pedagogies whereby myriad knowl-
edges, performances, practices, and competencies may contribute to the
militarization of children’s lives, including in but not limited to soci-
eties of the Global North. While this includes purposeful inculcation and
even martial instruction, it emerges too in school curricula, semi-formal
extracurricular programming, and experiential learning in everyday life.
Treating these circulations as pedagogies is not to suggest that there
need necessarily be a conscious instrumentality giving rise to them. The
thrust of some contributions in this part therefore reveals heterogeneous
assemblages, understanding that actors can be a part of an assemblage
without necessarily sharing the same aims. Here too, we see at the same
time children’s agency at work in remaking and resisting. As Susannah
Wright shows In Chapter 5, even in the context of direct and program-
matic instruction, children “in varied ways take on, amplify, modify, or
sometimes resist, core…messages.” Pedagogies here are understood as
practices of creative and complex exchange where the terms of sociopo-
litical relationships across both time and space are in a constant state of
negotiation.
Such negotiation is very much at issue too in the third and final part,
“Contingencies of Children in Peace and Conflict,” which includes inves-
tigations that foreground questions of responsibility to children. Here,
contributors assess, among other things, resilience-building, the demands
of protection, and the material and psychosocial effects of childhoods
lived in the shadow of war. Through all of these, we glimpse not only
the subjecthood of children but also the ambivalence of the adult world
in the navigation of risk and of responsibility to children. Reading these
contributions together, we see too how children’s subjecthood is simulta-
neously mediated by, in interaction with, and engaged in refigurations of
resilience, protection, enlistment, and unequal relations of power. These
and other contingencies of lived childhoods remind us that children and
childhoods are, like adults and adulthoods, constituted together with the
particular social worlds of which they are part. To speak of children and
childhoods in peace and conflict, then, demands that we sustain critical
interrogation of the homogenizing discourses that flatten alterity in defer-

ence to hegemonic tropes of both childhood and child. We are thus called
to be attentive not just to intersections of childhoods with peace and
conflict but to the particular circumstances, idiosyncrasies, and peculiar-
ities of everyday lives also—a more situated view of children’s agency,
in light of culturally and historically specific mediations particular to
post-Soviet Eastern Europe and Russia (described by Urszula Markowska-
Manista and Oksana Koshulko in Chapter 10), is but one for example.
Together, the varied contributions to this volume, rich in such empirical
detail and insight, sketch for us some exemplars to hold in comparative
perspective so that we might broaden our gaze beyond the unidimen-
sional framings of child soldiers and child victims in ways that will perhaps
aid in keeping sight of children as meaningful subjects interacting in, with,
through, and beyond peace and conflict.
Other Childhoods and Other Emergencies

Civil emergencies, wars among them, always press demands on children
and, in so doing, they can be tremendously illuminating. Though it
seems somewhat strange to think about it in this way, there is a perhaps
fortuitous aspect to the unforeseen circumstance that this volume has
happened to come together at a time of acute uncertainty and disrup-
tion, layered over the demands and challenges of navigating peace and
conflict. As research for the chapters that follow was conducted and, later,
as they were being drafted, the world had not yet heard of the novel
coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. By the time they were proceeding through
the process of review and revision, however, we were in the grips of
the declared COVID-19 pandemic. And, as they moved together into
production toward publication of the book, hope inspired by the distri-
bution of promising new vaccines came together with renewed lockdowns
and disheartening news of the emergence and spread of a more transmis-
sible mutated form of the virus. Among its many lessons, the global health
emergency that arose from the early months of 2020 onward brought
complicated webs of interconnection, interdependence, and inequality
into stark relief. In its uneven (and unevenly experienced) ebbs and
flows, the pandemic revealed not only how circuits of local and global
interaction enabled it to spread and to surge but also how structural
inequalities left some groups or communities (and, within them, some
individuals) more vulnerable. From the local to the global, it exposed
material inequality and disenfranchisement from political power as impor-

tant predictors of risk and of what would be demanded of whom. At
the same time, it saw the urgent suspension of norms and routines of
everyday life, including those affecting the regulation and governance of
social agency.
As these and other circumstances and implications of the pandemic
and the measures undertaken to address it have unfolded, it has been
impossible not to see parallels in the insights to be drawn from the
chapters herein, all which turn on varied experiences of children and
childhoods shaped by and shaping peace and conflict. For many, chil-
dren among them, COVID-19 manifested in ways similar to emergencies
associated with armed conflict. Broadly, exigencies of the pandemic have
frequently been cast as matters of human or national security whilst
response measures are framed in terms that are highly militarized, often
with direct appeal to storied wars of the past as exemplars of individual
duty and sacrifice to collective aims (Beier 2021). The ubiquity of war
metaphors in official and vernacular pandemic discourses (see Isaacs and
Priesz 2020; Lohmeyer and Taylor 2020; Semino 2021) is not incidental.
Rather, it reflects the important work war narratives and metaphors do
in making exceptional measures intelligible and setting threat in external-
ized opposition to an idealized collective identity in ways that obfuscate
inequality even as they generalize responsibility. War and war preparation,
like pandemics, entail disruption, mobilization, and, of course, casualties.
Still, apart from its temporal coincidence with the later stages of this
project, and whatever the material and discursive parallels, why pause to
comment on COVID-19 at the outset of a book on distinctive experi-
ences of children in peace and conflict? Here, we would point to a further
important dimension of pandemic responses as particularly salient: direct
appeals by sovereign power to children as indispensable social agents. In
the early days of the declared pandemic, a number of national leaders
called on the children of their countries to assume responsibility for a
range of mitigation measures that included, among other things, prac-
ticing hand hygiene and physical distancing, supporting public health
workers, personal and family emergency planning, and even reporting
violations of public health orders. Reminiscent of and, in some instances,
rhetorically linked to the roles assumed by children in the World Wars
of the twentieth century—from food conservation campaigns and scrap
drives to agricultural labour and work in munitions plants—the summons
to children to contribute in a new moment of civil emergency places their
recognized subjecthood visibly in tension with their enduring disenfran-

chisement from social power (Beier 2021). We are thus urged to sustain
affirmation of their agency together with recognition of their unique
vulnerability, not losing sight of how the latter may bear disproportion-
ately in their experience of the present emergency (see Lundy and Stalford
2020). These are sensibilities that likewise promise more nuanced read-
ings of the cases of children navigating contexts of organized political
violence, whether in zones of conflict, post-conflict, or relative peace and
security.
The pandemic is instructive too for how it has exacerbated challenges
faced by children in existing conditions of abjection the world over (see,
for example, Börner et al. 2020). For those already experiencing war,
forced migration, famine, climate disaster, or other such exigent circum-
stances, COVID-19 is folded in as a constituent of a complex emergency,
characterized by coeval and intersecting crises straining the social infras-
tructure and resources necessary to address them. Like the pandemic,
situations of armed conflict are not social contexts unto themselves,
somehow flattening alterity in the way that appeals to war metaphors
and narratives might suggest. Rather, they involve myriad intersections of
position and prerogative, abjection and adversity, possibility and promise.
They intersect also with complexities of lifeways and inclinations expressed
in agential remit and, thus, produce unique and diverse expressions and
experiences of peace and conflict alike. And this demands that we think
beyond the iconic figures of the child soldier or the hapless child victim
when we think about children’s experiences both populating contexts of
peace and conflict and as important agential beings, variously making,
remaking, and unmaking those contexts in all their complex exigencies.
Structure of the Volume

Through their various points of entry into children’s experiences of peace
and conflict, the contributors to this volume challenge fixed and bounded
understandings of childhood. Taking a range of different empirical and
conceptual starting points, the borders of what children are and how
they relate to their own lifeworlds are problematized in the chapters that
follow—individually and in reading them together—so their complexities
can be explored. Of particular interest, children are analyzed as polit-
ical subjects, and possible discontinuities between ‘places for children’
(designated as safe spaces by parents, state authorities, and international
organizations) and ‘children’s places’ (as negotiated or constructed by

children and adults) are brought to the fore. Across varied empirical
cases and contexts spanning sociopolitical time and space, the child–adult
relationship, despite its power imbalance, is discussed in terms of “inter-
dependencies” (Punch 2001). Even in armed conflict zones, children
negotiate and resist the constraints of an inside/outside coding of spaces
and hierarchies and reaffirm their relative autonomy within the bound-
aries that limit their choices, creating their own meaningful worlds and
participating in the construction of the lives of those around them and of
the societies in which they live.
While engaging with debates in critical approaches to International
Relations, Childhood Studies, Anthropology, and other fields and disci-
plines, this book does not purport to overcome the dichotomies between
children as vulnerable versus competent or dependent versus autonomous,
but seeks to explore how these sorts of ideas about and practices around
children and childhood have social and political currency and become
determinant of possibilities (and the limits on possibilities) of specific
kinds of subjectivities, life experiences, and objects. At the same time, the
chapters herein expose how challenging and uncomfortable might be the
call to contest the ontologies of childhood and the practices of protec-
tion based on this particular category. One of the aims of this volume is
precisely to confront such narratives about children and childhood and
to investigate their tensions, malleability, and contingencies. In doing
so, room is opened to engage in a further dialogue about the nature
and boundaries of the agentive, competent, knowing child who makes
meaning with regard to her/his own lifeworld (Spyrou et al. 2019).
Furthermore, both ‘childhood’ and ‘children’ operate here as “ana-
lytic prisms” (Jenks 2005: 420) through which contributors explore their
constitutive capacity and the power relations that permeate and autho-
rize the ontologized ideas not only of the child and the modern political
subject, but also about peace, conflict, and the nation-state. In this sense,
besides investigating the ontologized ideas and concepts that produce
a universalizing—but not universal—concept of children and childhood,
this volume invests in problematizing what is produced and reproduced
in the social order when pedagogies of children—or, ordering mecha-
nisms—are put into practice and contingencies of children overflow the
limits of the ideal child whose borders enable, respectively, support and
security opposed to uncertainty and danger.
The first part, “Ontologies of Children in Peace and Conflict,” aims

at challenging dominant ontologies that prefigure childhood in particular
ways. The three chapters in this opening part—taking up, respectively,
who counts as a child worthy of protection in armed conflict situations,
questions of voice and participation in the war in Bosnia and Herze-
govina, and the diminution of agency in the peacebuilding process in
Colombia—equip the reader to engage with the complexity of lived
childhoods and to take children as bona fide political subjects even in
cases where they might be profoundly disempowered, under threat, and
consummately objectified.
In Chapter 2 “Children as Soldiers or Civilians: Norms and Politics
in the United Nations Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism on Chil-
dren Affected by Armed Conflict,” Vanessa Bramwell invites us to reflect
upon what violations against children in armed conflict situations are
grave enough to trigger strong demands for international intervention.
In her analysis of the practices of protection developed within the United
Nations’ thematic architecture of Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC),
including the six grave violations against children during armed conflicts
which have been specified in several Security Council resolutions, the
child soldier—or, the child with a gun—emerges in the Western imagi-
nation as the hapless victim worthy of protection while the demands and
needs of other conflict-affected children are not addressed in an appro-
priate and relevant way. Focusing on the gaps of the UN’s protection
mechanisms towards children in armed conflict situations rather than
on the international response to the child soldier problem, Bramwell
draws our attention to which images of children suffering generate public
discomfort and elicit global action whilst other violations against children
are silenced. Here lies a puzzle at the center of the international interven-
tions as they are continuously at play: what are the limits of protection?
Which children’s experiences are risky enough to trigger international
attention? What deviations from the ontologies of childhood need to be
addressed as things to be treated/resisted/protected? Either maintaining
its over-focus on child soldiers in the CAAC mandate or expanding the
list of violations against children in armed conflict situations, the United
Nations keeps framing the borders of childhood in a particular bounded
way, despite its many exceptions and silences.
In a similar vein, Chapter 3, “Voices of Ex-Child Soldiers from the
War in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Between Public and Private Narratives,”
also focuses on the ‘child soldier phenomenon.’ However, instead of
exploring the international interventions towards children, Dalibor Savić,

Rusmir Piralić, and Aleksandar Janković address the experiences of chil-
dren’s participation in war based on their own voices and perspectives.
In this regard, it is worth noting that one of the authors, Rusmir Piralić,
is himself a former child-soldier in the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina
(BiH) and today is a peace activist. If, on the one hand, Bramwell investi-
gates the limits of international interventions aimed at protecting children
in wars, Savić, Piralić, and Janković address children’s experiences in
armed conflict beyond what has been articulated by the humanitarian and
the local ethno-nationalist discourses. The ontologies of the ‘child soldier
phenomenon’ are not only destabilized through children’s own stories,
but also by bringing to the fore children’s participation in a war that took
place in the 1990s in Europe. Within the particular construction of the
child-soldier as a vulnerable and exploited victim that needs to be saved,
little mention is made of the lived realities of children’s participation in
wars outside the African continent. As such, Savić, Riralić, and Janković’s
contribution opens space to acknowledge the participation of children in
wars beyond the usual focus on the Global South or, more specifically,
the characterization of child-soldiers as an essentially ‘African problem.’
In order to problematize the idea of child soldiers as passive partici-
pants in war and post-war events, this contribution explores the similar-
ities and differences between the auto/biographical narratives of former
child soldiers and the hegemonic narratives about them in BiH society.
While there is much that is revealing in these testimonies, something
that is especially interesting is that, although many of them self-identify
as victims of the war, this does not mean their varied experiences as
soldiers—which tell different stories of oppression, participation, and
resistance—may be erased or forgotten. Differently from the humanitarian
discourse that articulates the child-soldier either as the hapless victim or
the dangerous monster, Savić, Piralić, and Janković draw our attention to
the messy, ambiguous, and sometimes paradoxical experiences of child-
soldiers in wars. Furthermore, by making their own voices audible, the
chapter points out the limits of the static identity of the child soldier,
which is rendered possible by its relationship to the category of the child.
As such, exploring hegemonic ideas about child soldiers and their child-
hoods means not only challenging the idea that child-soldiers are, by
definition, an exception to the ontologies of childhood, but also seeing
the conception of child as uncertain.
In Chapter 4, “‘I Have the Right’: Examining the Role of Chil-

dren in the #DimeLaVerdad Campaign,” Diana Carolina García Gómez
turns the focus to the post-conflict situation and children’s engage-
ment in the Colombian peacebuilding process. Exploring the ways in
which the post-accord institutions in the country are conceptualizing chil-
dren’s participation in the process of building a “New Colombia” after
over half of a century of armed conflict, Gómez analyzes the limits of
children’s roles and whether the #DimeLaVerdad campaign subverts or
upholds the hierarchical adult–child relation. What is more, she argues
that recognizing that children are not only victims of the conflict, but
also perpetrators and peacebuilders, opens space for children to share
their stories and to be recognized as citizens of the Colombian society.
Regardless of what they did while engaged in conflict, children’s acts were
presented in terms of their own experiences, allowing them to escape from
the bounded and fixed narrative of child victimhood caused by war and
be recognized by adults as social and political actors. Through analysis
of the campaign, Gómez unpacks the ontology of children as defenseless
objects in need of protection and explores the limits and potentialities
of children’s political subjecthood and their role in negotiating peace in
transitional contexts.
Together, the chapters gathered together in the first part of the book
simultaneously challenge and offer unique analysis on the limits and
silences of the ontologies of childhood, which articulate the borders of
the concept of child as the innocent, vulnerable being who must be prop-
erly prepared to become a rational, productive, educated adult and citizen
of the future. The ideas of both the child and childhood, as they emerge
and are investigated through these three chapters, speak to the ways in
which relations of power are bound up with and are mutually consti-
tuted by dominant ontological renderings of childhood. At the same time,
presenting cases that address these issues in ways and under circumstances
not anticipated by prevailing common senses, they are revealing of the
varied ways in which children’s political subjecthood is at work in the
making, remaking, and unmaking of these same commitments and, with
them, of the social worlds of their everyday lives.
The contributions to the second part of the book, “Pedagogies of
Children in Peace and Conflict,” reveal heterogeneous assemblages—
authorized by hegemonic ideas of peace, conflict, and the nation-state—
that operate as ordering mechanisms by attributing distinctive rights and
duties to both children and adults, determining the objects and agents
of protection, identifying violations of such protections, and setting the

scope for education programs. In Chapter 5, “Children, Internation-
alism, and Armistice Commemoration in Britain, 1919–1939,” Susannah
Wright addresses internationalism and armistice commemoration in the
interwar years in Britain by focusing on both how the internationalists of
the League of Nations Union (LNU) engaged with children and child-
hood as part of their armistice-related activity, and how children engaged
with them as well. Children were understood as important audiences of
the main message articulated through the commemorations—that is, to
remember and to honor the lives lost during the First World War in order
to avoid the same happening again and, in doing so, to promote inter-
national understanding and peace. Exploring LNU texts, Wright reveals
how children were depicted as the “internationalists of the future” and,
as such, frequently neglected as political subjects in their present time.
Performing a pleasing visual spectacle in front of the audiences, children
were prepared to act as capable and productive adults of the future who
would preserve internationalist and peaceful communities—or, as Wright
puts it, “They were to be the keepers of an internationalist inheritance.”
Children’s high profile in modern society as the hope—and instru-
ment—for a progressive and peaceful future cannot be denied. Wright’s
chapter reminds of Erica Burman’s (2008: 11) observation that, “[…]
childhood becomes a site of multiple emotional as well as political invest-
ments: a repository of hope yet a site of instrumentalisation for the future,
but with an equal and opposite nostalgia for the past.” Burman’s argu-
ment turns visible the ambivalent meaning of the child: at the same time
that the child is (re)produced as a symbol of the promise of a progres-
sive future, s/he also serves to display to adult society its own state of
once untutored and undeveloped difference, which needs to be moni-
tored and subject to different forms of regulation and training (Tabak
2020). Considering this process of regulation and training of the child—
among the pedagogies of interest to us—children are placed in designated
spaces, schools being one of them where children can be developed so a
peaceful and secure future can be guaranteed.
Similarly, in Chapter 6, “Childhood, Education, and Everyday Mili-
tarism in China Before and After 1949,” Haolan Zheng focuses on
elementary educational policy in China in order to show the similari-
ties between the Chinese Nationalist Party and Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) understandings of the ideal child, and how this particular under-
standing articulates children’s daily lives. Furthermore, Zheng explores
the intersections between schooling and militarization by addressing how

children in China were not only objects of education, but also widely
mobilized to assimilate and practice militarism in their daily lives, such
as participating in political campaigns to support war under the highly
top-down mobilization system of the CCP during the Korean War. Of
particular interest, Zheng draws our attention to the process through
which the ideal child is constructed in the course of Chinese nation-
building. In other words, the model of the child—or, the future Chinese
citizen—whose life is fully militarized is simultaneously associated with
and authorizes a very specific type of nation-state, whose limits are care-
fully articulated by and through the particular ideas of sovereignty, order,
peace, and conflict.
In Chapter 7, “Primary Education and The French Army During
the Algerian War of Independence,” Brooke Durham extends the inves-
tigation of the investment in schooling, with a focus on the primary
education of rural Algerian children in Grande Kabylie provided by
the French military during the Algerian War of Independence. As
argued throughout the chapter, not only did investing in Algerian
children’s education allow the French military to present a respon-
sible and humanitarian face of its military operations, but primary
schools also operated as strategic spaces for controlling the risks related
to children, who were not just students but potential supporters of
the nationalist militants alongside their parents. Effectively, by disci-
plining the child through school education, risks of instability in
the former colony might be kept at bay. From Chapters 6 and 7,
it seems that schooling occupies a central role in pedagogies of children
once the process of educational learning prepares the child by imparting
knowledge so they can become productive, and ‘properly’ socialized (in
accordance with particular political aims) citizens in the future. Within
these terms, these contributions are in close dialogue with Nikolas Rose’s
(1999: 124) argument that education is recognized not only as an indi-
vidual right for the child, but also operates as a social and collective
right, since it implies the “duty of each individual to improve and civilize
themselves for the benefit of the social health of the community.”
By its turn, Chapter 8, “Militarizing Citizenship in Ukraine: ‘Strategy
for the National-Patriotic Education of Children and Youth’ in Social
Context,” also seeks to analyze the role of education policies, here
in framing the relationships between Ukraine and its youngest citi-
zens. Specifically, Vita Yakovlyeva explores the efforts of the 2016–2020
Strategy for the Ukrainian National-Patriotic Education of Children and

Youth in developing a unified system of national military-patriotic educa-
tion based primarily on ideas of militarization and territorial defence in a
country impacted by an armed conflict. As spaces for preparing children
to become (a particular kind of) adult citizen, this network of state and
non-government educational institutions, governed by social and educa-
tional policy, operates as an important mechanism for promoting military
training and encouragement of children and youth to take on an active
role in defence of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial unity based on
particular—although hegemonic—ideas of nationality, ethnicity, and mili-
tarism. Together with the other chapters in this part, this contribution
draws our attention to the pedagogies of children as ordering mecha-
nisms that carefully articulate and authorize the limits not only of the
bounded ontologies of childhood, but also of dominant understandings
of sovereignty, nation-state, peace, and conflict.
However, what happens when the limits of pedagogies are destabilized
by experiences and images of children that overflow what is prescribed by
their ontologies? The third and last part of book, “Contingencies of Chil-
dren in Peace and Conflict,” explores questions that emerge when the
encounter between children’s actual life experiences and their idealized
childhood is more effacing than engaging. While focusing on different
contexts, all four chapters of this part investigate questions of responsi-
bility to children when the processes of pedagogies are simply not enough.
That is, the limits of these myriad knowledges, performances, and prac-
tices lie wherever there are children engaged in experiences that do not
fit into the ontologies of childhood and of the child. In this regard, one
of the main questions that puts these contributions into conversation
is: when may protection mechanisms be better read as processes of risk
management? Or, as Rashmi Kumari invites us to question in Chapter 11:
whose safety is under threat when contingencies of children make ontolo-
gies of childhood unrecognizable?
In Chapter 9, “More Than a Victim: Childhood Resilience in Malik
Sajad’s Munnu,” Suniti Madaan and Cijo Joy question the narrative
about Kashmiri children framed by the limits of the victim stereotype.
Through a critical reading of the graphic autobiography, Munnu: A Boy
from Kashmir, by Malik Sajad, this contribution goes beyond the focus on
children’s victimhood and explores representations of children in armed
conflict situations when many facets of growing up in vulnerable contexts
are brought to the fore. Thinking in terms of “interdependencies” (Punch
2001) helps us navigate through questions related to children’s participa-

tion in socio-political life and their resilience as a way of dealing with
and resisting stress and disturbance. Without excluding Kashmiri chil-
dren’s right to protection, Madaan and Joy contribute to the debates
on children’s rights in situations of armed conflict by complicating our
views about childhood and pointing towards a multiplicity of experiences
beyond being the object of adult protection.
Also with a focus on the experiences of children in armed conflict
situations, in Chapter 10, “Children and Childhood on the Border-
land of Desired Peace and Undesired War: A Case of Ukraine,” Urszula
Markowska-Manista and Oksana Koshulko draw from interviews with
children and adults in order to explore and interpret other forms of
childhood within contexts of extreme vulnerability. Rather than erasing
the experience of war, the authors discuss how these children—even
when they are under threat—have managed to resist and be active in
the construction of their own lifeworlds. Sharing empirical context with
Chapter 8, this contribution also discusses the impacts of the national-
patriotic education curricula in framing the limits of bounded children
and their childhood. However, the authors highlight the dangers of repro-
ducing the victimhood stereotype once it silences the multidimensionality
of childhood, showing how diverse are the ways children react and partic-
ipate in the territories affected by the war and occupation in Ukraine. As
they put it, every childhood is a “perpetual negotiation” of their time and
spaces.
If the first two chapters of this part problematize the over-focus on the
idea of the child as a hapless victim in need of adult protection, the last
two explore the contingencies of children by questioning who/what is
being protected—or whose safety is at issue—when ontologies of child-
hood are under threat. In Chapter 11, “Production of ‘Safe’ Spaces
for Adivasi Children and the Armed Conflict of Bastar, India,” Rashmi
Kumari problematizes state investment in education for Adivasi children
in rural Bastar by complicating the role of schools as ordering mechanisms
in a society amidst conflict. Engaging in the limits of the construction
of childhoods “in crisis” and “in need of saving,” Kumari questions the
official discourse of education and poses the question of what children’s
safety (or lack of safety) entails and authorizes in terms of state practices
towards children in order to maintain stability and security. At the end
of the day, by addressing the ambivalent meaning of children’s innocence
that made them simultaneously victims of violence and potential threats
to state security, this chapter invites us to critically reflect on whose best

interest is being addressed when children are depicted as being “at risk.”
Finally, in a very different context, but addressing similar issues
regarding the anxiety around children’s education when they are
constructed primarily as innocent beings (or, becomings), Chapter 12,
“Raising the Empire’s Children? Everyday Insecurities and Parenting the
Privileged in the United States,” is a personal interrogation of prac-
tices around education and parenting when contingencies of childhood
and children destabilize the idea of childhood as a “once-upon-a-time
story with happy and predictable ending” (James and Jenks 1996: 315).
Outwardly distinct from many of the contributions to this volume,
Jennifer Riggan focuses on the processes of discipline of children and
the rituals adopted by caregivers intended to keep them safe and enter-
tained within a context that may appear less ‘exceptional’ and perhaps
less ‘spectacular’ than zones of conflict as they are commonly imag-
ined. Riggan discusses how the construction of privilege juxtaposed with
daily insecurities that are felt present, but which we cannot really see
or fully understand, produce the limits of the “children of empire.”
Unpacking and complicating parenting practices and parental anxieties
around protecting one’s children against a world with its multiplication
and proliferation of threats, this closing chapter reflects upon and chal-
lenges the limits of the main categories that constitute the book itself,
which are (re)produced as authorized and universal truths and presumed
stable and self-evident categories, such as children, peace, and conflict.
***
In their various explorations of empirical cases both within and beyond
zones of conflict, the contributors to this volume reveal something of how
children and childhoods are always bound up in the making, remaking,
and unmaking of conflict, experienced as war, war preparation, war
commemoration, and more. Likewise, they are indispensable and engaged
subjects in the building and maintenance of peace as well as in imag-
ining and specifying its requisites. Without discounting the importance
of continuing work around issues of child soldiers and war-affected chil-
dren in settings that, having dominated popular iconography and global
public imaginaries, have tended to garner most attention, these original
contributions alert us to the vast multiplicity of childhoods shaped by
and shaping the navigation of peace and conflict in unique and often sui
generis ways. ‘Finding’ children in contexts in which they have been less
often sought, and perhaps even more seldom seen and heard, the chap-
ters that follow nuance our understanding of political subjecthood and
of its varied and complex forms. In so doing, they better equip us to
critically engage the paradox of children’s simultaneous indispensability
to and marginalization in global security practices. And populating peace
and conflict with a fuller range of political subjects, they contribute as
well to a deeper understanding of recourse to organized political violence
and of efforts to manage, mitigate, and ameliorate its imprint upon social
worlds and everyday lives.
Acknowledgements Research for this chapter was supported by an Insight

Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
(grant number 435-2019-0009).
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1749-5687.2008.00062.x.
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PART I
Ontologies of Children in Peace and Conflict

CHAPTER 2
Children as Soldiers or Civilians: Norms

and Politics in the United Nations Monitoring
and Reporting Mechanism on Children
Affected by Armed Conflict
Vanessa Bramwell
Introduction
2019 marked 30 years since the signing of the Convention on the Rights
of the Child. This convention comprises the protection of children’s rights
in a range of situations, one of which is the protection of children in
armed conflict. This mandate to protect children in armed conflict has
developed a complex infrastructure over the last three decades—an infras-
tructure made up of non-governmental organizations as well as United
Nations working groups. The reporting relationships and mechanisms are
somewhat opaque, however UN documents claim success in a particular
pillar of child protection in armed conflict: the release and repatriation of
child soldiers. Although many contemporary violations in armed conflict
V. Bramwell (B)
Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74788-6_2
24 V. BRAMWELL
happen primarily to civilian children (where these can be clearly sepa-

rated from ‘child soldiers’), such as the denial of humanitarian access and
attacks on schools, the child soldier discourse remains highly prominent
in the Children affected by Armed Conflict (CaAC) workstream. Publicity
campaigns and reports by the relevant UN bodies have reflected an image
of the child soldier which has evolved over time, yet consistently speaks
to the role of the conflict-affected child as a site of local and global—
indeed, moral—tragedy; a corrupted victim, whose rightful function as
cultural capital for the future must be restored; a “global child” (Linde
2016) or “world-child” (Tabak 2020).
This chapter examines the development of the norm of the “child
soldier” in the Western imagination, and the way it has evolved along with
the CaAC infrastructure to become the dominant way of conceptualizing
conflict-affected children in this mandate. There is already excellent schol-
arship in the area of ontologies of the child soldier in UN intervention,
and this chapter draws on a base of scholarly work in critical feminist
International Relations and Security Studies, Anthropology and Child-
hood Studies. It also utilizes the author’s own analysis of resolutions and
reports of some relevant UN bodies, including the Security Council and
the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children Affected
by Armed Conflict. These sources together inform a discussion of the role
of norms and political motives, as well as the mechanisms of the infras-
tructure itself, in the dominance of the child soldier mandate. Finally, ways
to move away from an over-reliance on norms concerning child soldiers
are suggested, with the aim of both discouraging such over-simplistic
norms in other areas of the mandate, and giving these overlooked areas
greater attention.
Children in Armed Conflict

Children’s suffering is talked about today in ways that are fundamen-
tally different to those of the early/mid twentieth century. The World
Wars were famously brutal to children. Many were killed in air raids and
other military operations, as well as dying due to starvation and suffering
exposure or other forms of victimization in the aftermath of the wars.
The popular conception of children in the public mind usually identi-
fied them as complete victims, always civilian. In this regard, children
shared an ‘identity’ with women, who may have been engaged in war
work at home, but very rarely were active combatants (at least in the
2 CHILDREN AS SOLDIERS OR CIVILIANS: NORMS AND POLITICS … 25
Western collective conscious). David M. Rosen (2005) has examined the

ways in which children exercised their agency in some twentieth century
conflicts, including an analysis of the ‘ghetto-fighters’ of Warsaw in the
Second World War, and demonstrates that children were in fact pivotal
actors in these events—in the case of Warsaw, not even as individual
children contributing to adult resistance, but as a political organization
very much orchestrated, and motivated, by youth; yet, our cultural and
national narratives about the war do not generally recognize this role.
There are some similarities between the way we imagine children in
general in armed conflict today, and how we did so during and after
the World Wars. The suffering of children, as well as women, was the
original mandate for the charity operations of UNICEF (which keeps its
original acronym for United Nations International Children’s Emergency
Fund). Jennifer M. Morris (2015: 3) discusses the origins of UNICEF’s
strict and homogenizing focus on women and children as victims of
global conflict, arguing that this characterization was a political discourse
attached as a condition of funding by the United States, which consid-
ered the strength of the traditional family to be a key pillar in the defence
against communist ideology. While UNICEF’s portrayal of women and
children as total victims became increasingly impactful on the Western
imagination as its fundraising and publicity efforts grew, the suffering of
children was also frequently used as a propaganda tool to further polit-
ical motives or drum up support for war as the twentieth century went
on. The hyper-politicization of the suffering of children in war has also
occurred far more recently, notably with regard to the War on Terror and
the supposed need to liberate women and children from various entities
in the Middle East, including the Taliban. As a recent example, Cathy
Russell, the US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, stated
in a 2014 op-ed about the fight against ISIL:
Girls as young as 12 or 13 have been forced to marry extremists or sold

to the highest bidder — like cattle at an auction. These are young girls,
mothers, and sisters facing imminent rape, trafficking, and forced marriage.
These are women and girls who pleaded to be killed in airstrikes rather than
be brutalized by ISIL. (Russell 2014; emphasis added)
This description is graphic and emotive, making use of popular norms

relating to the subjugation of the vulnerable (women and children) under
brutal and barbaric foreign powers. There is no agency allowed in this
26 V. BRAMWELL
discourse, and the contrast to Rosen’s analysis of the empowered child

ghetto fighters is stark. The imagery recalls rhetoric from the George W.
Bush administration at the time of the War in Afghanistan, which itself
took on an imperialistic, hyper-altruistic tone:
Life under the Taliban is so hard and repressive, even small displays of
joy are outlawed. Children aren’t allowed to fly kites. Their mothers face
beatings for laughing out loud. (Bush 2001)
Such emotive Western characterizations of children’s suffering, but partic-

ularly of soldiering, were popular years earlier, during the Iraq-Iran War.
Shaherzad R. Ahmadi’s (2018) feminist analysis of the intersection of
social class and gendered spaces in boys’ enlistment in the war discusses
the Western account of these young fighters, and its reliance on an
explanation of state-encouraged religious fanaticism. Again, agency is not
afforded at all. Although children have probably always fought in warfare,
and certainly did in modern history—including in the American Civil
War, for example (Rosen 2005: 5)—“…the child soldier as an abused and
exploited victim of war is a radically new concept” (Rosen 2005: 6). The
oft-cited ‘Straight-18’ position on childhood, whereby any person under
the age of 18 is by definition a child, is a concept born out of the Western
Industrial Revolution and consequent periods of state consolidation and
influence over the private sphere (Linde 2016).
Political motives for the propagation of norms such as that described
above will be examined further on in this chapter. But first, it is important
to touch on the theory of norms and symbolic technologies, a theory
which is being usefully applied to research on CaAC by critical feminist
scholars.
Norms and Children in Armed Conflict

The theory of norms came to critical feminist International Relations
theory by way of social constructivism. A popular model for the gener-
ation and spread of norms was put forward by Martha Finnemore and
Kathryn Sikkink (1998: 893), which describes the process of norm diffu-
sion to a point of critical acceptance, or normalization. Later authors
have criticized such models for not focusing enough on the actual emer-
gence of the norms themselves. Elvira Rosert (2019) creates a model
specifically for this stage using the case study of the cluster muni-
tions ban. Rosert (2019: 1103) adds to the existing body of theory on
norms regarding civilian protection in armed conflict by demonstrating

four different sequences of norm generation: “problem adoption” by
norm entrepreneurs; issue creation in the public sphere (i.e., outside
of institutions); creation by institutions; and, creation during multilat-
eral negotiations. This closer look at the generation of norms can aid
in the consideration of motives behind particular symbolic technologies.
Robyn Linde (2016) and Helen Berents (2016) also usefully consider the
generation and spread of norms in examinations of the abolition of the
child death penalty and gendered social media campaigns pertaining to
children, respectively.
Other scholars taking a critical feminist approach to the study of armed
conflict, and women or children specifically in armed conflict, include
Katrina Lee-Koo (2011), Cecilia Jacob (2014), and Bina D’Costa (2016),
who have written about the ways norms impact policy and practice in the
CaAC mandate. Symbolic technologies are the modes by which an intan-
gible idea—a norm—is expressed in language: visual, verbal, written, et
cetera (Carpenter 2006). Photographs and digital footage in particular
are familiar symbolic technologies for transmitting norms in the twenty-
first century, and photographs and film published by global media played
a pivotal role in the establishment of the norm of the child soldier that
was so familiar to audiences starting in the late twentieth century.
This norm of the child victim-soldier was a new norm ascribed to chil-
dren in armed conflict that did not exist in the Western imagination in
the mid-twentieth century. The idea of the “child soldier” was foreign
at that time, as the consolidation of state definitions of childhood, and
the associated denial of agency, were still developing (Linde 2016). On
the issue of agency, Ewa Stańczyk (2015) complements Rosen’s (2005)
account of the Warsaw uprising by examining the way child fighters were
martyred and glorified immediately after the 1944 Warsaw uprising by
the local population; there were localities in the European world at the
time who perceived children as having some agency in conflict, and also
likely did not conceive of adolescent fighters as ‘children’ according to
the ‘Straight-18’ definition. This contrasts thoroughly with the way child
soldiers are now discussed in public policy as well as general conversa-
tion. Today, the public imagination tends to ascribe complete victimhood
to child soldiers. An examination of the development of the UN infras-
tructure on CaAC, in tandem with the development of this norm, can
illustrate the way they are closely related, and extend the existing body of
analysis.
28 V. BRAMWELL
The UN and CaAC: An Emphasis on Child

Soldiers and Reactionary Additions
Children have served in combat around the world since time immemo-
rial. In the Western world, they certainly have done so for hundreds
of years. Traditionally, they were valorised. This is demonstrated, for
example, by contemporary accounts of the heroism of “Christian boy
soldiers” of the American Civil War (Rosen 2005: 6). However, today’s
definition of childhood is different. The Western definition which has
informed international law, beginning formally with the Convention on
the Rights of the Child (1989), defines a child as anyone below the
age of 18. Prior to the Industrial Revolution there was not such a clear
definition between childhood and adulthood. Teenagers often worked to
support their families and, particularly for boys of lower class, there was
often a gendered expectation to work even if that work should include
soldiering—a phenomenon which continues in many areas and is iden-
tified even in Ahmadi’s (2018) analysis of boys soldiers in the Iran-Iraq
War. Moving into the twentieth century, with improved labour protec-
tions, the Western perspective on childhood changed considerably. In the
First World War, the minimum conscription age in the United Kingdom
was 18. According to the binary approach to understanding interstate
warfare prevalent in the West at the time, people during war were divided
into civilians and combatants, which put people under 18 firmly in the
civilian group. Women were also presumed excluded from the combatant
category. This understanding of children and women as the centre of
civilian identity is reflected in the development of civilian protections
and aid during and after the World Wars, with the original mandate of
UNICEF being an example: no aid was provided by UNICEF to men
in its immediate post-Second World War operations, regardless of their
circumstance (Morris 2015: 3).
Following the end of the Second World War and the genesis of the
United Nations, thinking around children in conflict continued to be
influenced by a conception of children as civilian only, despite the fact
that minors did actually serve in Western armies illegitimately. After the
Second World War, UNICEF was founded by the General Assembly.
UNICEF began as a temporary relief agency in 1946, but was given a
permanent mandate in 1953. Civil society in the UK, Europe, and the
U.S. was already active in raising money for this cause, and there was
public demand for a large-scale solution. Morris (2015: 2) contends that
UNICEF was strongly influenced in its conceptualization of victimhood

by political demands at this time; with much of the aid being distributed
in the Soviet bloc, there was considerable suspicion in political quarters,
and the permanent mandate of UNICEF was set with the involvement
of staff from the U.S. Children’s Bureau (Morris 2015: 6). It is clear
through discourse about children and wars, such as the example provided
earlier in this chapter from Russell’s column, that political motives have
remained entwined with the mandate.
Though the Geneva Declaration on the Rights of the Child (1924)
had been informed by contemporary thinking about children, and the
UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959) and the Year of the
Child (1979) demonstrated a growing influence of children’s rights on
UN mandates, agency for children in warfare was not part of the package.
1989 saw the creation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child,
signalling a prioritisation in the UN workstream of concerns related to
children; the Committee on the Rights of the Child brought the mandate
outside the exclusive responsibility of UNICEF. The conceptualization
of children’s victimhood in war began to change from norms of civilian
suffering towards that of the child soldier. In the 1990s, high-profile
conflicts such as the Iran-Iraq War began to draw international media
attention—as did wars in Somalia, Rwanda, and Sudan—and a key area
of interest in these conflicts was the role of children. Lee-Koo (2011: 731)
provides an analysis of how colonial ideas about barbarism and immorality
became tied in with the developing Western norm of the child soldier at
this time, a time when Africa was conceived of as a “morally defunct zone
of tragedy.” The “child soldier” norm in the Western imagination was
most likely both generated and reinforced by the growing public discom-
fort with the inaction of global governments in the face of these images
of children suffering.
In 1993, the situation became pressing with mounting public pressure
over wars continuing in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Somalia, as well as
in the Balkans. A seminal reaction by the UN was to commission The
Graça Machel Report (United Nations 1996). Its purpose was to assess
the severity and types of effects that armed conflict had on children,
and it identified children as gravely affected, not just as civilians but also
as combatants. This report led to Resolution 51/77 (United Nations
Security Council 1997) and the appointing of a Special Representative to
the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict.
30 V. BRAMWELL
The first Special Representative to the Secretary-General for Chil-

dren and Armed Conflict, Olara Otunnu, began to advocate for more
concrete CaAC measures towards the turn of the millennium. In 1999,
the seminal Resolution 1261 (United Nations Security Council 1999)
identified six grave violations of children in armed conflict: recruitment,
killing and maiming, abduction, attacks on schools and hospitals, sexual
violence, and blocking humanitarian access. These six violations are
the basic barometer by which the effects of children in armed conflict
are measured by the existing infrastructure. In 2004, Resolution 1539
(United Nations Security Council 2004) devised a clear Monitoring
and Reporting Mechanism (MRM) to identify violations, and shortly
afterward the Security Council Working Group on Children in Armed
Conflict (SCWGCAC) was created to operate this mechanism. Resolution
1460 (United Nations Security Council 2003) stipulated that any party
that carried out grave violations would be noted; however, a party who
engaged in recruitment specifically would be blacklisted in an annex to
the Secretary General’s annual report on Children and Armed Conflict. It
is telling that, at the time, this was the only violation considered worthy
of blacklisting a party for. Child soldiers were clearly a key priority in
both the UN workstream and in the public imagination. Subsequent
resolutions did add the other violations as listable offences, but the
timing of these additions appears to be reactionary.
In 2009, killing and maiming and rape and sexual violence were added
as triggers for listing in the Special Representative’s report. In that year,
the Somali civil war had broken out, and atrocities against children were
well publicized. The second Sudanese civil war had also not long ended,
and images of suffering children were spectres that the UN needed to
be seen to be responding to. Resolution 1882 (United Nations Security
Council 2009) was approved unanimously by the General Assembly. Two
years later, in 2011, Resolution 1998 (United Nations Security Council
2011) added attacks on schools and hospitals as a trigger for listing. The
Syrian civil war had begun in this year, and the deliberate targeting of
schools and hospitals for airstrikes by various parties was met with public
outrage. Resolution 2225 (United Nations Security Council 2015a)
added abduction as a trigger, months after 276 schoolgirls were abducted
in Borno Sate, Nigeria by Boko Haram. A strong relationship between
high profile violations and the adding of those violations as triggers seems
likely; at the very least, this process appears to be more reactionary than
proactive, and connected to the use of symbolic technologies. As Lee-Koo

argues in her analysis of children in visual global politics,
Far from the hard-headed strategies of global conflict, a single image

of a child experiencing political violence can galvanise an unwavering
emotional-political response and produce a clear underlying narrative:
“This war is wrong”; “These people are poison”; “This continent is a
basketcase.” (Lee-Koo 2018: 48)
It is probable that popular norms in the public imagination about chil-

dren in armed conflict had a significant influence on the development of
this infrastructure. If we consider Rosert’s possible modes of norm emer-
gence, as discussed above, these norms may have begun life as an issue in
the public imagination which needed to be addressed urgently by institu-
tions. The 1990s demonstrated that the UN now seemed to be motivated
to respond to situations of civilian suffering in the face of significant public
concern, with the genesis of the Responsibility to Protect principle. This
modus operandi may have persisted and strengthened moving into the
twenty-first century. Lee-Koo (2019) separately examines the contem-
porary use of norms relating to agency in the CaAC mandate, arguing
for the importance of a reconceptualization of children—as beings who
demonstrate agency—in improving the effectiveness of the mandate.
The current state of the international child protection infrastruc-
ture is opaque, and comprises mandates held by various UN parties
and working groups including SCWGCAC, the Special Representative’s
office, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UNICEF,
the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), the Office of the
High Commissioner for Refugees, NATO, the European Union, the
African Union, and others. Although the reporting relationships can be
difficult to map, the infrastructure appears to have been successful in
delivering on one area in particular: that is, the release and repatriation of
child soldiers. However, progress against other grave violations has been
far from satisfactory.
The following section will discuss two connected issues pertaining to
the over-focus on child soldiers in the mandate. These are the inappropri-
ateness of utilized norms to the success of the whole mandate (including
all violations), as well as the motivations behind the prevalence of the
child-soldier norm. The rest of this chapter discusses these challenges,
32 V. BRAMWELL
asking what avenues might be usefully explored to help draw the focus of
the mandate towards children suffering other violations.
Working Against Norms: Identifying

and Promoting Other Priorities
During the heyday of ISIL, media images of child soldiers seemed to
have changed. Audiences no longer saw primarily African children as
the embodiment of child soldiers but, rather, they were presented with
images of Iraqi boys: no longer alone and despondent but now in groups,
waving assault rifles and wearing black headbands, more reminiscent of
imaginaries of child soldiers from the Iraq-Iran War. The norm that was
inherited from the 1990s was no longer fit for purpose. With fewer
high-profile African conflicts and the new priority of ISIL for Western
strategists, the way public audiences imagined child soldiers began to
change.
A report made by the Security Council in 2017, called “Children and
Armed Conflict: Sustaining the Agenda,” discusses “new challenges” in
addressing violations against children (United Nations Security Council
2017). It particularly mentions recruitment as a changing phenomenon,
though does also discuss the changing nature of warfare and increased
lethality to civilians. If the norms reflected in the media and public imag-
ination as well as in UN policy are no longer fit for the purpose of
policymakers themselves, one has to wonder how relevant the work is
‘on the ground.’ The MRM does collect data but, as noted previously,
the very limited nature of this data, which must pass through country
teams and then filter upward through various levels of bureaucracy to
the SCWGCAC and office of the Special Representative, raises questions
about the appropriateness of interventions.
It also is clear that the UN itself acknowledges success in the recruit-
ment arena but not across other violations. The idea that inaccurate norms
might play a part in this problem is worthy of further research. The prolif-
eration of norms generates funding and donations, as it both encourages
and is enhanced by public concern. Therefore, when these norms have
reached a high level of saturation of the public imagination, large amounts
of funding may aid in producing ‘results’ even if these are not as targeted
or as appropriate as they could be if the norms were more representative.
The use of norms in such a way is one strategy political interests may
use to interfere with the functioning of the MRM. Political interests may
adopt and utilize norms and symbolic technologies, however, they may
also interfere by applying diplomatic pressure. As discussed above, prior
to 2009, only the act of recruiting child soldiers could result in a party
being blacklisted in the Secretary General’s annual report on Children
and Armed Conflict. Bo Viktor Nylund (2016) argues that progress has
been made in the area of recruitment. Jon Pedersen and Tone Sommer-
felt (2007: 254) agree with this assessment, although they argue that the
concept of the “child soldier” lacks a universal definition. There is little
data disaggregated by age; different modes of recruitment—forced or by
choice—are not often considered in data relied on by policymakers; there
is little recorded information about how long child soldiers have been
‘soldiering’ or what type of companies they are involved with. Lorraine
Macmillan (2009: 42), whose analysis will be discussed further below,
asserts that this lack of disaggregation is a deliberate oversight intended
to justify the ‘Straight 18’ position. Importantly, Pedersen and Sommer-
felt also argue that there is a relative paucity of data on children affected
by other violations. As discussed further on, there is some evidence that
the Security Council is beginning to acknowledge this issue. However,
further research in this area could only benefit the mandate.
Power and Politics

The project of rehabilitating child soldiers itself may be unfit for purpose,
but it also overwhelms all other violations in terms of the focus of the
CaAC mandate. In the author’s own analysis of reports of the Special
Representative of the Secretary-General for Children Affected by Armed
Conflict between the years 1999 and 2020, this theme dominated the
workstream more than any other, including sexual violence (though this
did receive increasing attention over time). Earlier in this chapter, the
use of norms and symbolic technologies for political purposes was intro-
duced with the mention of official American statements about children
and women in the wars against the Taliban and ISIL. These are obvious
examples of symbolic technologies being utilized for political purposes.
The proliferation of norms about the suffering of women and children in
Afghanistan, for example, encouraged American civilians to support the
war effort of the United States against the Taliban, who were accused
of harbouring Al Qaeda terrorists. However, symbolic technologies can
be employed in more subtle ways to reinforce broader political interests.
34 V. BRAMWELL
Explanations for this phenomenon come from anthropology as well as

postcolonial work in politics and International Relations.
Rosen (2007: 304) argues that the reasons for this overwhelming focus
on soldiering are fundamentally political: “The child soldier ‘crisis’ is a
modern political crisis, which has little to do with whether there are
more or fewer children in wars today than in previous eras.” That is,
the “crisis” itself is essentially manufactured and more a weapon of colo-
nial interference than a true intervention born of concern for children.
Stańczyk’s discussion compares the perception of child soldiers in the
Warsaw Uprising of 1944 as capable, heroic martyrs to the child soldier-
victim image of the Western imagination, which is an evident influence on
UN policy and discourse. David J. Francis (2007: 210) further argues that
this norm is non-representative particularly of the African communities
to which it is so often applied. Rituals of coming-of-age and adulthood
in various parts of Africa are incompatible with Western ideas about the
reduced agency of the child or adolescent and, in any case, “international”
(or inherently Western) norms about child soldiering may simply never
infiltrate some African localities as the outreach is insufficient or may be
rejected.
One of the reasons for the continuing lack of success in this area is due
to the fact that non-state groups such as militias in isolated local areas
may be more or less invulnerable to large-scale international mechanisms
like the ‘name and shame system’ of the MRM, because conflict societies
can struggle to implement these across all localities (Francis 2007: 210).
Local militias have no global diplomatic concerns and do not rely on
outside funding or external aid. However, there is a broader problem
with the listing mechanism as evidenced by paragraph 20 of Resolution
2427, passed in July 2018:
[The Security Council] Reaffirms that the monitoring and reporting mech-
anism will continue to be implemented in situations listed in annex I and
annex II (“the annexes”) to the reports of the Secretary-General on chil-
dren and armed conflict, in line with the principles set out in paragraph
2 of its resolution 1612 (2005), and that its establishment and implemen-
tation shall not prejudge or imply a decision by the Security Council as
to whether or not to include a situation on its agenda. (United Nations
2018)
Anyone in the habit of reading Security Council resolutions will be

familiar with this kind of political caveat. In this case, though, it appears
an admission that even the listing of parties who commit grave viola-
tions against children in armed conflict will not necessarily be discussed
openly by the Security Council. The Council would rather the mecha-
nism operate quietly and still function in the intended way of shaming
perpetrators. For this reason, this caveat in this particular mandate may
seriously hinder the effectiveness of the MRM.
As stated in the 2019 report, killing and maiming and attacks on
schools and hospitals had increased significantly and caused severe devas-
tation. Importantly, then, these violations do appear to have an emphasis
over recruitment in the report. However, the situations in question
were Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan, among others. Cluster munitions,
air strikes, and unexploded ordnance caused a high proportion of this
suffering. As mentioned previously, it has been demonstrated before that
some parties such as Saudi Arabia, which has well-known activities in the
conflict in Yemen, can simply have their names struck off from the annex
by request. It is no surprise, then, that it is the violations which relate
to military activities of powerful global players which have not seen any
improvement.
Rosen argues that the Graça Machel report of 1996, the real genesis
of the CaAC mandate, makes use of symbolic technologies and attempts
norm entrepreneurship. In particular, Rosen (2007: 298) references
Machel’s emphasis on the idea of “new wars”: the proliferation of intra-
state conflict that was demonstrated particularly the civil wars in Africa in
that decade. These wars are supposedly more brutal than war was in the
past with more atrocities carried out against the vulnerable, and a blurring
of the distinction between soldier and civilian. The picture painted by this
discourse is one of barbarism, lawlessness, and savagery. This fits with the
colonial sentiments described by Lee-Koo, and the discourse has been
argued to in fact be a means of sanctioning conventional or ‘Western’
warfare (Macmillan 2009: 44). The 1990s had heralded an era of humani-
tarian intervention. After largely ignoring the Rwandan genocide in 1994,
and earlier atrocities in Somalia, the UN and NATO were facing serious
criticism and public backlash. As a result, an informal norm allowing for
humanitarian intervention developed. However, proxy power plays across
Africa have since revealed the extent of global power competition on
that continent. France, traditionally coveting influence there, continued
its involvement and China began to aggressively forge economic and trade
36 V. BRAMWELL
relationships. Rosen (2007: 298) argues that contemporary humanitarian

discourse, such as the idea of “new wars,” favours state over non-state
actors because of its demonization of rebel and insurgent militias who
are more reliant on younger child soldiers. It is easy to see how this
favours top-down imperialism and allows large powers authority over local
actors—and resources.
Macmillan (2009: 46) extends Rosen’s commentary on the narrative
of ‘new wars,’ and complements Lee-Koo’s analysis of the imagery of
African boy soldiers with a postcolonial argument against ascribing child
soldiers to the Global South. Macmillan contends that the state consolida-
tion over the private sphere, and childhood in particular, which occurred
in Anglophone nations through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
is given an extension into conflict-affected societies in the Global South
when they are deemed incapable of protecting their own children. This
functions as a tool of colonial control and at once propagates narratives of
irrationality, deviance, and irreparable trauma among child soldiers, which
impacts upon their supposed rightful potential for stewardship of their
nations—Jana Tabak’s (2020) “world-citizen.” The connection between
this stratagem and the ‘Straight 18’ position is made clear.
Political constraints clearly affect the operation of the MRM to some
degree, outside the use of norms and symbolic technologies. Indeed,
in the aforementioned Security Council report of 2017 on the CaAC
agenda, this political interference is explicitly acknowledged, referencing
the controversial removal of the Israeli Defense Forces in 2015 and Saudi
Arabia in 2016 from the annexes (United Nations Security Council 2017:
2). In the years following this report there has been open criticism by
non-governmental organizations in particular about the political nature
of listing decisions, including the recent addition to the reports of a sepa-
rate category of perpetrators who are praised for provided some evidence
they are making improvement (Action Against Hunger et al. 2019).
Redoubling Efforts Elsewhere

Having examined possible reasons for the inhibited performance of the
CaAC infrastructure, I move now to a future direction. This direction
considers the challenge of refocusing the mandate away from recruitment,
where significant progress has ostensibly been made even if the relevant
imaginaries of child soldiers leave considerable room for complexity and
appropriateness, and onto the other violations where failure has been
evident. It considers where the infrastructure is currently at in terms

of this change, despite the challenges of non-representative norms and
political interference.
Resolution 2427 (United Nations Security Council 2018) includes
some encouraging as well as problematic clauses. Firstly, it states that “the
best interests of the child as well as the specific needs and vulnerabilities
of girls and boys should be duly considered” in planning operations (para.
11). This is significant because, until now, sexual violence, and trafficking
in particular, in the CaAC mandate has largely been discussed in terms of
the particular needs of girls only. The case of trafficking under the Lord’s
Resistance Army (LRA) and reporting through the MRM on this issue is
a good example.
In 2015, a Statement by the President of the Security Council on
the subject of transnational organized crime referred to the Protocol to
Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women
and Children, which entered into force in 2000. The President’s state-
ment includes the following:
The Security Council notes the particular impact that trafficking in persons
in situations of armed conflict has on women and children, including
increasing their vulnerability to sexual and gender based violence. The
Security Council expresses its intention to continue to address this impact,
including, as appropriate, in the context of its Working Group on Chil-
dren and Armed Conflict, within its mandate, and in the framework of its
agenda to prevent and address sexual violence in armed conflict. (United
Nations Security Council 2015b)
The report accompanying this speech explicitly refers to ISIL and Boko
Haram, which at that time had been the subject of news coverage for
trafficking women. The same report includes trafficking and abductions
under the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). However, of the 25,000–
38,000 children abducted by the LRA between 1986 and 2006, only 24
percent were actually female (Pham et al. 2008: 404).
This example again illustrates how a global, macro approach based on
prevailing norms (in this case seeing women and girls as the most likely
victims of trafficking and abduction) can result in ineffective monitoring
and reporting on the ground. The special needs and vulnerabilities of
boys should have been considered in this case, gendered needs such as
the need to work outside the home to support family, as discussed earlier
38 V. BRAMWELL
in this chapter, placing them in the open and in harm’s way. It is therefore
encouraging to see that Resolution 2427 includes reference to the specific
needs of both boys and girls in relation to the planning of interventions.
A change in attitude in this direction could also help to better address two
grave violations for which monitoring and reporting has thus far been a
dismal failure: sexual violence and abductions.
A further interesting development in this Resolution is the repeated
reference to the role of regional, sub-regional, and local organizations at
paragraph 9: “Recognizing the valuable contribution pertinent regional
and sub-regional organizations and arrangements make for the protec-
tion of children affected by armed conflict.” This acknowledgement of
the responsibility of local and subregional bodies was identified in this
author’s analysis of Special Representative reports as an emerging theme
between 2010 and 2020. Should this apparently emphasized discourse
translate into genuine effort to validate and work with local organi-
zations to a degree regarding the agency of children, this may aid in
addressing multiple grave violations. Country teams do already liaise with
local organisations but, as is argued above, the language around the
recruitment of child soldiers delegitimizes local bodies with its colonial
tone.
Local support can make all the difference to country teams seeking
access or information. On the other hand, given the political caveat
present in this Resolution, it is optimistic to hope that genuine action
in this regard would be taken if it were to limit political influence
of interested powers. Further on, paragraph 17 refers to, “Recogniz-
ing…the importance of countering, notably through education and
awareness-raising, all recruitment methods utilized by non-state armed
groups targeting children.” Returning to the previous examination in
this chapter of the Secretary General’s report on Children and Armed
Conflict (United Nations Security Council 2019), it was stated that non-
state groups committed violations at an alarmingly increased rate in that
reporting year. This paragraph therefore seems to be a practical response
to a growing challenge. It could also be suspected of representing an
intention to liaise locally only to a certain degree—to affirm the autonomy
of state governments in their civil conflicts, and to gain cooperation that
way. Any future move towards increased local collaboration and decreased
colonial language, and how this affects the success of the MRM, should
be observed with a critical eye.
Conclusion
Change is occurring in the norms expressed in UN policy under the
CaAC mandate. There is reason for caution and hope in this area. New
norms will continue to emerge and diffuse. The challenge for academics
and practitioners in this field is to assess the impact these norms may be
having on practical intervention work, with the goal of making this infras-
tructure as effective at preventing grave violations as possible. Both the
propagation of norms, whether used for political purposes or not, and
other political interference, present challenges to the MRM and associ-
ated infrastructure at several stages. Furthermore, since the norms utilized
in the over-focus on child soldiers are informed by overly-simplistic ideas
about conflict-affected children, a shift away from this part of the mandate
must be made in order to both focus on other grave violations and go
about addressing them in a more appropriate and relevant way. Infor-
mation collection, policy design, and public reception are all affected by
these factors. A critical, academic examination of this work is a relatively
new subject in the study of International Relations and law, but one that
requires much further investigation to supplement its robust initial base.
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CHAPTER 3
Voices of Ex-Child Soldiers from the War

in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Between Public
and Private Narratives
Dalibor Savić, Rusmir Piralić, and Aleksandar Janković
Introduction
More than twenty years after the 1992–1995 ethnic conflict between
Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), the
majority of surviving ex-child soldiers live on the margins of society.
However, within the ethno-national cultures of remembrance—Bosniak,
Serbian, and Croatian—child soldiers who died in the Bosnian-
Herzegovinian battlefields have the status of war heroes and/or martyrs.
In this context, the authors of this chapter focus on similarities and
D. Savić (B) · A. Janković

Faculty of Political Sciences, University of
Banja Luka, Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina
e-mail: dalibor.savic@fpn.unibl.org
R. Piralić
Faculty of Criminal Justice, Criminology and Security Studies,
University of Sarajevo, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74788-6_3
44 D. SAVIĆ ET AL.
differences between auto/biographical narratives of ex-child combatants

and dominant public narratives about the members of this popula-
tion in the BiH society. The research is based on discursive analysis of
twelve life stories of ex-child soldiers, as well as on discursive analysis
of public speeches given by the politicians, public announcements made
by non-governmental organizations, documentaries, and newspaper arti-
cles relating to members of the mentioned population. Research findings
indicate that public perceptions about the members of this population
are predominantly based on stereotypes within the ethno-nationalist and
humanitarian discourses—that is, they represent an integral part of discur-
sive practices aimed at remembering and commemorating the (killed)
child soldiers or emphasizing the marginal position of the surviving child
soldiers. However, the collected life stories have ambivalent characteris-
tics. They are simultaneously based on narratives which, to a lesser or
greater extent, legitimize the aforementioned discursive practices, as well
as on narratives which indicate that the war and post-war experience of
ex-child soldiers should not be reduced to the mentioned stereotypes.
The phenomenon of ‘child soldiers’—i.e., “children associated with
armed forces and armed groups” (UNICEF 2007: 7)—became one of
the central issues in international humanitarian law during the 1990s
(Machel 1996). Since then, this phenomenon turned from a mainly
humanitarian issue into a frequent subject of social science research and
debates, as well as an inevitable part of contemporary popular culture
(Rosen 2005, 2015). However, the majority of humanitarian initia-
tives, scientific research, and popular culture content about child soldiers
maintains a focus on conflicts in Africa, notwithstanding the available
statistical data indisputably indicating that direct involvement of chil-
dren in war is not just an African but a global phenomenon (Tynes
2018: 6). The same applies to the case of child soldier participants in
the war in BiH who, even after twenty-five years since the end of the
ethno-national conflict, have not been a subject of either scientific or
wider public interest. According to unofficial estimates, between 3000
and 10,000 child soldiers participated in the war in BiH, but they are an
essentially invisible population (Ahmetašević 2014). For example, there
is no official socio-demographic data (number of killed/survivors, age
structure, gender, etc.). Also, they are not guaranteed special rights
compared to other demobilized combatant categories, and they were
never involved in appropriate peacetime reintegration programs into BiH
society (Ahmetašević 2014; Obradović 2017).
3 VOICES OF EX-CHILD SOLDIERS FROM THE WAR … 45
Information on members of this population within the public sphere is

sporadic and is mainly related to activities of the associations of ex-child
combatants, statements made by authorities, representatives of religious
organizations, politicians, press releases of NGOs, as well as certain docu-
mentary movies, books, etc. Considering the lack of scientific knowledge
about the ex-child soldier population in BiH, we use available informa-
tion and carry out exploratory research based on the analysis of public
discourse. Based on the research results, we have identified two dominant
discourses on ex-child soldiers in BiH at the level of the public sphere:
the ethno-nationalist and the humanitarian (Table 3.1).
The research results have also indicated that the model presented
above has limited heuristic/analytical reach, as it could not serve as a
comprehensive explanatory framework for understanding the life stories
of ex-child soldiers which became available to the public through media
reporting. There is a significant difference between the life experiences
of ex-child soldiers and the stereotypes specific to ethno-nationalist and
humanitarian discourse: with the former, because they are multiply exclu-
sive—they are predominantly based on narratives of war-stricken child
soldiers, do not refer to the post-war period, have a chauvinistic connota-
tion, glorify and idealize war as a way of solving problems in inter-ethnic
relations, etc.; and, with the latter, because they largely reduce ex-child
soldiers to passive participants in war and post-war events. For this reason,
Table 3.1 Dominant discourses on ex-child soldiers in BiH
Dominant Main Reference Forms of cultural Public entities

discourse on stereotype time memory advocating it
ex-child soldiers framework
in BiH
Ethno-nationalist Members of The period Commemoration Politicians,

our nation before and and martyrology representatives of
who were during the religious
(killed as) war organizations,
child soldiers writers
are heroes
Humanitarian All child The period Instrumentalization Non-governmental
soldiers are before, and marginalization organizations
victims of during and
the war after the
war
Source Authors
we carried out a descriptive research based on examining the similari-

ties and differences between the auto/biographical narratives of ex-child
soldiers and the dominant public narratives about members of this popu-
lation in BiH society. Unlike the exploratory research, this time we
collected twelve life stories through auto/biographical narrative interview
(Wengraf 2001). We interviewed ex-child soldiers (all were combatants)
of Bosniak, Serbian, and Croatian ethnicity. Recruitment of interviewees
was completed by using the snowball sampling principle (through social
networks).
Since the mutual conditionality between the life stories of ex-child
soldiers and the dominant public narratives on members of this popu-
lation in BiH society cannot be understood independently of the current
discussions on the discourse of childhood which is dominant in Western
culture, the first part of this chapter is predominantly theoretical. In
the second part, we present the results of a discourse analysis of the
collected private and selected public narratives through a three reference
time framework (periods before, during, and after the war).
Order of Discourse on Ex-Child Soldiers

in BiH: From ‘Childhood’ to ‘Voice’
The dominant discourse on childhood specific to Western culture largely
presents children as passive, immature, dependent and/or irrational
beings, incapable of independent decision-making and action (Beier
2015; Brockliss 2016). Since the 1990s, this discourse within the social
sciences is increasingly subject to criticism and rejection. A growing
number of social scientists contend that the stereotypes about social
reality which are promoted in this discourse (through popular culture,
legal norms, educational and health institutions, etc.) have ideological,
essentialist, and universalizing characteristics and that they are not an
adequate framework for (re)presenting the social status of children—
i.e., the specific circumstances of their growing up in different cultural
contexts. They advocate a paradigmatic turn in Childhood Studies: from
the Western discourse on childhood to a research approach that would
put the relationship between children’s activity and social structure at the
forefront, towards the so-called children’s agency discourse (James and
Prout 1990). This paradigmatic turn is also becoming more noticeable
in studies that focus on (ex-)child soldiers (Rosen 2005; Berents 2009;
Beier 2015) (Table 3.2).
Table 3.2 Discourses on childhood
Discourse on Main An ontological Cultural The paradigmatic

childhood stereotype conception of sensitivity example
childhood
The Western Children Children only Extremely low. Emile; Or, on

discourse on cannot be enter the ‘Childhood’ is Education (Rousseau
childhood active social ‘adult world’ mostly [1979] 1762)
actors fully when interpreted
they reach from the
adulthood Western
perspective
Children’s Children ‘Childhood’ is Extremely high Construction and
agency discourse can be a social Respecting reconstruction of
active social construct and cultural childhood (James
actors should always differences is a and Prout 1990)
be understood necessary
in a situational prerequisite for
and relational adequate
context interpretation
of
‘childhood.’
Source Authors
We believe that adequate interpretation of the similarities and differ-

ences between public and private narratives about ex-child soldiers in
BiH society should be preceded by analysis of the mutual relations/order
of the public discourses on childhood and public discourses on ex-child
soldiers. We have conceptualized our analysis in accordance with the
principles of “reversal,” “discontinuity,” and “exteriority”—i.e., Michel
Foucault’s (1981: 67) methodological guidelines which indicate “cutting-
up and rarefaction” of discourses, “must be treated as discontinuous
practices, which cross each other, are sometimes juxtaposed with one
another, but can just as well exclude or be unaware of each other.” That
is, we should strive to interpret them on the basis of their “external
conditions of possibility.”
We will first consider the relationship between the Western discourse
on childhood and the ethno-nationalist discourse on child soldiers partic-
ipating in the BiH war. It is necessary to point out that the order
of discourse that is valid in peacetime is most often “reversed” in
favour of those discourses that provide for ethnic or national homog-
enization immediately before and during wartime events. In the case
of BiH, from the end of the Second World War to the early 1990s,
the Western discourse on childhood was normalized and institutional-
ized in the shadow of the socialist discourse on childhood, one of the
pillars of the then-Communist regime in the Socialist Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia (SFRY). As part of the official ideology of “Brotherhood
and Unity,” the specific project of multiculturalism aimed at overcoming
ethnic differences and divisions between Yugoslav “peoples and national-
ities,” the official cultural memory that glorified the armed resistance of
the Yugoslav partisans against fascist aggression during the Second World
War, the socialist discourse on childhood promoted the indoctrination
and militarization of children and youth. This discourse was (re)produced
through various mechanisms: the educational system, the pioneer move-
ment, television programs for children, children’s literature, movies about
real or fictional child soldiers belonging to the partisan movement, etc.
(Duda 2015). In this way, the (in)direct preparation of children and youth
for participation in defensive warfare became a normalized social practice.
The rise of ethno-nationalism, the change of political circumstances, and
the beginning of hostilities in the territory of the former SFRY led to the
additional marginalization of the Western discourse on childhood, but this
time by ethno-nationalist discourse which, among all conflicting parties
in BiH, imposed itself as meta-narrative on the “defensive-liberation war”
(Burg and Shoup 1999). The ethno-nationalist discourse on child soldiers
has been relatively successful in following but, at the same time, ‘cut-
ting down’ the socialist discourse on childhood. In addition, the Western
childhood discourse and the ethno-nationalist discourse on child soldiers
are characterized by low cultural sensitivity, but with the opposite sign—in
the first case of universal and, in the second, of chauvinistic character.
The relationship between the children’s agency discourse and the
ethno-nationalist discourse on child soldiers participating in the war
in BiH has the characteristics of “discontinuity.” Namely, the ethno-
nationalist discourse on child soldiers (re)produces narratives about chil-
dren (but only those within their own ethnic group) as active social actors.
In so doing, the activism of child soldiers, ontologically, rests on narra-
tives in which their real or fictional traits and actions are identified from
earliest childhood with the traits and actions of adults, and not on the situ-
ational and relational assumptions specific to children’s agency discourse.
For example, the author of the biography of Spomenko Gostić (1978–
1993), the youngest killed member of the Army of the Republika Srpska,
claims that as soon as he (Spomenko) became able to walk and talk, he
“started going to the newsagents and greengrocers on his own,” or more

explicitly, in a situation when he was accidentally cut by a knife at the age
of two, he “does not cry, but calmly watches and waits for his hand to be
bandaged, as an adult person” (Savić 2019: 13–14).
The humanitarian discourse on child soldiers participating in the war
in BiH is based on discursive practices that stem from “continuity” of
Western and UN/UNICEF discourse on childhood: a ‘child’ is anyone
under the age of 18, all forms of children’s military involvement are
considered ‘child soldiering,’ vulnerability of children and victimization
of child soldiers as subjects without social and political agency, and mili-
tary recruitment as antithetical to the innocence of childhood (Lee 2009:
7–12). Although BiH has been a signatory to the Convention on the
Rights of the Child from 1993 and to the UN Optional Protocol on the
Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict from 2000 (ratified in 2003),
it still has not formally recognized the participation of child soldiers in
the war (MLJP BiH 2001). Also, competent international organizations,
such as the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, do not mention
child soldiers as participants in the BiH war in their comments to BiH
reports to the Committee (CRC 2005). The humanitarian discourse on
child soldiers participating in the war in BiH became public discourse
only at the end of the first and beginning of the second decade of this
century—i.e., with the establishment and operation of the first associa-
tions made up of members of this population. Two associations had the
greatest importance in promoting the aforementioned discourse: the War
Veterans Association—Juvenile Volunteers of the War of Independence
and Liberation ’92–’95 Canton Sarajevo (founded in 2011 and composed
of former members of the Army of BiH) and the Association of Juve-
nile Volunteers of the Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna (founded in
2008 and made up of former members of the Croatian Defense Council).
It should also be noted that in Republika Srpska there is no association
of ex-child soldiers belonging to the Army of the Republika Srpska, but
a few participate in the joint activities of the aforementioned associations
(Al Jazeera Balkans 2016).
We have already pointed out that the collected auto/biographical
narratives to some extent deviate from the stereotypes specific to ethno-
nationalist and humanitarian discourses (as well as Western discourse
on childhood). In this context, they can only be seen as ‘voices’ of
resistance to the subordination of these discursive formations. Since
auto/biographical narratives, as forms of discursive (re)production of
identity, should be understood through their situational interdependence

with the broader social context—social expectations and roles, current
events, prejudices, stereotypes, dominant discourses, etc. (De Fina and
Georgakopoulou 2008)—we will try to determine real critical potential
of the ‘voices’ of ex-child-soldiers based on the collected life stories.
The Pre-War Period: Narratives

on Childhood’s End and Joining Armed Forces
Based on the available data (unofficial data and conversations with repre-
sentatives of the associations) on child soldiers participating in the war in
BiH, we found that the vast majority entered the war during the middle
adolescence period (between the ages of 14 and 17). The majority of
them joined the armed forces voluntarily, as no cases of organized mobi-
lization of children were recorded in BiH before or during the war (MLJP
BiH 2008: 21), However, the dominant discourses (ethno-nationalist and
humanitarian) on ex-child soldiers contain mutually contradictory stereo-
types about the circumstances in which their childhood ended and about
the motives for joining the armed forces. In what follows, we present
these stereotypes and the identified similarities and differences with the
collected life stories.
Although diametrically opposed, both ethno-nationalist and human-
itarian discourses function as “systems of exclusion” that (re)produce
ideologically eligible representations of social reality (Foucault 1981: 52).
In this regard, ethno-nationalist narratives about the circumstances that
ended the childhood of ex-child soldiers participating in the war in BiH
rest on the stereotype that they “replaced the pencils by rifles and became
involved in the defense of the country” (Oslobod-enje 2019) on their own
initiative—i.e., “were determined to die” for the defense of their ethnic
group/identity (Ilić 2013). On the other hand, the humanitarian narra-
tives (re)present the aforementioned circumstances on the basis of the
stereotype of child soldiers as victims of organized instrumentalization
and militarization by ethno-national elites (Bursać 2016).
The stereotype of the self-initiated ‘replacement of a pencil by a rifle’
is a kind of anachronism. This discursive framing neglects the fact that,
with the beginning of ethnic conflicts in BiH, there was a suspension
of teaching in educational institutions in war-affected areas—i.e., that by
force of circumstances the students of those schools ‘due to rifles were left
without their pencils.’ Most of the interviewees mentioned the broader
social circumstances related to childhood’s end and school education,

and some of them also referred to the previously mentioned situational
circumstances:
Before the war, like all the others, we grew up with marbles, playing,
kidding ... in ’92 we were left without toys and without anything. That
unfortunate war came... The only toy at the time was my rifle. One rifle.
Never again would this rifle be a toy to anyone as it was to me. (EX-CS
1, see “Appendix”)
The first barricades are appearing. Students stop going to school. In some
places, there were fatal incidents. ... It all seemed unreal to me. I thought
it would stop soon. ... Until the grenade shells started to fall. (EX-CS 2,
see “Appendix”)
The ‘determination to die for the defense of ethnic group/identity’

stereotype is a discursive practice that has no basis in the collected
auto/biographical narratives. None of the interviewees expressed views
that could be labeled as nationalist fervor. On the contrary, most of them
claimed that, until the early 1990s, they did not even pay attention to
ethnic differences—they were not ready for the war and, while it was
happening, they fought to survive and save the lives of their loved ones:
I believed in that Yugoslav idea and we declared ourselves as Yugoslavs...

We were all considered Bosnians and Yugoslavs, as it was already in
Yugoslavia. ... There were no interethnic problems until the nineties when
this rhetoric began, the pro-Chetnik ... Ustasha .... I was angry that
Yugoslavia was falling apart. (EX-CS 2, see “Appendix”)
Unfortunately, the war caught me as a minor. ... I just didn’t know the
consequences of that ... I survived the war hoping it would come back to
what it was before. Hoping to be able to live a normal life. (EX-CS 6, see
“Appendix”)
I got into the situation of having to struggle for the existence of myself,
my sister and my mother. The environment was like that ... This is what
led me ... it wasn’t ... because of the ideals, some greatness, the ideals of
warriors. (EX-CS 11, see “Appendix”)
The stereotype of child soldiers as ‘victims of organized instrumentaliza-

tion and militarization by ethno-national elites’ is partly consistent with
the auto/biographical statements of certain respondents. We refer to the
parts of the life story of the participant EX-CS 8 who, as an active football
fan in the early 1990s, directly witnessed the rise of interethnic tensions
and ethnic homogenization in the former SFRY. Specifically, fan groups in
the territory of the former SFRY during that period played important role
in public promotion of interethnic intolerance and political violence—
i.e., their members were subject to “conscious and programmed political
instrumentalization” (Vrcan 2003: 98). According to the participant EX-
CS 8 (see “Appendix”), as a fan he realized that, “every bird flies to its
flock,” and that the war would begin. He points out that he tried to resist
these processes through participation in the establishment of a multi-
ethnic fan group that promoted “Yugoslavism,” but did not succeed.
In the end, due to the growing perception of interethnic mistrust and
feelings of personal vulnerability, he chose the path that many other
supporters in the former SFRY took (Vrcan 2003: 83–84), joining an
ethno-nationalist party and going through the program of paramilitary
training:
I managed to join the training of para-military forces, where I was absent

from school for half a year before the war ... I completely neglected the
school. The teacher tells me to stand up and asks me, “When are you
going to start studying?” and then I talk back saying “Why should I study
when the war is going to start?”. And then there is complete silence in the
classroom because no one believed that there would be war. (EX-CS 8, see
“Appendix”)
Contrary to the above, most interviewees refer to the organized instru-

mentalization and militarization of their population by the socialist elite.
Most of the interviewees particularly point out that they were heavily
influenced by partisan movies which significantly shaped their perceptions
of the (impending) war:
That damn war ... I think that Yugoslavia had a big influence on us, i.e. on
me ... We were influenced by the movies about children partisans. When I
took the rifle in my hands I thought the bullet cannot kill you. (EX-CS 6,
see “Appendix”)
All I knew about the war, because I did not have any military training, was
from the partisan movies we were pumped up with. A man is wounded by
some weapons, gets bandaged and everything is just fine. (EX-CS 11, see
“Appendix”)
On this basis, it is possible to conclude that the discursive practices

characteristic of humanitarian narratives/stereotypes about circumstances
related to the period of childhood’s end of members of the researched
population (un)justifiably exclude the aforementioned “discontinuity”
between socialist and ethno-nationalist discourse on childhood.
This presents us with the opportunity to briefly consider the reasons
why the interviewees joined the armed forces. Since all of them identi-
fied themselves as juvenile volunteers, we asked ourselves about the real
nature of their ‘voluntariness.’ In accordance with research results which
strongly indicated that ethno-nationalist and humanitarian discourses on
child soldiers in BiH have limited explanatory reach, we analyzed the
contents of their life stories from the perspective of children’s agency
discourse. The analysis indicates that none of the interviewees was directly
forced to participate in the armed forces, as their ‘voluntariness’ was the
result of personal initiative and agency. Thus, we have identified four
typical motives for joining the armed forces (Table 3.3).
The mutual relationship between situational and relational characteris-
tics of the motives mentioned shows that the actions of ex-child soldiers
within that time period mostly cannot be interpreted as opportunistic
overcoming of current difficulties under the militarized environment—
i.e., “tactical” or “agency of the weak” (Honwana 2006: 51). Thus,
even though their decisions to approach the armed forces may have been
‘voluntary,’ they cannot be unambiguously signified also as “strategic
agency”—i.e., they do not necessarily represent the synergy of position
of power, comprehension of a wider context, and understanding of long-
term (political) gains (Honwana 2006: 51). However, they certainly are
“the product of one’s (at least relatively) autonomous choices” and thus
are a reflection of their “subjecthood” (Beier 2015: 240).
The Period During the War: Narratives

on Growing up, Suffering, and Disappointment
Opposite to ethno-national cultural memories, based on discursive prac-
tices that (re)produce “an organized and refined image of the past,
Table 3.3 Typical motives for joining the armed forces and their characteristics
Motives for joining Situational Relational An example of a

the armed forces characteristics characteristics narrative
Monotony Life in a war zone - Solidarity with peers,It’s just …

lack of food and lack of toys and/or socializing … it’s
water, reductions of opportunities for probably a bit of a
electrical energy, playing and having monotony … you
shelling, sniper rifle fun didn’t have
fire, etc. anything anywhere
… No one was
chasing us, we just
stepped up on our
own (EX-CS 10,
see “Appendix”)
Defense of family, Solidarity with peers We took our rifles
place of birth and/or relatives, and grouped on
and/or state parents’ resistance the outskirts of
our village. We
went nowhere
else…not even
once for four years
of war (EX-CS 11,
see “Appendix”)
Personal security Distrust towards You were more
other people, fear of secure in the
being wounded or trench when you
dying were on the battle
line than when
you were allowed
to get back home
(EX-CS 8, see
“Appendix”)
The desire to own Parents’ resistance, When the first
a weapon weapons as a symbol turmoil began in
of personal power BiH, I felt some
and freedom urge for weapons
at the time. I
wanted to get
some weapons as
soon as possible
because I thought
that was power
and force (EX-CS
12, see
“Appendix”)
Source Authors
devoid of contradiction and shaped into a homogeneous narrative with

a clear polarization of good and evil, victims and executioners, us and
others” (Kuljić 2006: 182), the life stories of interviewees offer a more
complex and more tragic perception of war. Their testimonies on partic-
ular war events and the personalities that participated in them are often
inconsistent with existing patterns of their ethno-national culture of
remembrance. This discrepancy is even more visible when comparing their
own war experiences, which are turned into the narratives on growing
up, suffering, and disappointment, and ethno-nationalist stereotypes that
present them as “young people who matured in a whirlwind of war” who
were “determined and courageous” to “deal with things they did not
understand at all” (Kadić 2019).
Most interviewees point out that they were not ready to participate
in the war and they had no idea what they were getting into. They
often describe their first war experiences as a great shock, but also a
kind of sobering up of ‘boyish delusions.’ The participant EX-CS 12 (see
“Appendix”) describes these circumstances as follows:
Not even twenty to thirty days have passed since... I thought I could not
be wounded or killed, I realized that war was not what I saw on the
movies. ... I have seen that war is a horror and that people die and lose
their lives ... It seems to me that I had no choice then. My goal was no
longer to fight, by any means, but neither it was to stay still in the same
surrounding where you could be killed as a civilian and as a child.
However, most of them point out that they were not mature enough at
the time, but they only realized that in the years after the war. This view
is shared by interviewees who came of age during the war, as well as those
who spent the entire war as juvenile combatants:
War is such a state of affairs in ... in which people perish on all sides, where
difficult situations are ... In my case after the war one becomes aware of
where he was ... why, where and for what reason he is. (EX-CS 7, see
“Appendix”)
During that unfortunate war, it seems to me that in a month or two, I have

suddenly grown up. Not because I wanted it, but due to circumstances.
I started to think a bit more seriously and look at things from different
perspective, but still in a way which was not mature enough. That’s how I
see it today. (EX-CS 12, see “Appendix”)
In contrast to the stereotypes that present them as ‘determined and coura-

geous’ warriors, their life stories suggest that they had a realistic and
(self)reflexive attitude towards direct involvement in warfare. Some inter-
viewees emphasized that they had no wish at all to prove themselves
as warriors, especially to exceed their comrades-in-arms. For example,
referring to the relationship between juvenile and adult combatants in
his unit—“The older ones were wiser than us and knew better … we
weren’t asked much there”—participant EX-CS 7 (see “Appendix”) says
that he did not want to be “better or stronger” than his comrades-in-
arms. Similarly, the participant EX-CS 11 (see “Appendix”) says, “I was
an ordinary soldier, so-called ‘lineman’ who went and held the line …
had a shift. And that’s it. We didn’t think or want anything more then.”
Perhaps a better indicator of the relationship of BiH child soldiers towards
their direct involvement in the war are their testimonies of personal
and collective suffering. In these testimonies, predominantly character-
ized by events such as capture, wounding, and death of comrades, family
members and/or other civilians, they do not represent themselves as
ruthless warriors, but as young men of flesh and blood:
At the beginning of ’94 I was really tired both mentally and physically. I
couldn’t do it anymore. I was broken. It was only then that I felt that it
had become a habit because you had the obligation for twenty-four hours.
People perish and you look at other terrible things and you see that it will
not stop ... that there is no ending. (EX-CS 9, see “Appendix”)
Once I was wounded by a bullet and once by a bomb. I realized what

it meant to bleed. I watched others losing their loved ones. At the time,
I also felt that I was losing some of my childhood feelings and that was
horrible to me. ... I started missing the security, the carelessness ... the
friends I grew up with. I started thinking about them more and more
often, although later I found out that everyone was defending their own.
We were playing for real. It was not a child’s play, but adult and serious.
(EX-CS 12, see “Appendix”)
The life stories of most interviewees also contain critical reflections on

the military and political activities of their ethno-national elites at the
time. Their reflections represent disagreement with mentioned activities
and disappointment in ethno-national elites. For example, the partic-
ipant EX-CS 2 (see “Appendix”), a former member of the Army of
BiH, expresses his dissatisfaction with the gradual Islamization of mili-
tary structures and the discrimination that his non-Muslim unit members
faced. He realized at the time that “the fight did not make any sense”—
i.e., that the Bosniak ethno-national elite betrayed the ideal of the
multiethnic BiH which was propagated at the beginning of the war.
Similar and many other different examples, such as situations when they
witnessed war profiteering, avoiding military service, cooperating with
enemy units, negligence of commanding structures towards the lives of
ordinary soldiers, indicate that ex-child soldiers were more aware of the
realities of war compared to the (ethno)national historiographies and
cultural memories in BiH.
The Post-War Period: Narratives

on Social Injustice and Exclusion
The war in BiH ended in 1995 with the signing of the Dayton Peace
Agreement (DPA). The document was primarily a legal framework for the
establishment of a negative peace—that is, an end to the armed hostilities
but without resolving key underlying sources of conflict—and as such did
not offer guidelines for addressing many of the post-war issues that BiH
society was facing (Bieber 2006). Among other things, the DPA did not
contain provisions that would form the legal basis for resolving the status
of ex-combatants, which led to the fact that an adequate process of their
demobilization and reintegration was never implemented in post-war BiH
(King et al. 2002: 10–12). In this context, ex-child soldiers shared the
fate of the majority of demobilized combatants: they were abandoned
by the authorities and left on their own (Bougarel 2006). Accordingly,
the life stories of the interviewees are mostly characterized by narratives
about social injustice and exclusion. On the other hand, at the level of
public discourses, ethno-nationalist discourse excludes discursive practices
that (re)present the injustice done to ex-child soldiers, while humanitarian
discourse approaches this issue through the instrumentalization of their
life stories (Ahmetašević 2014; Veteran 2018).
Through narratives about social injustice, most interviewees not only
refer to the unresolved status of ex-child soldiers, but also point to the
broader social context of post-war BiH. They emphasize their dissatisfac-
tion and resentment with the events they witnessed in the first four to five
years after the end of the war. Recalling this period, interviewee EX-CS 5
(see “Appendix”) claims that he was not satisfied with doing the hardest
physical jobs in order to survive, while having to watch the social rise
of (post)war profiteers and criminals, as well as other men who managed
to avoid participation in the war. According to him, due to his moral

principles, he did not want to participate in the large-scale expansion of
smuggling and crime during that period, so the period “between ’96 and
’99 was more difficult” for him than war period. The participant EX-CS
9 (see “Appendix”) recounts a similar experience:
There were traffickers and smugglers in the war. While someone was
fighting and dying, someone was making money. ... How people managed
after the war ... It was crime everywhere, just like it was during the war. It
was all the same, there just wasn’t any shooting ... I didn’t have a job, I
was thinking and going back to some past days and then I was irritated by
the way of life they had, and I knew how they had lived before the war.
Contrary to these examples, narratives on social injustice that refer to

the period from the beginning of the new millennium to the present are
mainly focused on the relationship of different public actors—authorities,
veterans’ organizations, political parties, etc.—towards the population of
ex-child soldiers. These narratives intertwine (re)presentations of exam-
ples of injustices experienced by interviewees and/or their acquaintances
(e.g., in employment, housing, determining military disability, etc.) as
well as general considerations on the social status of ex-child soldiers.
The participant EX-CS 3 (see “Appendix”) recalls a situation when he
did not receive a veteran’s flat because he was not politically eligible, and
immediately afterwards presents his views on the current state of ex-child
soldiers in BiH society:
I am hurt by the injustice of this country, the injustice of the authorities,

the injustice of some eligible persons ... Having talked to my comrades-in-
arms and the soldiers of the Army of BiH and the Army of RS I realized
that everyone was in the same problems. We are on a total margin. We are
forgotten. People laugh at us. They say, “You were not minors, but idiots.
Why did you go to war? Who forced you?”
Relationships between different levels of BiH authorities and ex-child

soldiers may perhaps best be (re)presented by interviewees’ narratives
regarding the social exclusion of their population and its consequences.
Some of the participants, such as EX-CS 2 (see “Appendix”), offered a
fairly comprehensive and credible interpretation of the patterns of social
exclusion characteristic of their population:
A lot of people from the war, my war friends, have failed to integrate
into a peacetime society. The children who left school ... the war ended
and time passed. It would be difficult for them to go to school with
younger children. Psychologically, they were crazy because the war had
huge consequences on them. The state does not care about them. It does
not provide any programs of re-socialization and reintegration into society,
but everyone handles it spontaneously. Depending on how lucky they are.
A lot of people remain on the street. Then the problems ... as soon as you
can’t find a job and you have no school education... to get away from it
a little, there are drugs, alcohol, these problems start and you become a
burden to the society. Your parents don’t want you… They throw you out.
You cannot start a family because you are not competitive in the labour
market. Basically, that generation is becoming a problem ... I feel sorry for
these people, because they were good guys. True patriots ... and they were
cheated and left in the lurch by the authorities.
Most participants approach this issue through a personal example

describing the structural and situational circumstances that influenced
their life paths after the war. They indicate that they have experienced
the absence of institutional help, primarily with regard to continuing
their education and finding long-term solutions for economic reinte-
gration (gaining the right to work), but also medical and psycho-social
rehabilitation, as well as the establishment and activities of their associa-
tions. Many of them were injured and/or suffered from psychic trauma
during the war. Some of them were alcoholics and/or drug addicts. They
had to overcome the adverse impact of structural and situational circum-
stances solely through their personal initiative and/or support of parents,
partners, friends, relatives, neighbors, and/or former comrades-in-arms.
Although narratives about social injustice and exclusion have significant
place in their life stories, some of the interviewees do not accept the role
of the victim of the war. In their view, they cannot be victims because they
have voluntarily chosen to join the armed forces. We particularly highlight
the testimony of the interviewee EX-CS 7 (see “Appendix”) who not only
rejects the role of the victim, but directly refers to the “exclusion” of
child soldier-war survivors from the discursive practices characteristic of
ethno-nationalist discourse:
I hold the view that I volunteered to join the army and therefore I am
not a victim ... that is enough for me not to feel like a victim ... I am
not a hero, nor am I a victim. It is possible that the answer to all this is
precisely our status in society, if we are neither heroes nor victims then we
are nowhere and that suits the society ... that we are nowhere.
Most participants, on the other hand, perceive themselves as victims of

war, mostly referring to the lost youth and the unfulfilled expectations
about a peacetime life—that is, that they were used by ethno-national
elites and/or great powers, which, in their opinion, actively participated
in the breakup of the former SFRY due to their own geopolitical interests.
Conclusion
The research results indicate that the collected auto/biographical narra-
tives have distinctive critical potential in that they represent the ‘voices’
of resistance to public discourses on ex-child soldiers in BiH. This is
primarily related to the established differences between the collected
life stories and the ethno-nationalist discourse related stereotypes on
ex-child soldiers. Through all three reference time frameworks, the
auto/biographical narratives have largely ‘cut up’ the patterns of ethno-
national cultural memories. However, the collected life stories did not
deconstruct the ethno-nationalist discourse on ex-soldiers only directly,
through the found differences between private and public narratives, but
also indirectly, through the fact that former war enemies have very similar
memories on the (auto)destructive consequences of the normalization
and institutionalization of the aforementioned public discourse in BiH.
The ‘voices’ of the ex-child soldier resistance to humanitarian discourse
are more distinctive in the first and second reference time frameworks,
primarily through disagreement with the stereotype on their instrumental-
ization and militarization by ethno-national elites. In the third reference
time framework, most participants (self)identify themselves as victims of
war consequences—i.e., to a greater or lesser extent, they accept the main
stereotype within humanitarian discourse on ex-child soldiers.
In the theoretical context, the research results show the heuristic
and explanatory superiority of the children’s agency discourse over the
Western discourse on childhood. We noticed that the interviewees’ life
stories to a great extent indicate that they, as adolescents, had a very active
attitude towards social reality, which, among other things, manifested
itself through distinctive (self)reflexivity. In addition, the operational-
ization of the ontological assumptions underlying the children’s agency
discourse has provided us with a more credible insight into the transi-
tion from socialist to ethno-nationalist discourse on childhood and, thus,
better understanding of the social status of ex-child soldiers during and
after the war in BiH.
We believe that the lack of academic research on the members of this
population so far is one more aspect of direct evidence of their social
exclusion. In conversation with many social scientists across BiH, we have
found that they are not even aware of the ex-child soldier population and
the everyday problems they face. Thus, we sincerely hope that the research
results will attract the attention of BiH and the international academic
community. A positive change in the social status of ex-child soldiers
would necessarily imply additional academic research aimed at identifying
the socio-demographic characteristics of their population, explaining and
understanding their position in relation to actual power structures in BiH
society. Such scientific knowledge would enable far more effective plan-
ning and implementation of applied research strategies and advocacy of
public policies directly aimed at improving the social status of ex-child
soldiers in BiH society.
Appendix
See Table 3.4
Table 3.4 List of interviewees
Identification code Birth year Ethnicity Military force
EX-CS 1 1977 Serb Army of the Republika Srpska

EX-CS 2 1975 Bosniak Army of BiH
EX-CS 3 1976 Croat Croatian Defense Council
EX-CS 6 1975 Croat Army of BiH
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na temelju članka 8. stava 1. Fakultativnog protokola uz Konvenciju o pravima
djeteta u pogledu uključivanja djece u oružane snage. Accessed 9 September
2019. http://www.mhrr.gov.ba/ljudska_prava/DJECA_U_ORUZANOM_S
UKOBU.pdf.
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v24i1.1367.
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zamijenili puškama.” 9 October. Accessed 1 October 2020. https://www.
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vke-zamijenili-puskama-497180.
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CHAPTER 4
‘I Have the Right’: Examining the Role

of Children in the #DimeLaVerdad Campaign
Diana Carolina García Gómez
Introduction
Dime la verdad, solo la verdad.

No hay reparación ni justicia si no es con verdad.1
Adrián Villamizar
The Colombian armed conflict is one of the longest ongoing conflicts

in the world, lasting for over half a century and with more than
9 million victims of forced displacement, disappearances, extrajudicial
killings, sexual violence, kidnappings, and massacres across the country.
Its origins can be traced to the unequal socio-political conditions rema-
nent of the colonial enterprise as well as the international interference
in the form of antidrug policies that have allowed for its prolongation
in time. Therefore, the armed conflict in Colombia has had an impact
D. C. G. Gómez (B)
Rutgers University, Camden, NJ, USA
e-mail: dcg93@scarletmail.rutgers.edu

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74788-6_4
66 D. C. G. GÓMEZ
on most of its population, sometimes individually, sometimes collectively.

Since the creation of the Victims Law in 2011, both the government and
Colombian society have questioned how victims of the armed conflict
can be ensured necessary and just reparations. According to the Victims
Law (Colombia 2011), the government seeks to provide reparations to
victims via the re-establishment of three main rights: truth (article 23),
justice (article 24), and integral reparation (article 25). This will be done
through Colombia’s Comprehensive System of Truth, Justice, Repara-
tion, and Non-Repetition (hereafter SIVJRNR for its acronym in Spanish)
composed of three governmental agencies: the Missing Persons Search
Unit, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, and the Commission for the
Clarification of the Truth, Coexistence, and Non-Recurrence (hereafter
the Truth Commission). These reparation endeavors seek to also include
children and youth.
According to the Victims Unit of the Colombian government, by
the time FARC-EP (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia –
Ejército del Pueblo; Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—Army of
the people) demobilized in 2016, a total of 2.5 million children had been
victims of the armed conflict (Pais 2016; Armas Contreras 2017). Of
those, around seventeen thousand children had been recruited by illegal
groups (Histórica 2017). Therefore, the notion of victimhood in relation
to childhood in the context of the Colombian armed conflict includes
both the children that were conscripted by illegal armed groups, and
the children who suffered direct physical, emotional, and psychological
violence. This dichotomous understanding of children in contexts of war
not only ignores the dynamic characteristic of the categories of victim
and perpetrator that are not necessarily mutually exclusive (McEvoy and
McConnachie 2012). It also leaves out a crucial group: children as peace-
builders. In most conflicts, youth groups working from the grassroots
level create their own projects to foster and promote peace (McEvoy-Levy
2006: 7). This peacebuilding work does not necessarily need to occur in
a post-conflict context. Many times, it is a direct response to everyday
violence. If children have been victims, perpetrators, and peacebuilders
in Colombia, what are the ways in which the post-accord institutions
are conceptualizing children’s participation in the current transitional
context?
There has been plenty of research on children’s involvement in war
contexts as victims and perpetrators. What is being questioned in these
instances is children’s capacity to participate and make autonomous
4 ‘I HAVE THE RIGHT’: EXAMINING THE ROLE OF CHILDREN … 67
choices which are closely related to the idea of children’s agency, a key
concept in childhood studies (Hanson 2016: 471). However, the roles
of children who do not identify as either but are key peacebuilding
agents in their own communities during post-accord or post-conflict2
contexts, is less common (Berents 2018; Schnabel and Tabyshalieva 2013;
McEvoy-Levy 2006). By omitting children’s political subjectivity in tran-
sitional contexts, adults can perpetuate the notion that childhood is a time
of innocence and vulnerability and that children are defenseless objects
in need of protection (Dubinsky 2012). Furthermore, in contexts of
everyday violence in intractable conflicts, children and young people have
played a crucial role in the negotiation of peace in everyday life in their
communities but are rarely acknowledged (Brocklehurst 2006; Berents
2018).
This chapter provides an analysis of the roles given to children as rights
holders as well as the representation of a ‘post-accord childhood’ in the
Colombian context by the Colombian Truth Commission. It pays special
attention to two particular social media campaigns, #DimeLaVerdad (tell
me the truth) and #NuncaMásNiñosYNiñasEnLaGuerra (Never again,
boys and girls in war). The #DimeLaVerdad campaign was created for
the inauguration of the Colombian Truth Commission’s mandate in
November 2018. In it, different sectors of Colombian society claim the
right to know what happened during the last 50 years. The #NuncaMás-
NiñosYNiñasEnLaGuerra, was the Commission’s effort to include chil-
dren in the construction of a lasting peace and their response to the
atrocities that occurred on 29 August 2019 when the Colombian military
attacked dissident FARC leader ‘Gildardo Cucho,’ killing at least eight
minors (Judicial 2019). The social media platforms used by the Commis-
sion were Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. To analyze the
roles of children as rights holders and the representation of childhood in
the campaign, I carried out a qualitative content analysis of the videos
created for both campaigns. The inclusion criteria for the videos found in
the different social media platforms was the use of the hashtags mentioned
above.
Because of these social media campaigns, unlike previous truth
commissions, this is the first time we can analyze the ways in which a
truth commission includes children as cocreators of the master narra-
tives (Phelps 2004) in digital mediums. According to Teresa Godwin
Phelps (2004: 81), in a truth commission report, “individuals tell personal
stories, the commission uses them and constructs the plot, the inevitable
68 D. C. G. GÓMEZ
master narrative, and the two together manifest a unique sharing of

power reflecting the promise of democracy.” For the Colombian Truth
Commission, this master narrative seeks to represent the tri-ethnic mesti-
zaje central to the construction of a “Colombian identity” as it was
determined by the 1991 Colombian constitution (Colombia 1991). This
is reflected in who is part of the campaign and the aesthetic choices,
particularly in terms of the song that became the slogan for the campaign.
It also represents the urban–rural dichotomy that has been historically
central for the understanding of the Colombian armed conflict. By exam-
ining the inclusion and representation of children in the campaigns, an
approximation to the Commission’s intentions to include children will
be addressed. Furthermore, the question of whether the inclusion and
representation of a ‘post-accord childhood’ in the campaign subverts or
upholds the hierarchical adult–child relation will also be considered.
In this chapter, I provide a brief explanation about the ontolo-
gies of truth commissions with a particular emphasis on the Colom-
bian experience. Next, drawing from #DimeLaVerdad and #NuncaMás-
NiñosYNiñasEnLaGuerra campaigns, I analyze children’s participation
within transitional contexts. Finally, I discuss the ways in which the
campaigns portray a ‘childhood’ ideal for the Colombian post-accord
context and how children’s representation in the campaigns contradicts
the actual role that children have played so far within the Truth Commis-
sion’s hearings. By bringing a Childhood Studies perspective to the
Commission’s endeavor, this chapter seeks not to diminish but to supple-
ment the brave work that the Truth Commission is carrying out to
clarify a truth that has been denied to Colombians for over 50 years. I
acknowledge and respect the work that the commissioners are carrying
out, risking their lives to ensure our right to the truth.
Truth Commissions and the Unattainable

Construction of “The Truth”
Truth Commissions are one of the key institutions created to guarantee
transitional justice. According to Joanna Quinn (2009: 3), transitional
justice is “the process by which societies move either from war to peace
or from a repressive/authoritarian regime to democracy while dealing
with resulting questions of justice and what to do with social, polit-
ical, and economic institutions.” When discussing truth commissions, we
must bear in mind that there is not a single definition or blueprint that
these organizations follow. There are, however, some characteristics that

they do share. Generally, truth commissions are created to investigate the
human rights violations committed by different actors during a partic-
ular period of time rather than a specific event (Hayner 2011: 11). They
should also be officially authorized or empowered by the state. They are
temporary in nature and are charged with giving “an official report of
their findings” (Phelps 2004: 78) that can somehow account for past
violence. This retelling of events prevents history from being rewritten
by ‘the winners’ and allows society to learn from its past so these events
do not repeat themselves in the future. Furthermore, truth telling also
aids societies in reconstructing the social fabric that has been destroyed by
the war. These two activities, conflict prevention and societal reconstruc-
tion and reconciliation, are the two key ways in which truth commissions
support peacebuilding efforts in transitional contexts (Borer 2006).
Priscilla B. Hayner’s attempt to define truth commissions in 1994
omitted a key element: that a truth commission always engages with
victims and survivors (Hayner 2011: 11). Therefore, by 2011 Hayner
(2011: 11) suggested a revised definition in which truth commissions
include the “intention of affecting the social understanding and accep-
tance of the country’s past, not just resolve specific facts.” In this manner,
truth commissions seek to affect the policies, relationships, and dynamics
in a way that respects and honors those who were affected by armed
conflict or human rights violations.
An example of the latter were the madres and abuelas of La plaza de
Mayo in Argentina, the first collective who claimed a right to the truth.
This first unofficial truth commission began in 1983 and it is now known
as CONADEP (Comision Nacional de Desaparecidos ) which translates
as National Commission of the Disappeared. What is remarkable about
CONADEP is that, by 1986, there was virtually no international recogni-
tion of non-judicial truth-seeking as a transitional justice tool. However,
by the mid-1990s this had already changed drastically and the field of
“transitional justice” was widely known (Hayner 2011). So far, there have
been 46 countries that have created organs that meet the characteristics
of a truth commission. And at this writing, every South American country
has had at least one truth commission.
Due to their transitional nature, some of the methodological questions
that are central to truth commissions cannot be answered by turning to
any established legal norms or general principles. Instead, these questions
require a consideration of the specific needs and context of each country
70 D. C. G. GÓMEZ
(Hayner 2011: 5). This is also true of other types of peacebuilding

efforts, in which “children’s role in peacebuilding takes different forms
in different socio political, cultural, religious and geographic contexts”
(O’Kane et al. 2013: 36). Therefore, despite the shared characteristics, it
is the context of each country which greatly determines the transitional
possibilities that civil society and particularly children might have. Some
of these factors are the strength of the groups of individuals who were
responsible for the abuses and their ability to control transition policy
choices and the groups’ ability to control or disseminate the narrative
around the violent events. Other factors include how vocal and orga-
nized a country’s civil society is, including: victims and rights groups; the
interest, role, and involvement of the international community; the type
and intensity of the past violence or repression; and, the nature of the
political transition. In sum, the socio-political culture of each context will
determine the necessary parameters for the ways in which the past will be
confronted (Hayner 2011: 17) by victims, perpetrators, and society.
The Genesis of the Colombian Truth Commission

On 26 September 2016, Colombian society witnessed a long-awaited
moment when, with a prolonged handshake and in the midst of a
deafening standing ovation, former president Juan Manuel Santos and
Rodrigo Londoño alias Timochenko, signed and finalized the peace
process between the government and the FARC-EP. Consequently,
through the Legislative Act 01 of 2017 and Decree 588 of 2017, the
Colombian government and FARC-EP established the final agreement to
“end the armed conflict and for the construction of a stable and lasting
peace” (Verdad 2019a). In this same act and decree, the Commission for
the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and Non-Repetition, was created.
Due to its temporary and extrajudicial nature, the Truth Commission
had three years to present Colombian society with the truth about what
happened during the armed conflict3 and to contribute to the clarifica-
tion of human rights violations and infractions committed by all parties
involved (mainly, the Colombian armed forces, paramilitary groups, and
guerrilla groups) and offer a broad explanation of its complexity to
Colombian society. The three mechanisms contemplated in the SIVJRNR
were created to operate in a coordinated and articulated manner and to
contribute to non-repetition (Paz, Oficina del Alto Comisionado para la.,
n.d.).
The Truth Commission was composed of eleven commissioners: six

men and five women representing various sectors of Colombian society.
With the selection of these members, the selection committee sought
to fulfill five main representational goals: the representation of victims,
human rights defenders, academic experts, truth commission experts, and
lastly, media and divulgation experts.4 The commissioners also repre-
sented a variety of knowledge traditions such as gender/feminism and
decolonial thought with the contributions of the Indigenous cosmovi-
sions and Afro-Colombian storytelling and community leaders (Abierta
2017; Paz, Justicia para la. 2017). Despite the committee’s efforts to
make of the Truth Commission a proxy representation of Colombian
society, it had to deal with the death of two of its commissioners during
its mandate: on 31 October 2019, the passing of renowned Colombian
sociologist Alfredo Molano and, on 7 August 2020, the passing of Afro-
Colombian social leader and human rights defender, Ángela Salazar due
to COVID-19 complications. Still, what was constantly missing was the
centering and inclusion of children’s and youth’s perspectives regarding
the armed conflict and the peacebuilding project.
“I Have the Right”: The Participation

of Children in the First Year
of the Colombian Truth Commission
The #DimeLaVerdad campaign consisted of six videos that had the exact
same format: each sequence was 21 seconds long and it featured the
chorus of Dime La Verda, the main song that represents the Commis-
sion’s mandate to the Colombian audience. After a few seconds and
while a sequence of diverse individuals—who we could easily assume were
Colombian—was shown, a couple of the persons featured would then
claim, “I have the right,” followed by a longer dialogue that explained
why knowing the truth was important on a personal level. Finally, in
the closing segment a different Colombian citizen demanded the Truth
Commission to clarify the truth.
The dialogues in all the videos were structured in a way that allowed for
anonymity at different levels. First, by not clarifying who is asking to know
the truth, but just having children, adults, and minorities saying, “I have
the right,” it is all Colombians who are making that claim. Second, this
initial general anonymity allows for personal claims such as, “I have the
72 D. C. G. GÓMEZ
right to know what they did with my father, why they took my brother”
(Verdad 2018a), to also leave the identity of the perpetrator anonymous.
In this way, the truth is not about finding culprits or assigning blame
but, rather, assuring Colombian society that these violent events will
never happen again. Finally, the closing dialogue also uses the anonymity
of those who question the Commission to render it accountable to all
Colombians. It portrays the Truth Commission as an organ indepen-
dent from any political parties or ideologies, in the service of society and
particularly the victims of the armed conflict.
The participation of victims in the campaign can be inferred by the
demands in the videos, an example of which is the statement, “why they
took my brother.” There was only one video from the campaign that
did not include imagery of children. The rest of the videos portrayed
children in the three roles that had dialogues. Often, the role was to
claim the “right to the truth” as members of Colombian society. Only
one video had a child personally claiming to know the truth: “Please tell
us the truth. It can be very useful to all of us. Lying always plays with
us” (Verdad 2018b). The audience rules her out as a victim, and instead
as a guardian of the Truth Commission’s main objectives. Hence, chil-
dren are being positioned as members of Colombian society with a voice
to push for the right to know the truth, albeit a limited one. As Helen
Brocklehurst (2015: 32) explains, this distinction positions the child as
“emotional scenery,” showcased as a signifier for the adult gaze to under-
score the Commission’s role as the responsible adult who must act in the
child’s best interest.
According to Schnabel and Tabyshalieva (2013), in a transitional
context, the reconstruction of the master narrative requires the active
participation of its younger generations. This participation of children
and youth needs to rely on a serious consideration of their interests and
needs. However, because of their “protracted victimhood, children and
youth—and their needs and abilities—are at risk of being overlooked
in the planning and implementation of post-conflict peacebuilding”
(Schnabel and Tabyshalieva 2013: 4). In the case of the #DimeLaVerdad
campaign, children’s participation in the post-accord context is limited
to being marginal citizens who have only witnessed or heard about the
conflict, but who have not directly experienced it. Therefore, children
cannot be considered central agents within the post-conflict context
either as victims, perpetrators, or peacebuilders. As an audience, we see
them demanding to know the truth, but only as solidary members of the
national community and not as active citizens. Not a single child shared
a personal memory about the armed conflict. By merely demanding
to know the truth, but not being active agents in the construction of
the master narrative, children are relegated to being recipients of the
peacebuilding efforts (Schnabel and Tabyshalieva 2013). They have not
reached full political agency but, rather, act as moral guardians of what
Colombian society needs, representing the aspirations for the truth for
Colombian society as a whole. This is exemplified in statements such as,
“hey, you should tell us the truth. It’s necessary. It’s important,” made
by an adolescent as a closing argument in one of the videos (Verdad
2018c). In the campaign, children’s dialogues were always plural (we,
us) making their demands important for their fulfillment as future-
citizens in the post-accord context, placing their agency in terms of their
belonging to the community and not in the individual understandings
that characterize the concept in the Western tradition (Spyrou et al.
2019). It could be argued, then, that we are presented with an immanent
child (Holzscheiter 2010) who is a social agent valued in terms of their
Colombian identity, but nevertheless apolitical.
Unlike the campaign #DimeLaVerdad, in the Encuentro por la Verdad
#NuncaMásNiñosYNiñasEnLaGuerra (Truth Encounter #NeverAgain-
BoysAndGirlsInWar) the Commission presented children and youth as
key participants in the construction of the master narrative. By centering
children’s experiences with the armed conflict, the ambivalent role as
protagonists in the construction of the master narrative was replaced with
children’s and youth’s participation in the reconstruction of the truth in
their own rights. We see children’s status as peacebuilders being restored,
in conjunction and with the support of the adult figure represented by
the key childhood wellbeing stakeholders such as UNICEF and ICBF.5
Furthermore, the event, which lasted for more than three and a half
hours, included more than 10 testimonies of either youth who had been
affected by the armed conflict or (young) adults that became victims as
children.
Children are one of the most vulnerable populations during and
after armed conflict due to their limited political agency (Schnabel and
Tabyshalieva 2013: 15). Such vulnerability is heightened when we focus
on children who belong to ethnic minorities or live in rural areas.
Therefore, the #NuncaMásNiñosYNiñasEnLaGuerra employed several
strategies to bring children to the center and out of the anonymity and
passivity imposed by the #DimeLaVerdad campaign.
74 D. C. G. GÓMEZ
Previous to the event #NuncaMásNiñosYNiñasEnLaGuerra,

Colombia learned that during a military operation against ex-FARC
leader ‘Gildardo Cucho,’ who disregarded the peace agreements and
went back to arms, at least eight children were also killed. Furthermore,
it was disclosed that the residents of the area had been informing govern-
mental agencies of children’s recruitment by illegal armed groups for at
least 6 months. It was in the aftermath of this horror that, as a nation, the
question of what prevails, being a child or being a ‘victimizer,’ was raised
by different segments of society. As Karl Hanson (2016: 471) explains,
“whether or not children are considered having agency is evaluated from
a normative standpoint about what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ for children
to do or not to do, rather than from empirical investigations about
children’s actual degrees of capacity or autonomy in practice.” This is
linked to the understanding that children’s agency refers to their capacity
or incapacity for making autonomous choices. The Truth Commission
decided to dedicate its third hearing to children and their experiences
with the Colombian armed conflict by including children who had been
victims, perpetrators, and who were now peacebuilders.
The event took place on 22 November 2019 in the city of Medellin
and had the participation of victims, commissioners, perpetrators, and
adult allies. Around 15 testimonies were shared. We heard of parents
or siblings being assassinated in front of their family during selective
killings or in confrontations where rural schools were the battle ground;
a young woman told how she was kidnapped due to “ridiculous ideolo-
gies”; three former child-soldiers explained they were recruited due to
lies or the promises of revenge by extreme left and extreme right groups;
and, from Indigenous communities who created networks of resilience
and resistance to protect their own children. Furthermore, the victims
clearly identified the armed forces, or the paramilitaries, or the guerrillas as
the responsible perpetrators for the violent acts, dispersing all notions of
anonymity. This loss of anonymity goes hand in hand with the Commis-
sion’s goal of forgiveness and recognition of responsibility by perpetrators.
This was materialized in the public ask for forgiveness by a major from
the Colombian army, a former paramilitary commander, and an ex-FARC
commander, for their roles in the use of children as a military strategy
(Verdad 2019b).
Successfully, the event showcased children as victims, perpetrators, and
active agents in the construction of peace. Some testimonies highlighted
how war violated their children’s rights for education, a family, freedom,
or healthy development. By explaining the rights violations and other

forms of victimizations they were subjected to, the categories of victim-
hood and childhood were equally important to situate them as members of
the international and the national community. In this event, these victims
of violence, who coincidently were children, questioned what it means
to be a victim in the Colombian context and explained to the audience
that it is an empowering position, one in which “you found yourself in a
narrow path, surrounded by millions like you, all fighting not to survive,
but to reconstruct a new country” (Verdad 2019b). The event was also a
space in which children’s organizations showcased their work around the
construction of collective memory and peace. It was an opportunity to
highlight children’s contributions at a community level to a national audi-
ence. Just like other children’s and youth’s organizations in transitional
contexts, the event allowed for children’s recognition as reconciliation
agents (O’Kane et al. 2013) which highly contrasted with the former role
allocated to them in the #DimeLaVerdad campaign where they were “sit-
uated in discourses and projects not of their making wherein they function
as rhetorical devices” (Beier 2020: 7).
The inclusion of children in the #NuncaMásNiñosYNiñasEnLaGuerra
event exemplifies how children’s participation in truth commissions has
evolved. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the truth commissions of Chile,
El Salvador, and Haiti only focused on the documentation of violations
against children. In the second half of the 1990s, the truth commissions
of Guatemala and South Africa documented and investigated a substan-
tially higher number of cases of violence against children and adolescents.
In 2001, Peru’s and Timor-Leste’s truth commissions included special-
ized chapters around childhood. Sierra Leone was the first commission
to explicitly mention children in its mandate in 2002 and Liberia went
even further by systematically including children in its activities in 2005
(O’Kane et al. 2013: 38).
At this writing, Colombia’s Truth Commission had been operating
for over a year and the participation of children and youth in the
#NuncaMásNiñosYNiñasEnLaGuerra event seemed promising. Despite
some scripted segments, the commissioners focused on children in a way
that, as a country, we had refused to do before. However, the event only
included victims who would be legally considered adults. The only minors
who participated in the event were either the moderators, who had flash-
cards at all times, and the youth organizations featured towards the end
of the event. Without a full name (we only saw their first names) and
76 D. C. G. GÓMEZ
belonging to Children’s Rights organizations, they were more the reflec-

tion of an ideal protected childhood reflective of Brocklehurst’s (2015)
emotional scenery, than the active peacebuilders recently discussed. The
Commission’s attempt to deal with children’s participation in war seemed
contradictory: they chose to include different and diverse testimonies
by former child victims while, at the same time, they perpetuated a
Western ideal of an innocent and vulnerable post-conflict childhood. Both
instances exemplify how different discourses around childhood coexist.
While the #DimeLaVerdad campaign focused on the immanent child, the
#NuncaMásNiñosYNiñasEnLaGuerra event presented an evolving child
image, one in which children are considered political, autonomous, and
socio-political agents (Holzscheiter 2010).
“Solo la verdá”: The Symbolic

Child in the Post-Accord Context
By studying images of children, we might not be able to comprehend
children’s real lives, but we get an insight into the imagination of adults
about those children and the lives they should live. Thanks to contribu-
tions like those of Patricia Holland (2004), Kate Manzo (2008), Karen
Dubinsky (2012), Katrina Lee-Koo (2018), and Helen Berents (2020),
we know that the use of children’s images is always embedded in inten-
tionality. In times of crisis or war, representations of children show us the
power structures that regiment children’s lives; wider cultural attitudes,
assumptions and values; and, the symbols society uses to negotiate the
idea of childhood in each particular context and historical time. Prolifer-
ating imagery does not necessarily translate into a better understanding of
childhoods, but does show the meanings in which the imagery intends to
fix and limit them (Holland 2004: 5). While the emphasis of these authors
has been on imagery about children in violent contexts, the imagery of
“Solo la verdá” presents us rather with the opportunity to deduce how the
Colombian Truth Commission is representing a post-accord childhood.
“Solo la verdá” is an animated video that represents the Colombian
armed conflict by depicting its three main actors (the state via the military
forces, the guerrillas, and the paramilitaries); some of the most recurrent
forms of violence such as assassinations, disappearances, forced recruit-
ment of children and forced displacement; and, the quest for the truth
carried out by the victims. This quest for the truth is symbolized by a
candle that is carried by the protagonist of the video, a campesina girl. In
three minutes and forty-eight seconds, the Truth Commission combines

the graphics by Metiza Films and the Cumbia by Adrian Villamizar to
portray the Truth Commission’s compromise with the victims. The video
begins with a disclaimer that reads:
WARNING
This story has been lived
By many people in Colombia
And no one, ever again, should re-live it. (Verdad 2018d)
The figure used to embody that story lived by many was that of a
girl. Surrounded by green mountains, she and others are working the
land while the traditional Indigenous flutes found in Cumbia play in the
background. The girl is kneeling, working the land with her own hands
when a shadow lurks over her, calling her attention form the soil upwards.
As Dubinsky (2012: 7) states, children are “almost always depicted as
defenseless, cowering from ideologies or bombs or poverty or forms of
racialized violence, in need of a strong nation state, or revolution, or
political party to protect them.” This is reinforced by Anna Holzscheiter’s
(2010) argument around the innocent child, who is vulnerable, apolitical,
and sufferring. In this first image, we see her lack of power in the position
of her body and the heightened difference in size against the violence that
is about to begin.
As the video progresses, we get glimpses of her daily life with her
parents in front of her farm and in her village but, suddenly, a hand comes
into the frame and tears away the daily activities of the campesino life,
bringing the darkness of war. After the campesino lifestyle gets destroyed,
our protagonist appears in the center of the frame carrying a candle, and
so she begins her quest. This moment coincides with the chorus of the
song, that pleads for the truth that is represented by the candle and the
perseverance of victims represented in the feminine child.
This “beautiful, feminine, infant child becomes the icon of vulnera-
bility in war propaganda, polarizing and humanizing the threat, imploring
protection” (Brocklehurst 2006: 16). This vulnerability is reinforced by
preconceived ideas of childhood as an era of innocence, seeking a reaction
in the viewer to protect this child from the atrocities of war (Brocklehurst
2006). Furthermore, in the video she gets to introduce the viewers to
the hardships that other victims have suffered. She walks a trail where she
meets the perpetrators of the violence, becomes a witness of her father’s
78 D. C. G. GÓMEZ
victimization and, in her “quest” (rather, forced displacement), she is

accompanied by Indigenous, afro-Colombians, and campesinos who, just
like her, are carrying the candle of the truth despite their hardships.
Towards the end of the video, she arrives at her final destination, the
city, and the video wraps up showing different Colombian landscapes
representative of the country’s biodiversity.
The girl is the embodiment of the vulnerability of the victims of the
armed conflict. This vulnerability of children allows a particular form of
subjectivity that needs to be read as political and that calls for the reaction
of the adult viewer (Dubinsky 2012) and the paternal state represented in
the Truth Commission. Her presence also heightens the threat posed by
the armed conflict in a way that resonates with “the near exclusive picto-
rial use of the child in the western media to illustrate or to epitomize crisis
or disasters, thus simultaneously compounding societal and childhood
innocence or degradation” (Brocklehurst 2006: 17). Hence, the video,
instead of questioning Western concepts of childhood as a time of power-
lessness, vulnerability, or innocence, reinforces these ideas by representing
victims in the form of a campesino girl. It is imperative to challenge these
notions if we want “children and young people [to turn] from violent
action to non-violent action for positive social change” (O’Kane et al.
2013: 34) and begin to understand them as political agents in their own
right.
Conclusions
It took Colombia 50 years to sign an accord with one of the most promi-
nent figures of our armed conflict. However, the overall sentiment is that
we still have a long way to go. Just like the girl in “Solo la verdá”, we do
not know where the road to the truth will take us, but those of us who
support the peace agreement are determined to follow it.
Hayner (2011) and Phelps (2004) explain the importance that truth
commissions have for victims by granting them the space, time, and
acknowledgment they rightfully earned. But in the #DimeLaVerdad
campaign, the audience sees a plethora of citizens, ones who are also
victims, asking not to tell the truth, but to know the truth. There-
fore, unlike Hayner and Phelps who see truth commissions as spaces for
storytelling by victims and perpetrators, the #DimeLaVerdad campaign
represents and addresses the citizens who did not suffer the horrors of
the war, but who nonetheless have the right and duty to know what
happened. And who better to represent this uninformed citizen than

children?
In contrast, #NuncaMásNiñosYNiñasEnLaGuerra gave children and
youth the opportunity to tell their stories, which constitutes an essential
component of power (Phelps 2004: 80). We were able to see that chil-
dren are more than the citizens-to-be portrayed in the #DimeLaVerdad
campaign or the representation of vulnerability shown in “Solo la verdá”.
Instead, the victimizations they suffered granted them the right to partic-
ipate in the post-accord peacebuilding efforts promoted by the Truth
Commission. By sharing their stories, children and youth were able to be
recognized as connected members of Colombian society, with whose pain
we can empathize (Phelps 2004: 76). In this event children’s acts, crimes,
and responsibilities were presented in terms of their own experiences as
victims, perpetrators, and peacebuilders. This allowed for the recognition
of children’s individual and collective agency regardless of whether they
had or had not done the right thing (Hanson 2016). Furthermore, the
symbolic act of forgiveness on behalf of the three historical perpetrators
elevated their political status, recognizing their direct implications with
the armed conflict.
Children and youth are more visible in war than they are in peace.
We know that wars are impossible without youth, who typically are the
vast majority of combatants. But peace negotiations and peacebuilding
efforts in contexts of transition seem to remain the domain of adults
(Schnabel and Tabyshalieva 2013: 24). To ensure that children’s expe-
riences during times of conflict are taken seriously, we need to remember
that justice is not a single event that occurs once, but an ongoing and
dynamic process in which sharing our stories is key to the process (Phelps
2004: 9). Hence, the local and national efforts by the SIVJRNR need
to include and promote child-sensitive approaches that integrate children
and youth as active participants of the post-accord context (Schnabel and
Tabyshalieva 2013). By promoting children’s participation, we will char-
acterize children not only as victims but as participants in the post-accord
reconstruction, which will allow them escape the child victimhood caused
by war and be recognized by adults as the social and political actors that
they are, ensuring a long-term peace for Colombia as a whole.
80 D. C. G. GÓMEZ
Notes
1. “Tell me the truth, only the truth. There is no reparation or justice if it
is not with the truth.” Chorus to the song Dime la Verdad, written by
Colombian composer Adrián Villamizar.
2. At the moment of this writing, the Colombian context was better explained
using the term post-accord than post-conflict. The presence of illegal armed
groups like ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional —National Liberation
Army), and the assassination of ex-FARC members characterized this tran-
sitional period. However, the creation of transitional institutions such as the
Colombian Truth Commission were possible due to the fulfillment of the
peace accords signed between the Colombian government and FARC-EP
in Habana in 2016.
3. Though the armed conflict in Colombia is considered to begin in the
1960s, the Law of Victims stipulated that the mechanisms contemplated
within the SIVJRNR would concentrate their efforts from 1 January 1985
onwards.
4. The latter were asked to create the media strategies that will inform
Colombian society about the Commission’s findings.
5. Colombian Institute for Family Welfare is the Colombian entity designated
to work for the prevention and protection of children, youth, and families
(Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar—ICBF ).
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PART II
Pedagogies of Children in Peace and Conflict

CHAPTER 5
Children, Internationalism, and Armistice

Commemoration in Britain, 1919–1939
Susannah Wright
Introduction
The front page of the League of Nations Union (LNU) News Sheet in
November 1938 contains a striking photographic image of the national
British armistice commemoration ceremony at the Cenotaph memorial
in London (LNU News Sheet, November 1938: 1). In black and white
the Portland stone of Edwin Lutyen’s famous memorial appears vast and
gleaming against the poppy wreaths and rows of smaller, darker figures.
Many of those standing close to the memorial were royalty and state
dignitaries from Britain and the wider Empire (or Commonwealth—both
terms were popular at the time). Equally striking are the words around
the image: above, “Twenty years on” (from the end of the First World
War); and, below, “Save the League and Save Peace.” An internation-
alist message and a sombre act of remembrance were presented to the
reader as intertwined. This written and visual text shows a top-down
S. Wright (B)
Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK
e-mail: susannahwright@brookes.ac.uk

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74788-6_5
86 S. WRIGHT
invented tradition (Hobsbawm 1983). Commemorating the First World

War in an appropriate way was intended as induction into a culture of
responsible citizenship (King 1998: 195–197), and the hierarchies of
class, race, gender, and age embedded within British citizenship. Rituals
could also be sites of resistance (Dirks 1994). The internationalist message
conveyed here was one of a range of ‘acceptable’ narratives of remem-
brance (Gregory 1994). Yet the LNU saw fit to utilize the symbols and
acts of commemoration for its ideological and propagandist purposes, and
its message was not one which all contemporaries would have appreciated
or agreed with.
I take this image as my starting point for thinking about internation-
alism and armistice commemoration in the interwar years. The words and
picture convey LNU messages about the First World War that recur in
many of that organization’s outputs throughout the interwar years. The
saving the League strapline was informed, generally, by the difficult inter-
national climate of the late 1930s, and, specifically, the events of Autumn
1938 which saw European nations step back from the brink of another
conflict, and provoked strident criticism of the League of Nations, and
the LNU’s lobbying position. Still, the message that it was important
to remember and memorialize the First World War, with the purpose
of bolstering the League of Nation’s peace-making efforts to ensure
that a conflict like that would never happen again, remained remarkably
consistent throughout the interwar years.
Children and young people are entirely absent from this image, yet
they were, in different ways and by different ideological constituen-
cies, incorporated and enmeshed in narratives and acts of armistice
commemoration. This chapter focuses on the ideological constituency
of internationalists. How did they engage with children and childhood
as part of their armistice-related activity, and how did children engage
with them? This constitutes a hitherto under-explored dimension of the
commemorative landscape of the interwar years. Particular attention is
devoted to the liberal internationalism of the LNU, the largest interna-
tionalist voluntary association in Britain in the interwar years. Through
annual Armistice Day messages for schoolchildren from the LNU, edito-
rials and resources in teachers’ periodicals, and through meetings, plays,
and pageants held in drawing rooms, school halls, cinemas, and parks
across Britain, liberal internationalists presented armistice commemora-
tion as part of a much longer narrative of national history, which included
5 CHILDREN, INTERNATIONALISM, AND ARMISTICE COMMEMORATION … 87
the First World War (Bartie et al. 2017). Such a narrative also envis-
aged a future without the loss and suffering on a global scale of that
conflict. Remembering the lives lost during the First World War would
lead to a determination to avoid the same happening again and stim-
ulate efforts—not just from statesmen but from individual citizens—to
promote international understanding and peace.
Children were presented as central to this narrative, as it would be their
idealism and efforts which would ensure international understanding and
peace in the future. They were perceived as captive audiences for such
messages. Yet attracting a younger generation was complex and, even for
enthusiasts, challenging. Wider historical and ethical questions about the
First World War and its legacy and war and peace had to be addressed with
children as with adults. Engaging with children meant, also, navigating
difficult territory related to the impact of children’s age, and assumptions
about agency and capacity which went with this. Children responded to
these attempts to incorporate them in an internationalist understanding
of commemoration in complex and varied ways. Their responses were
a force which, perhaps in subtle ways which can be difficult to trace in
many of the extant primary sources, did something to shape the liberal
internationalist agenda as it was experienced by these children and the
adults around them. LNU texts portray children as the internationalists
of the future (more than the present), but frequently neglect or skim
over what children made of their involvement at the time. The occasional
glimpses we have of children’s own perspectives indicate that they were
not passive vessels, but could in varied ways take on, amplify, modify, or
sometimes resist, core liberal internationalist messages.
Internationalist Remembering in the Civic Sphere

Commemoration of the First World War in interwar years Britain was
a coming together, involving shared monuments, symbols, and rituals.
It was also a site of contest, of ideological disputes and differences
arising from individuals’ varied experiences and memories of the conflict
(Connelly [2002] 2015; Gregory 1994; King 1998; Noakes 2015;
Todman [2005] 2013). The combination of collective remembrance
and the potential for difference and discord was brought into focus
each November around the time of the annual armistice commemora-
tion. Narratives of remembrance in interwar years typically incorporated
two strands. Firstly, members of the armed forces who died in the war
88 S. WRIGHT
were remembered and honoured. This was true also of the living who
had served, but, importantly, to a markedly lesser extent. Veterans were
accorded moral authority at this time (Noakes 2015). Yet there was
ambivalence around their positioning at moments and sites of commemo-
ration, perhaps because they made visible, in a discomfiting way, suffering
after as well as during the war (c.f. Enloe 2019). The second strand was
one of celebrating the coming of peace and hoping for the avoidance
of a similar conflict. With these two narrative strands co-existing, both
militarism and internationalism could be encoded in acts of commemo-
ration. Varied constituencies, from the British Legion and other veterans
groups, through to internationalists and pacifists, deemed it worthwhile
to seize on the annual commemoration to energize their members and to
promote their cause and their interpretation or interpretations of the First
World War and its consequences. They might have emphasized the war
dead or the coming of peace to greater or lesser degrees, but all found a
way of presenting their take on remembrance which fell within a broadly
acceptable range.
Internationalist perspectives, the focus of this chapter, were taken up
by a range of contemporary British organizations; the largest of these was
the LNU. The date of the LNU’s founding, November 1918, bound
it symbolically to the end of the First World War, and the legacy of
that conflict. With a paid-up membership which peaked at over 400,000
in 1931, the LNU became one of the largest voluntary associations in
interwar years Britain and gained renown internationally as one of the
most active of the League of Nations societies established in member
states (McCarthy 2011: 4; Beales 1931: 322). Its goals were framed
ambitiously: it would develop international understanding, while main-
taining international order and liberating mankind from war (LNU 1926:
3). With headquarters in London and local branches nationwide, it
aimed to promote the League of Nations through government lobbying
and promotional activity among the general public. Vera Brittain, who
lectured for the LNU, recalled meeting “every social class from earls to
dustmen, every shade of religious conviction from Roman Catholicism
to Christian Science, and every type of political opinion from true-
blue Diehard Toryism to blood-red Bolshevist Communism” (Brittain
[1933] 1978: 565). Aiming at mass appeal, the LNU, alongside other
contemporary organizations, experimented with developments in mass
communication, harnessing new technologies like film and embracing
commercial arrangements (c.f. Beers 2010). Despite some evidence of
breadth of political appeal, LNU supporters were more likely than not
to be liberal or labour in their politics (Birn 1981), and in terms of
religious beliefs Christian, especially Nonconformist Christian (McCarthy
2011: 79–102). A challenging international climate by the mid-1930s,
evidencing the limits of the League of Nations’ collective security arrange-
ments, has been mooted as the death-knell of support for the League of
Nations and hope in what it could achieve, leading in turn to a decline
in support for the LNU (Birn 1981). Yet efforts to communicate inter-
nationalist narratives to children, and to engage them as young activists
and members of the LNU, continued until the eve of the Second World
War (Elliott 1977; McCarthy 2011: 103–131; Wright 2017: 145–176;
2020a). Given the difficulties of the late 1930s, looking to the future of
internationalism through a younger generation was, potentially, an attrac-
tive strategy for the generation that lived through the First World War
and supported the emergence of the League.
The LNU’s particular version of internationalism—liberal internation-
alism—encouraged and enabled a wide basis of support. It called for
nation states to work together but did not undermine the geopolitical
structures of the nation state. Liberal internationalism could co-exist with
existing national and imperial loyalties, existing systems of governance,
and existing systems of enforcement in national and imperial settings,
including military ones (Clavin 2011; McCarthy 2011: 132–154). Even
though a minority of individual members took the fully pacifist view
that any armed conflict was wrong, the LNU as an organization was
pacificistic. If the aim was to avoid war, it accepted the need for the
military on the grounds that the processes of maintaining international
order could potentially involve controlled use of military force (Ceadel
1981: 305). Liberal internationalism, importantly, was defined and cham-
pioned by the victors of the First World War, and leadership was vested in
a white male elite among them. No fundamental upheaval was posed to
existing structures of political and diplomatic power, or racial, gender, and
class loyalties. Other contemporaries—more socialist, more secularist, or
connected with older pre-First World War peace movements—promoted
a more radical vision of a world parliament run by people on the ground
rather than existing governments (Beales 1931). The LNU, however, by
fitting into existing ideological and political structures and issuing ideal-
istic and moralistic appeals to an interconnected humanity, appeared to
contemporaries as “high-minded and respectable” (Birn 1981: 4). With
90 S. WRIGHT
this respectability, the LNU’s internationalist message could be dissemi-

nated widely and extensively. It was promoted to pupils in school lessons,
and to a wider public (which could include children) through the press,
pamphlets, church sermons, and civic events, including those which took
place on Armistice Day.
As early as 1919, the LNU latched on to armistice commemorations
as a promotional opportunity: “To allow this memorable event to be
recalled for the sole purpose of rejoicing over the victory by arms would
be an unworthy use of the day” (The League, October 1919: 5). Soon,
this was not only about Armistice Day itself. A week or so of “inten-
sive propaganda” came to be recognized as “one of the best methods
of increasing support” for its objects (Headway, December 1924: 238).
Ideologically-focused goals of promoting peace, and recruitment-focused
goals of seizing on a symbolically important moment in order to increase
membership were combined: “It is by a campaign for our cause that we
can best pay our debt to the dead” (Headway, October 1926: 200).
As well as bringing in new supporters, “armisticetide” was deemed by
the LNU significant for existing members. It was the time when they
could “rededicate themselves to the carrying out of their essential task
– the building of a better world order” (Headway, November 1932,
LNU News Supplement: i). Local branches arranged mass meetings,
participated in civic ceremonies and parades, organized League-themed
armistice services, put on concerts and pageants. They placed displays in
shop windows, set up recruitment stalls in marketplaces, and distributed
leaflets. The most ambitious programs were found in urban areas with
very large branches, or multiple smaller branches that could combine
their energies. The same broad message comes through in many of the
texts that recorded or were produced for armistice-time activities. Those
who died fighting in the First World War were to be remembered and
honoured. But, in their name, it was vital to avoid future wars and secure
peace, through support for the work of the League of Nations (which, in
turn, would be achieved through supporting the work of the LNU).
Children and young people were frequently involved in this activity.
They performed in front of audiences. In 1924 Buxton local branch orga-
nized a children’s “Pageant of Unity and Peace” on 4 and 5 November
in the town’s opera house (Headway, December 1924: 239). A “very
impressive” tableau was put on in Aberdeen in 1932, with over 60 chil-
dren, mainly Girl Guides. A key scene involved “the dipping of the flags
of all nations in the League in remembrance of the sacrifice of the war,
and then hoisting them again to signify the hope of the future in the
youth of today” (Headway, December 1932, LNU News Supplement:
iii). This description suggests an embodied and visually striking informal
learning about war and peace for the performers and those who saw them.
It also suggests that although ‘the youth of today’ provided a pleasing
visual spectacle in the 1930s, their main contribution to peacebuilding
was deferred to the ‘future.’ Such a generationally grounded message of
world citizenship projected forward in time was common in LNU texts
(Wright 2020a). Alternatively, children could be the audience. They were
invited to hear talks, gathered in their hundreds in large civic venues, or in
smaller groups such as Sunday Schools (e.g. Headway, November 1926:
218; Headway, November 1923: 458). They watched LNU-produced
films; the LNU, along with other humanitarian agencies, was keen to
experiment with the medium of film in order to reach mass audiences
for educational and propaganda purposes (c.f. Tusan 2017). In Oxford in
1926, over 1240 children were invited on Armistice Day to a screening
at the city’s main cinema of the LNU’s own film, The Star of Hope, which
described the horrors and costs of the First World War (avoiding too
much gory detail) and the creation of the League of Nations as a positive
legacy (Headway, December 1926: 238).
Children, moreover, were involved by their local LNU branches in
larger civic Armistice Day commemorative events, often involving parades
and war memorials. In 1933, to give one example, nearly 300 “Pioneers”
—the LNU’s term for young members and supporters—processed to
Blackpool’s cenotaph in 1933 (League News, February 1934: 7). On
such occasions, children, arguably, imitated the rituals and behaviours
displayed by their elders, and were thereby inducted into a national—
and local—collective memory and culture (c.f. Sánchez-Eppler 2013). For
the LNU, the same processes were harnessed in order to induct children
into, and thereby to preserve and ensure the future continuity of, local
and national communities of internationalists too. Processes of inducting
children by remembering the past were focused on creating an interna-
tionalist child—which had affinities with the ‘world-child’ of the later
twentieth century that Jana Tabak (2020) describes. The internationalist
child of the interwar years would, it was hoped, act as an adult to preserve
internationalist communities in the future.
92 S. WRIGHT
Internationalist Remembering in Schools

It was, however, in schools, where children were required to spend so
much of their time together, and were prepared for political subject-
hood in the future, that much armistice commemoration activity with
an internationalist focus involving children took place. Activities were
encouraged by local LNU branches, with Ealing Branch arranging for
speakers to visit local schools and writing to teachers to encourage them
to celebrate “League Weeks” around armistice time (LNU: Ealing Branch
1924, 1929). Beyond such local provision, teachers looking for an inter-
nationalist slant on armistice commemoration could find in educational
periodicals a wealth of talks, prayers, lessons, and essays. A “Peace Service
for Armistice Day” and a “Peace Prayer for Children” (the latter by the
popular children’s author Enid Blyton) were typical fare (Teachers’ World,
October 26, 1932: 128; Teachers’ World, November 9, 1932: 205).
Several Local Education Authorities (LEAs) issued guidance for schools,
calling on them to emphasize internationalism and peace when they cele-
brated the armistice (e.g. LNU, Minutes of the Education Committee,
October 30, 1925 and November 27, 1925; Times Educational Supple-
ment, October 13, 1934: 205). It is often not possible to identify the
LNU in this material as author or originator, though this does not
preclude authors or LEA officials being members or sympathizers. This,
in itself, demonstrates how prevalent internationalist narratives of the
armistice became in schools, as they did in the wider public sphere in
the interwar years (Gregory 1994). Revealingly, the inspectors who gath-
ered information for a Board of Education report on “League of Nations
teaching” in schools noted that the armistice was observed through
communal events with a stress on “the need for international goodwill …
uniformly.” Such events were deemed “impressive occasions” when pupils
were “particularly receptive to emotional rather than intellectual influ-
ences;” they had the potential to be powerful fora for informal learning
(Board of Education 1932: 9).
Armistice ceremonies with an internationalist flavour seem to have
been a recognizable and common feature of the contemporary commem-
orative landscape. The distinctive components of an internationalist
armistice-time message become evident when compared with a wider
selection of armistice-time messages targeted at children. A “Service for
Remembrance Day”, for example, recommended a headteachers’ address
which would cover the years of the First World War and the sacrifices
made, the significance of the silence, the unknown warrior, war poem and
Bible readings, prayers, hymns, an explanation of what was expected from
children, and (mainly in secondary schools) the roll of honour recording
the names of ex-pupils and teachers who lost their lives (Teachers’ World,
October 22, 1930: 169). British Legion adverts, which appeared most
years in the educational press, emphasized poppies as a means of providing
money for war veterans and remembering those who lost their lives in war
(Teachers’ World, October 28, 1931: 125). Internationalist texts aimed at
schools often included the same ceremonial and ritualistic elements, and
similar messages about sacrifice and loss. In addition, as will become clear
below, children were encouraged to work for peace too, and to strive
for future disputes being settled not through war but arbitration and the
League of Nations.
The glut of content in the educational press suggests an appetite
among teachers for material with an internationalist flavour to support
them in running such events. The LNU also reported considerable
demand. From 1919, it issued pamphlets, programmes of Armistice Day
celebrations, and copy for educational periodicals (The League, December,
1919: 41; LNU, Minutes of the Education Committee, November 26,
1920 and November 21, 1924). From 1929 to 1939, it issued an annual
Armistice Day message; a shorter, simpler, message was also produced
in some years for younger pupils. Messages, the LNU suggested, could
be read out during the school’s Armistice Day commemorative event,
and placed on noticeboards afterwards (Journal of Education, November,
1933: 721). Notwithstanding the dominance of women among the
LNU’s members and supporters (McCarthy 2011: 182–211), those
invited to pen these messages were all men. The first three were authored
by leading figures in the LNU itself. The Headmasters of two leading
public schools, Rugby and Harrow, contributed messages in 1932 and
1933.1 From 1934 to 1937 the gravity of the international situation
was felt to demand messages from high-ranking statesmen and politicians.
1938’s message was written by the Archbishop of York.
LNU Armistice Day messages could reference the events and concerns
of the moment. Cyril Norwood, headmaster of Harrow in 1933,
expressed his hope for a disarmament treaty, whilst the Archbishop of
York in 1938 commented on the events of September that year which
brought nations “to the very brink of the pit of war” (League of Nations
Union News Sheet, November, 1933: 3; The Schoolmaster, November 3,
1938: 655). Some messages were pitched at the level of principles and
94 S. WRIGHT
generalities. General Smut (South African prime minister and interna-

tional statesman) in 1937 called, in somewhat abstract terms, for “Youth
to concentrate its enthusiasm and energy on this task of fundamental
reconstruction” to secure a “better world for the future” (The School-
master, November 11, 1937: 826). The Archbishop of York in 1938,
instead, offered concrete suggestions, encouraging young readers and
individuals to act in order “to increase good will and to establish peace.”
He recommended that they learn history with a determination to under-
stand the position of enemies in conflicts, and that they travel overseas
if able to, meeting with locals and not just spending time with English
friends. He suggested that they show kindness to refugees and other
recent immigrants from other nations who lived in their neighbourhoods
and who might feel lonely and lost: “you will come to understand their
point of view and feel more sympathy for it” (The Schoolmaster, November
3, 1938: 655).
Notwithstanding these variations in reference points and tone, what
is perhaps more striking is the way in which three interconnected argu-
ments appeared in some form in all the messages. First, the young people
addressed were encouraged to remember and honour those who had
lost their lives, or suffered injuries, in the First World War. Second, the
founding of the League of Nations was presented as a result of the War.
In this view, preventing another war through working for the success of
the League in preserving peace was the most appropriate way to show
gratitude to those who had fought and to honour the memories of those
who had died. Third, it was the responsibility of the younger generation
to promote and sustain the League to ensure that the legacy of peace
that those who fought in the war had desired would be achieved. They
were to be the keepers of an internationalist inheritance, those who would
preserve it in the future; this dynamic has been noted already in relation
to locally organized armistice events. As Gilbert Murray wrote in 1931,
“we have founded it … it is for you to keep it alive and make it stronger,
till at last the nations really know that they are members of the whole and
one of another” (The Schoolmaster, November 5, 1931: 682). And main-
taining and promoting such an inheritance, Hugh Lyon, headmaster of
Rugby, suggested the following year, was the “finest tribute” that could
be paid to those who died in the First World War. For young people to
preserve peace would require “the … courage and constancy” that their
fathers demonstrated on the battlefield (LNU 1932). Tropes of legacy
and emulation of war heroes common in contemporary armistice texts
(Connelly [2002] 2015; Wright 2020b) were tied to an internationalist

purpose.
The LNU often reported success through numbers: of Armistice Day
letters distributed, of armistice-time meetings, of new members who
joined through recruitment activities, of people at events. It is more
difficult in most LNU texts to ascertain the meanings ascribed both by
those trying to engage children, and the children who read or heard
messages, listened to talks, watched pageants and films, or processed to
memorials, themselves. Oblique insights can be gleaned through refer-
ences from teachers and in LNU records and publications into what
the adults involved, at least, wanted to achieve. They aimed for some-
thing appropriate for children’s age and understanding, and which was
of interest and relevant to them; the latter exercised minds increasingly
as the years passed and the First World War itself became an increasingly
distant memory. In his 1935 Armistice Day message (LNU 1935), Samuel
Hoare (Foreign Secretary at the time) noted that the 17 years since the
first Armistice Day covered the whole lives of most of the young people to
whom he was writing. The generation which suffered during the war years
and set up the League of Nations, it was noted in 1929, were now passing
and it was up to children to take their agenda forward and develop the
“League of the future” (Headway, November, 1929, LNU News Supple-
ment: i). Children’s key contribution here was, as noted earlier, envisaged
not in the present but in the future once they possessed adult capacities
and capabilities.
Reading through the Armistice Day messages together, it seems that
an older generation was grasping for a way to communicate a suitably
internationalist message in a manner which would engage young listeners
and readers. And the authors of these messages after 1934 were not
all educators by profession, with some picked because of their promi-
nent position in public life instead. Their contributions, undoubtedly,
had the potential to be a highly influential and powerful pedagogical
instrument. Notwithstanding this, the LNU documented in some years
a “mixed response” from teachers (e.g. LNU, Minutes of the Education
Committee, December 14, 1936). In part this seems to have been about
difficulties in finding the right register or pitch for children, not easy
when different ages were together in a whole school gathering. Most
teachers responding to an LNU survey in 1936 deemed the Armistice
Day messages suitable for the occasion, but for a minority they were not
understood by younger children, not exciting or challenging enough for
96 S. WRIGHT
older ones, or not “constructive” enough (LNU, Minutes of the Junior

Branches Sub-Committee, December 8, 1936). Whether these concerns
were about knowledge and understanding, concepts, tone, or the ideo-
logical message and/or lack of practical suggestions (either of which the
latter comment about being constructive might imply), is not clear.
The challenges that teachers alluded to did not stop at least some
members of school-based junior branches engaging with armistice-time
activity with enthusiasm and energy. In a manner parallel to adult
branches, the days and weeks around 11 November could be a time of
intensive effort. Notably, this remained the case for junior branches well
into the 1930s when adult branches’ armistice-time endeavours appear
to have waned (according to the crude barometer of the reporting of
events in LNU periodicals). Junior branches campaigned, as did local
adult branches, to sign up new members. The Junior Branch of Ilford
County High School for Boys deemed “a campaign for new members
… the best way of keeping Armistice Day.” Others, like Leighton Park
School in Reading, engaged in house-to-house canvassing to recruit for
the local adult branch (League News, February, 1933: 8). Armistice-time
was also deemed a symbolically important occasion for activism within
the school community. The junior branch at Central Foundation Girls’
School, for example, launched an “anti-war campaign” with “addresses
to the school” on the afternoon before Armistice Day in 1933, followed
by a debate on the need to abolish armaments on 14 November (Central
Foundation Girls’ School Magazine, February, 1934: 12–13).
School magazines and LNU periodicals are replete with examples, in
the days before and after 11 November if not on 11 November itself,
of debates, large meetings with external speakers, and a range of perfor-
mances and exhibitions—plays, concerts, pageants, model assemblies,
mock trials, poster displays. Some of these activities were aimed mainly
at junior branch members but many included the wider school commu-
nity and sometimes outside visitors too. Through rousing speeches,
drama, music, re-enactment, young LNU supporters aimed to attract
attention, and provide a personally persuasive or intellectually and
emotionally meaningful experience for an audience who, at armistice
time, would be particularly alert and receptive to messages about war
and peace, including the LNU’s liberal-internationalist messages (c.f.
McCarthy 2010). Descriptions of these events suggest exhortation and
even idealism, but also, on occasion, input which challenged some of the
policies and activities of the League. Bradfield College’s junior branch
activities on 11 November 1934, for example, involved the reading out

of the LNU’s Armistice Day message, described as a call to support the
League, and a talk on naval armaments by a visiting speaker, who chal-
lenged the arguments of many League activists about the desirability
and practicality of disarmament at least in the naval sphere (Bradfield
College Chronicle, December, 1934: 1540–1541). While the LNU’s texts
or services and talks for teachers published in the educational press did
not shy away entirely from difficulties, they were frequently positive and
idealistic. Accounts of localized activity suggest that some armistice-time
events allowed for questioning and critique too.
Those who wrote in school magazines were typically junior branch
secretaries or other committee members. They were the enthusiasts. We
could question whether their enthusiasm was shared by all who encoun-
tered internationalist messages at armistice time in schools. Teacher and
pupil accounts of what happened in the morning of 11 November
1937 submitted to Mass Observation, the social research organization
founded earlier that year, offer a wider range of responses. Accounts refer-
ence narratives which were internationalist, militaristic, or somewhere in
between, suggesting a difficult ideological balancing act between motifs
of militarism and patriotism and internationalism and peace. One pupil
for example wrote of an officer training corps parade, and prayers for
the King, leaders, peace, and the League of Nations (Mass Observation
Archive (MOA) 1937, Day Survey Respondent (DSR): 225). The Mass
Observation accounts describe highly charged communal events, perhaps
echoing the Board of Education’s reference to the power of emotional
influences a few years earlier. But responses to the ideological narratives
conveyed, or the emotive charge of events, were far from uniform. In
submissions from both teachers and pupils, children were neither passive
recipients of messages nor vessels for cultural transmission. They could
comply with cultural traditions and norms, they could enact minor, typi-
cally unobtrusive acts of rebellion, or they could simply ignore what they
were presented with (Wright 2020b).
Multiple accounts, from teachers and pupils, refer to the reading
out of General Smut’s Armistice Day message for the LNU, and all in
negative terms. The language was too difficult, it was too pompous, it
was war-mongering (MOA 1937, DSR: 225, 385, 520). One teacher
described it as “a meaningless mixture of diluted economics and League
of Nations propaganda” and observed that pupils were bored and stopped
listening. Another noted in the margin of his account the headteacher’s
98 S. WRIGHT
lack of sympathy with the League, suggesting that problems with tone
and content were exacerbated by a lack of sincerity from the person
reading the message (MOA 1937, DSR: 308, 385). Other accounts,
however, report enthusiastic attempts by those organizing or speaking at
commemorative events to use these events as an opportunity to discuss
and promote the League of Nations or, more broadly, a message of
international understanding and peace (e.g. DSR: 112, 113, 188). One
teacher read to her class a winning entry to an LNU essay competi-
tion. She thought the essay very good, and better than the entry she
herself had submitted, but despite attempts to simplify it was too compli-
cated and went “above” her pupils’ heads (DSR: 102). Mass Observation
accounts highlight the challenges of getting the right register and tone,
and ensuring relevance and interest, noted in other years. Whilst addi-
tional challenges posed by the backdrop of the events of 1937, for some,
made hopes of avoiding future war seem futile, others ‘kept the faith’
(Wright 2020b).
Conclusion
Internationalist—and specifically liberal internationalist—approaches to
remembrance at armistice time were prominent throughout the interwar
years. This chapter has shown that such approaches involved and engaged
children. A younger generation, like their elders, honoured those who
died or were injured fighting in the First World War, and, in order to
remember and honour them, were called on to work for a future of inter-
national understanding and peace. Thousands of children in schools and
civic venues throughout country heard messages and speeches, joined
parades, took part in or watched plays and pageants, saw films, or
canvassed for more LNU adult or junior branch members. LNU publi-
cations and the converts to the cause among pupils and teachers who
wrote in school magazines present such activity as popular and under-
taken with enthusiasm. The positivity in such accounts, however, belies
the challenges inherent in presenting a message which, if not radical or
controversial, had a different emphasis from other contemporary messages
which emphasized to a greater extent the glories of military sacrifice
and the heroism of war. It also belies the unease which even enthusi-
astic contemporaries expressed about making such activity appropriate
and relevant for a generation not directly involved in the First World
War. Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan (1999: 31) note the potential for
reassessment of approaches to commemoration over time as veterans and

survivors are joined and eventually replaced by a successor generation
who might want to act as trustees but might also wish to reassess the
War’s legacy and their own relation to it. Such reassessments could create
tensions. All this applied to internationalist readings of the armistice, and
the activity during the weeks around Armistice Day as well as the rituals
of Armistice Day itself. And it is likely to have been felt particularly keenly
when the focus of attention was on young people and how they could and
should be involved in remembering the First World War and defining its
legacy.
Children were for liberal internationalists the hope for the future (c.f.
King 2016), the key to the achievement of their aims of peace and coop-
eration in the long term. Armistice commemoration was conceived as “an
initiation into national history” for children (Times Educational Supple-
ment, November 17, 1934, Home and Classroom Section). For liberal
internationalists the history that children were to be initiated into incor-
porated, as a legacy of the First World War, campaigns to avoid a repeat
of this conflict. If these were fundamentally adult interpretations and
concerns, children’s perspectives, needs, and concerns were still important
to adults involved. And children could engage proactively and enthusias-
tically with the cause. Texts from the LNU headquarters and penned by
adult and junior members offer many examples of leadership, enthusiasm,
and initiative from young internationalists. Mass Observation accounts,
on the other hand, provide examples of ennui and resistance too. Agentic
responses—gleaned obliquely from adult-authored or, occasionally, from
child-authored texts—were far from uniform (c.f. Gleason 2016).
By the time the commemorative period of November 1939 came
around, the Second World War was underway. The LNU’s hopes
expressed the previous year of saving peace had not been fulfilled (LNU
News Sheet, November, 1938: 1). Still, Gilbert Murray penned a final
Armistice Day message (LNU 1939). This was issued with a poignant
comment acknowledging disruption to children’s, and teachers’, lives; it
was noted that evacuation might prevent whole school assemblies, and
teachers were therefore encouraged to use the message to prepare their
own talks for their classes instead. Even if the scale and emotive power of
events of previous years could not be replicated, internationalist messages
at armistice-time were still deemed appropriate and desirable for children.
LNU supporters continued to prepare for and promote a future—if not
100 S. WRIGHT
a present—of understanding and peace, and children remained central to

these hopes.
Note
1. Public schools in the British context refers to elite, often long-established,
fee-paying schools.
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CHAPTER 6
Childhood, Education, and Everyday

Militarism in China Before and After 1949
Haolan Zheng
Introduction
Militarism deeply shaped human societies of the twentieth century. China
was no exception. The Sino-Japanese War which broke out in 1937 was
the first modern total war for the Chinese government, which mobi-
lized all of the society’s human and material capital to fight the Japanese
invader. Less than one year after the end of the Sino-Japanese war in
1945, the Civil War between the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang,
the KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (the CCP) broke out. This
war ended with the military victory of the CCP, which seized power and
established the People’s Republic of China (the PRC) in 1949. However,
just one year after the PRC’s founding, Chinese society had to be mobi-
lized for warfare again because the CCP decided to take part in the
Korean War in October 1950.
H. Zheng (B)
Keio University, Tokyo, Japan
e-mail: zheng@sfc.keio.ac.jp

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74788-6_6
104 H. ZHENG
The influences of these wars on Chinese society were profound.

Modern warfare not only brought about modern management mecha-
nisms with regard to population, land, revenue, and so forth, but also
promoted the development of social welfare and shaped the way people
thought and behaved in their daily lives. One key element in under-
standing this process is childhood. As many scholars have argued, child-
hood is a socially and politically constructed concept, linked in thought
and practice to the nation’s governance (Therborn 1996; Burman 2021;
Wells 2011; Rose 1999: 123–134; James and James 2004: 23–41; Millei
and Imre 2016).
This chapter explores the linkage between childhood and militarism in
China. Recently, new research on this intersection has gone beyond the
conflict zone where children are directly victimized by warfare, drawing
attention to the agency and subjectivity of children in connection with
militarism and militarized practices in their daily lives (Basham 2016;
Beier 2011; Hörschelmann 2016; Frühstück 2017; Harding and Kershner
2018; Beier and Tabak 2020). However, compared with the literature on
childhood in Western Europe and North America, the study of childhood
in modern China is less developed.
It is only in recent years that research has started to look into Chinese
childhood in the modern period (Naftali 2010, 2014; Plum 2012; Kubler
2018; Tillman 2018). Regarding childhood and militarism, most of the
research focuses on the activities and policies of the KMT and the
philanthropic associations for child care and child relief during the Sino-
Japanese War (Plum 2012; Zheng 2013; Tillman 2018; Kubler 2018).
However, we still know little about the impact of militarism on ordinary
children (as opposed to abandoned children or refugee children), despite
the fact that ordinary children accounted for the majority of the child
population.
Another problem with the existing research regarding childhood in
modern China is that there is little that examines how militarism influ-
enced people’s expectations and attitudes towards children. As Wells
(2015: 11) notes, childhood is a socially constructed concept, and “chil-
dren’s lives are shaped by the social and cultural expectations adults and
their peers have of them in different times and places.” We thus need
to examine the following two questions. How were people’s expecta-
tions and attitudes towards children shaped by militarism? How were
children’s experiences shaped by the adults’ understanding of them as
children? Inspired by a wealth of historical and sociological scholarship
6 CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND EVERYDAY MILITARISM … 105
on militarism in the twentieth century (Lutz 2002; Bernazzoli and Flint

2010; McSorley 2016; Hörschelmann 2016; Mabee and Vucetic 2018;
Beier and Tabak 2020), this chapter uses the term everyday militarism
to answer these two questions. Everyday militarism, as used herein, does
not refer to how children became the direct victims of war or even how
children were trained to be little soldiers. Rather, it refers to a social and
political process in which children were mobilized to support the war,
and how their daily behavior was required to conform with a series of
martial values imposed on them. These values included body discipline,
obedience to collective order, habits of laboring and self-control, courage
to fight against enemies, etc.
In order to highlight the intersection of militarism and children’s daily
lives in modern China, this chapter goes beyond the year 1949, when the
CCP seized the regime and declared the beginning of the ‘New China.’
If we look to the sequence of wars (the Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese
Civil War, and the Korean War), the transformation of Chinese society
from the 1930s to the 1950s could be regarded a continuous process
of militarization. However, the modern history of childhood in China is
still split by the division of 1949. Focusing on elementary educational
policy, this chapter works to show the similarities between the KMT and
the CCP’s understandings of the ideal child, and the influence of their
understandings on children’s daily lives.
The chapter is laid out in three parts. In the first part, I examine how
the modern notion of childhood was ‘discovered’ and changed in the
1920s and 1930s. In the second and third parts, after comparing the
differences and similarities between the KMT’s and the CCP’s under-
standing of children in their educational policies, I use Shanghai as an
example to show how children were mobilized to support the Korean
War and how their daily lives were shaped by military values.
Childhood and Militarism Before 1949

Following the deep influence of Confucian thinking in traditional Chinese
society, children were considered to belong to their parents and families.
Although some recent studies have shown that Chinese people had special
care and concern for children since at least the tenth century (Hsiung
2005: 10–15; Tillman 2018: 12), Confucian child education centered
around obedience to the authority of parents and academic training for
106 H. ZHENG
the imperial examination to assure a successful career (Saari 1990: 86–99;

Lee 2000: 431–542; Xiong 2000: 49–57). The traditional way of child
raising and education was questioned by Western missionaries in the late
Qing period and strongly criticized by many intellectuals during the May
Fourth Movement (1919) after the Qing Dynasty collapsed in 1911.
It was in the context of anti-Confucianism that the modern notion
of childhood emerged. “Saving children” from feudal Confucianism was
linked to the slogan of “saving the nation.” Based on knowledge of
child psychology, imported mainly from America, childhood came to
be considered an innocent, particular, and sentimental period different
from adulthood (Farquhar 2015: 13–37). In contrast to the coercive
approaches of Confucianism which stressed reciting classical literature
without comprehension or motivation, John Dewey’s philosophy of child-
centered education, and its emphasis on children’s interests, motivation,
and personality development, were accepted by many intellectuals in the
1920s (Xu 2013). One of Dewey’s students, Chen Heqin, who studied
pedagogy and psychology in America, became one of the most influen-
tial intellectuals promoting child-centered education and advocating new
ways of parenting. These new parenting ways were based on an under-
standing of children’s psychology, requiring parents to shift their coercive
or authoritarian attitudes to more liberal and democratic attitudes towards
children (Chen 2008: 645–657; Tillman 2018: 41–52).
It is worth noting that the emergence of the modern notion of child-
hood occurred in the process of modern nation-building. Indeed, before
the emergence of the modern notion of childhood, the body management
of children had been an important issue for national survival. Strug-
gling with the experiences of the Western powers’ aggression from the
mid-nineteenth century, the Qing Dynasty reformed its traditional educa-
tion system in 1904 and showed its concern about improving children’s
physical ability to resist foreign invaders. In the new education system,
military drills (mainly calisthenics and gymnastics) were included in phys-
ical education at school. Although military physical education declined
and was eventually replaced by sports education in the 1920s (Lu and
Fan 2014: 25–32), there had been a desire among Chinese intellectuals
to strengthen children’s physical abilities.
In the 1920s, the rhetoric surrounding childhood was linked to
citizenship education. Following Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the
People (Nationalism, Democracy and the Livelihood of the People, see
Zarrow 2015: 121–139), the elementary education of the KMT govern-

mentestablished in 1927, emphasized the importance of body discipline,
cultivating social moralities, and improving living skills.1 However, culti-
vating ‘little citizens’ was not so easy in practice. The mortality rate of
infants was reported to be around 20 percent, due to the insanitary
and poor living conditions in which most Chinese children lived at the
time (Hou 2001: 396–401). Child abandonment and infanticide were
also common phenomena, both in cities and in the countryside. Against
this background, scientific child raising quickly became a set of doctrines.
Parents who lacked the basic scientific knowledge of child raising were
typically depicted as neglectful and ignorant adults. Specific policies were
implemented to protect children’s lives, such as the prohibition on infan-
ticide and the physical examination of pregnant women and children
(Watt 2014: 35–72; Zheng 2017). With the help of philanthropic asso-
ciations, many events for children’s happiness were conducted in big
cities. Children’s happiness meant that children should be protected by
providing a healthy and sanitary environment in which to live, and then
have opportunities to receive education.
In the 1930s, under the national crisis of Japan’s invasion in
Manchuria, militarism grew. The KMT promulgated the educational
policy of “Matters Requiring Special Attention in Future Primary and
Secondary Education” in 1932.2 In this policy, it was clearly stated that
primary schools should pay attention to children’s military and sports
training, guide students to organize self-governing groups, and discipline
them to follow collective order. This bill also mentioned that students at
primary schools should learn how to work hard without complaint and
live without unnecessary expense and romantic extravagance in order to
save the nation.
Needless to say, the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War strengthened
militarism in myriad ways, along with the large-scale wartime requisition.
According to the “Implementation Plan of Education at All Levels in
Wartime,” enacted in 1938, elementary education during the war had
to be converted from intellectual training to education consisting of the
three aspects: moral education for cultivating children’s collective respon-
sibility and discipline; intellectual education emphasizing the knowledge
of national geography, history etc.; and, physical education for promo-
tion of children’s health.3 In the policy of “The Standard of Training and
Educating Students in the National Elementary Schools,” promulgated
108 H. ZHENG
in 1941, there were four goals for primary education: conducting phys-
ical training to cultivate sports and hygiene habits and the spirit of vivacity
and courage; conducting moral training of the mind in courtesy, sincerity,
and sensibility to disgrace; conducting economic training to cultivate the
habit of thrift and labor, and to develop the knowledge and ability of
production cooperation; and, conducting political training to cultivate
the mind to obey rules and serve the public order, loving the country
and the people.4 In order to meet this standard, 200 specific rules were
set for the daily behavior of elementary school students. In part, the rules
on the topic of “obedience” for lower grade elementary school students
included: going to school and coming home every day on time; lining up
quickly, being quiet and neat; following the guidance of those who main-
tain order and the group; obeying government orders and the laws of the
country; and, believing that obedience is the essence of responsibility.5
Under intensified militarism, childhood was regarded as an important
and integral period of cultivating citizens’ national consciousness and
military spirit. Within this context, child-centered educational philosophy
received much criticism from politicians and educators. Zhang Xuemen,
a well-known advocate of child-centered educational philosophy in the
1920s later thought that it could not meet the real needs of Chinese
society in 1938 (Zhang 1938). In his critique, innocent and happy child-
hood was deemed potentially dangerous for national survival and children
should have an obligation to serve the state. At the same time, regarding
how to educate children in wartime, a debate between the advocates
of child-centered education and nation-centered education took place.6
The debate was ended with the understanding that there should be no
contradictions between them, because child-centered education could be
a useful way to develop children’s physical and mental abilities, which was
ultimately in the national interest.7 Apparently, attention was not paid to
the development of children’s personalities, but focused on their physical
and mental abilities required for nation-building. In other words, child-
centered education was integrated into nation-centered education in an
instrumental manner.
Another change regarding childhood rhetoric brought about by mili-
tarism was the re-recognition of Confucian values. As Rose (1999: 126)
points out, “‘the family’ was an ideology mechanism for reproducing a
docile labour force, for exploiting the domestic labour of women under
the guise of love and duty, for maintaining the patriarchal authority of
men over the household.” The patriarchal authority was advocated by
the KMT government in the Sino-Japanese War, requiring men’s fighting

on the battlefield and women’s cooperation in the household.8 Women’s
cooperation referred to women’s dedicated activities at home to support
men’s war fighting, including disciplining children to be good citizens for
the national survival. The New Life Movement launched by the KMT in
1934 was also an attempt to cultivate the good habits of citizens in their
daily lives through combining some Confucian values—such as following
social orders and being a moral person—with the citizenship education
(Jiang 1934). As for children, they were expected to be obedient to their
parents, to form good habits, help the adults, learn living skills, and so
on. Being obedient to parents was not only a family’s internal issue, but
also an ideological mechanism for keeping social order during wartime.
However, we should keep in mind that the reality of childhood was
more complicated than the changing understanding towards childhood
reflected in official educational policies. The modern ideas of child-
hood were accepted by some social elites or middle classes living in the
cities. For the rest of the society, especially those illiterate people living
in the countryside—accounting for more than 80 percent of the total
population—it was difficult to understand either the modern concept of
childhood or the scientific ways of child raising. Thus, warfare might
have sharpened differences in the experiences of childhood between poor
families and those of the middle-class or intellectual elites.
Children and Political Mobilization After 1949

The KMT and the CCP had opposite attitudes towards Confucianism.
For the KMT, Confucianism was a useful value structure to keep social
order and underwrite authority in wartime. By contrast, the CCP thought
Confucianism represented the feudal culture which needed to be elimi-
nated under socialism. The CCP also sharply criticized the KMT’s child
education for serving only the interests of the bourgeoisie and feudal land-
lords, while the vast majority of children of workers and peasants were
excluded from education. There is no doubt that the CCP made substan-
tial progress in education, including reforming the old primary school
system and expanding education to the children of workers and peasants.9
Basically, there were two differences between the CCP’s understanding
of children and that of the KMT. One was that the CCP emphasized
the nature of children’s social class, believing that children’s development
110 H. ZHENG
was influenced by their social relations, and class relations in partic-

ular. Another difference was that the CCP emphasized the activism and
initiative of the child, believing that children were able to change the envi-
ronment around them. In an article entitled, “To Understand Children is
the Prerequisite for Education,” published in the People’s Daily in 1953,
children were considered as follows:
It is a big mistake to think about children’s development without thinking

about class relations and the cultural environment surrounding them...
The environment is not passively accepted by humans, but can be trans-
formed by humans. When children are able to respond positively to
their environment, they have the possibility to influence the environment
around themselves…The more effective educational work we do, the more
motivation children will have, in turn the more effectively children can
understand and criticize their environment. They are influenced by the
environment around them, but they can resist being influenced. (People’s
Daily, November 11, 1953)
It is clear to see that the CCP believed that children could acquire the
competence and the skills to transform and challenge the environment
around them. It was because of this logic that Chen Heqin’s educational
thoughts were sharply criticized. One of the main criticisms was that Chen
ignored the political goal of education. In October 1951, Chen published
his confession article in People’s Daily, recognizing that his bourgeois
thoughts needed to be reformed by the Party (People’s Daily, October
8, 1951). This marked the end of child-centered education.
The biggest difference in child education between the KMT and the
CCP might be the CCP’s capacity for political mobilization. We need to
keep in mind that the one-party system of the CCP was highly militarized
with the capacity to extract human and material resources from the society
(Walder 2015: 38–39). This powerful militarized mobilization system was
formed in the Chinese Civil War and was later consolidated during the
Korean War. It was during the Korean War that the Party established
new political structures centered on the CCP organizations from central
to grass-roots level and suppressed anti-communist forces within society
(Strauss 2002; Yang 2008).
Under the highly top-down mobilization system, children in Shanghai
were mobilized to participate in social and political activities. In elemen-
tary schools, the CCP established the Chinese Young Pioneers, composed
of children between the ages of 9 and 15. The main purpose of the
Young Pioneers was to cultivate the five civic virtues of love (the love
of the motherland, the love of people, the love of labor habits, the love
of science, and the love of public property) through education (People’s
Daily, October 25, 1949; April 29, 1951). The members of the Young
Pioneers were obliged not only to achieve outstanding grades but also
to behave appropriately. Behaving appropriately implied studying well,
keeping discipline, working hard, and so on. According to the archives
of the Education Bureau in Shanghai, nearly all members of the Young
Pioneers maintained excellent grades and were well-disciplined children
capable of abiding by the rules.10
With the help of the Young Pioneers, children were widely mobilized
to attend many activities related to politics. The ideological education in
elementary schools focused on integrating political symbols and activi-
ties into children’s daily lives. Political symbols in everyday spaces could
help children build their identities in a natural way. In Shanghai, chil-
dren’s lives were flooded with political symbols. The praises and gratitude
for Chairman Mao and the CCP were visible in textbooks, picture books,
and recreational activities. On 1 October 1950, a total of 650,000 people,
including elementary students, workers, and soldiers of the People’s
Liberation Army, participated in a parade in Shanghai celebrating the
National Day. During the parade, the participants cried out slogans such
as “Long Live the People’s Republic of China” and “Long Live Chairman
Mao” (Children’s Time, no. 10, 1950). In the April 1950 issue of the
magazine, Children’s Time, there were dot-to-dot worksheets for chil-
dren using Chairman Mao’s portrait and a song titled, “The Communist
Party is Like the Sun” (Children’s Time, no. 4, 1950). In many families,
the portrait of Chairman Mao was hung on the wall.
Regarding political activities, apart from the lectures introducing
current events and politics in classes, various activities outside of class were
strongly recommended by the Party. The bulk of extracurricular activ-
ities included: understanding the histories of political role models such
as Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Zedong through poems, songs, novels, tales,
and movies; visiting public facilities such as museums, warship sites, exhi-
bitions, and galleries displaying the happy lives of children in the Soviet
Union and China; understanding the significance of the Chinese Revo-
lution and the happy life in “New China” through discussions about
movies; and, developing consciousness of working, building respect for
workers and farmers. These extracurricular political activities were all led
112 H. ZHENG
by the members of the Young Pioneers.11 In addition to these activi-

ties, various national campaigns that encouraged children to serve the
country were also carried out in elementary schools—for example, the
One Bowl of Rice Campaign and the Winter Garment Campaign that
called on donating one bowl of rice or some winter clothing to comfort
the victims of the natural disasters and the war in 1950.
Political mobilization was strengthened in the Korean War. In resi-
dential neighborhoods, the CCP established organizations called the
Residential Committees, grassroots official organizations associated with
political activists, from the spring of 1951 to June 1952. The Resi-
dential Committees played an important role in mobilizing residents to
support the “Resist the U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea” movement. For
children, one noticeable thing the Committee did was helping the govern-
ment to improve sanitary and health conditions. In the Patriotic Health
Campaign, which was carried out during the spring of 1951, the govern-
ment showed its strong mobilization capabilities by vaccinating millions
of urban residents in a short time and mobilizing families to clean their
homes and streets. Physicians, nurses, and midwives were mobilized to
go to schools and to the residential neighborhoods to vaccinate over
180,000 citizens in just one day (Shanghai Xinmin Evening News, March
24, 1951). The Residential Committees also helped the government to
investigate the number of children who had reached school age but were
not in school. Based on this investigation, the government increased the
number of elementary schools as well as the number of classes provided
in elementary schools. By the summer of 1952, the number of elemen-
tary school students in China had doubled compared to that of 1949.
(People’s Daily, September 24, 1952). It was also reported that the Resi-
dential Committees launched many political activities, such as gathering
children to read newspapers and learn about the CCP’s political thought
and current political affairs. Children were encouraged to help propagate
political information by producing material such as children’s posters.
In June 1952, there were more than 9000 resident newspaper groups,
political study classes for young people, literacy classes for women and
children, night schools, and other political education organizations in the
residential neighborhoods of Shanghai (Zhang 2015: 47–48).
Everyday Militarism and Conflicts

Although the CCP didn’t deny the necessity for parents and educators
to understand children’s psychology, the Party’s educational policy paid
more attention to collective order than to children’s personality or senti-
ments. In fact, another criticism against child-centered education was that
the priority in education should not be put on individual children’s needs
or personality, but on rules and orders in the classroom (People’s Daily,
October 8, 1951). In addition, the articles regarding children in educa-
tional periodicals, published in the early 1950s, embraced the images of
the patriotic, obedient, self-governing child with a healthy and strong
body. As noted earlier in this chapter, these images had already emerged
in the 1930s, in the context of militarism.
Militarism was further intensified during the Korean War. Under the
top-down mobilization system of the CCP, ordinary people, including
children, were widely mobilized in political campaigns to support the war.
Besides the political campaigns noted earlier, people’s values were also
shaped by militarism. As for children, there were three main martial values
propagated by the CCP. Similar to the values advocated by the KMT
in the 1930s, the first of these was obedience. We see it reflected in a
composition written by a fourth grade student at an elementary school in
Shanghai:
Happy New Year’s Day. 1952 is coming, and I’m ready for this new year:
1) I should bear in mind the words of Chairman Mao, study and practice
well, and build up our motherland. 2) I have to take care of my brother
and sister at home. 3) I brush my teeth every day, change my clothes, wash
my face clean. 4) I help my mother do the housework. I do this, and I
am so prepared to fight for Chairman Mao’s great ideals. (Children’s Time,
no. 40, 1950)
Studying hard, helping parents do housework, and being self-governed

at home and school, all these things were advocated by the Party for
children’s contribution to the front line. Good behavior also included
participating in political campaigns such as saving pocket money for the
front line and visiting soldiers’ families.
The second key value area was building “strong bodies” to work hard
and defend the country. As Kevin McSorley (2013: 2) points out, “it is
not just the bodies of combatants and victims that are produced by and
central to war, but the bodies of veterans, witnesses, pacifists, patriots and
114 H. ZHENG
many others.” The same was true of children in modern China. After
1949, military drills were abolished and replaced by physical drills in
elementary schools. During the Korean War, physical drills became widely
practiced in people’s daily lives. For example, the government encour-
aged people to do radio gymnastics, whether in schools or at home, in
December 1951. In Shanghai, 80 percent of school students practiced
radio gymnastics every day at school (People’s Daily, June 21, 1952). In
addition to sports activities organized at school, the local government and
mass organizations also actively organized various recreational activities
for students. This placed a great burden on teachers and students. It was
reported that an elementary school teacher in Shanghai had to work an
average of 11–12 hours per day and could not rest even at night because
of the need to attend activities and meetings (Wenhui Daily, February 3,
1953). Children were thus occupied with political and social activities in
elementary schools.
The third key value was the military spirit of fighting against ‘ene-
mies.’ Although the KMT also advocated this value in the Sino-Japanese
War, the CCP expanded it from fighting against outside ‘enemies’ to
include both external and internal ‘enemies.’ People were encouraged
to find the ‘enemies’ in their daily lives, including among their family
members. In the elementary schools, the confrontation between ‘good’
and ‘evil’ in education was emphasized. The CCP believed that chil-
dren could transform their parents’ ‘bad behavior’ if they stood in the
Party’s position. With the encouragement of schoolteachers, many chil-
dren began to accuse their parents of covertly listening to the Voice of
America and playing Mahjong at night, which violated the government’s
policy of calling for the conservation of electricity to support the Korean
War (Shanghai Xinmin Evening News, January 15, 1952).
Children’s political activism was different from the practice of “chil-
dren’s citizenship” discussed today, which is based on the understanding
that children have the right to participate in decisionmaking and to share
power with the adults (Lister 2007; James 2011; Larkins 2014; Locker
2016). For the CCP, children’s political participation was limited to some
specific circumstances in which the Party needed children’s cooperation
to reform people’s thoughts and behavior. In other words, children’s
‘political subjectivity’ was only practiced when it was instrumental for
the Party to reform the society. And children’s ‘political subjectivity’ was
ambiguous. On the one hand, children could have the ability to reform
the adults’ old thoughts and behavior because they were less ‘polluted’
than the adults. On the other hand, children were required to be obedient
to parents and teachers to keep the social order and support the country.
According to this logic, children were both ‘becomings’ and ‘beings.’ To
what extent they were ‘becomings’ and to what extent ‘beings’ depended
on the specific circumstances. The Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) was
an extreme case for the young people to challenge the existing social
authority under the cult of Chairman Mao. But in normal times, the
Party did not deny parents’ and teachers’ authority. Especially, when the
Party needed children to support the war and socialist construction, the
obedience of children to authority was indispensable.
The first time that children challenged adults authority was not in the
Cultural Revolution, but in the Three-Antis and Five-Antis Campaigns
(1951–1952). The Three-Antis Campaign, which was mainly conducted
in government and educational institutions, meant fighting against
corruption, waste, and bureaucratism while the Five-Antis Campaign,
which targeted private enterprise, meant fighting against bribery, tax
evasion, cheating on government contracts, theft of economic intel-
ligence, and stealing state assets (Walder 2015: 76–78). These two
campaigns served not only as the government’s demand for its citizens
to save economic resources, but also as a political educational campaign
to mobilize ordinary people to eliminate ‘evil’ behavior in their daily lives.
During the Five-Antis campaign in Shanghai, there was a large number
of cases reported by the Communist Youth League in which students had
exposed the misconduct of their parents. The majority of these children
were ten years old or more and many were members or activists of the
Communist Youth League or the Young Pioneers. The record of their
denouncements of others was highly valued in the screening process for
joining the Communist Youth League.
Zhang Siwei, a fourth grade elementary school student in North
Jiangsu Province and a member of the Young Pioneers, wrote a letter
to the county mayor alleging that his father was an anti-revolutionary
and asked the government to investigate him. The county mayor wrote a
reply to Zhang. In the letter, he highly praised Zhang’s behavior: “You are
a good student, a model student in the counterrevolutionary campaign.
Your act of placing righteousness above your family loyalty is completely
in line with the demands of the people of the whole country” (Wenhui
Daily, June 1, 1951). It was considered that Zhang’s accusation of his
father represented “justice” because he did not pursue private interests of
his family and stood instead on the CCP’s side.
116 H. ZHENG
The increased cases of children’s denouncement of their parents’

‘bad behavior’ might intensify parent–child conflicts within families. It is
necessary to keep in mind that the influence of Confucianism did not
completely disappear from people’s daily lives, even under the CCP’s
slogan of Anti-Confucianism. Filial piety, showing respect to the elders,
and affection for the younger ones, being obedient to parents and so
forth, all of these Confucian values continued to influence people’s
thoughts and behavior in their daily lives. In addition, children were
not simply passive beings complying with the demands placed on them
in straightforward ways. Especially for teenagers, resistance against their
parents was common since each child had the capacity to exercise a degree
of agency no matter how much parents sought to control them (James
and James 2004: 6). Hence it was possible that those children who
accused their parents were those who had personal conflicts with their
parents before the Three-Antis and Five-Antis.
Militarism could also intensify the hidden violence towards children
behind the slogan of revolution. It has been reported that in the early
years of the 1950s, corporal punishment still exsited in families and at
schools (People’s Daily, December 28, 1950; January 27, August 27,
1951; May 25, August 27, October 18, 1952, etc.). Although the
Communist Party imposed a policy on parents to ban corporal punish-
ment (People’s Daily, June 18, 1950), there was little effort to shift
parents’ and teachers’ authoritarian attitudes towards children. Driven
by the demand of Chairman Mao’s rapid socialist construction, the ideal
images of obedient, self-governed and disciplined children were further
propagated, while beating and scolding were probably widely used by the
adults to correct children’s behavior.
Conclusion
The emergence and evolution of the modern notion of childhood in
China occurred in the process of nation-building. With the discovery
of happy and innocent childhood, child-centered educational philosophy,
which emphasized the importance of understanding child psychology and
the child’s individual personality, became a popular rhetoric representing
modern, scientific ways to educate children. However, Chinese society did
not have enough time to practice child-centered education. The national
crisis brought by Japan’s invasion led to the rapid rise of militarism in the
1930s, which caused the decline of child-centered educational philosophy.
Child-centered educational philosophy finally ended in the Korean

War. It would be difficult to understand childhood in modern China
without considering the influences of militarism. Although there were
some differences between the KMT and CCP’s understanding of children,
both viewed childhood as an important period to cultivate citizenship for
modern nation-building. Moreover, both emphasized collective order in
education, requiring the cultivation of children’s national consciousness,
labor habits, and obedience to collective order and authority.
This chapter showed two aspects of everyday militarism during the
Korean War in China. One aspect was that children were widely mobilized
to participate in political campaigns to support the war, under the highly
top-down mobilization system of the CCP. The other aspect deals with
martial values advocated by the CCP. These included being obedient to
collective order, making bodies strong to work hard, and fighting against
‘enemies’ in daily life. These values were reinforced through propaganda
as the new social norms, which shaped people’s understanding of the ideal
child in the socialist China.
The socialist revolution (1953–1956) after the Korean War was
conducted against the background of the Cold War. When society’s labor
force was highly organized and mobilized for socialist revolution, chil-
dren were not the ‘center’ of the family. Rather, their role was to support
their parents’ efforts. Together with the fact that the revolutionary culture
propagated was itself violent, authoritarian attitudes towards children,
including corporal punishment, were probably common.
The interaction of militarism and children’s daily lives was much more
complex in reality than we could imagine, since children were not only
the object of education, but also the agents of militarized practices in
their daily lives. In light of this, it may not be surprising to see young
people’s violent rebellious behavior in the Cultural Revolution (1966–
1968). Such violence might have come from Communist revolutionary
education which emphasized the principle of class struggle, but it may
also have had determinants in childhood experiences with militarism.
Acknowledgements This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant

Number JP19H01315. The author also wishes to thank the editors for their
helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.
118 H. ZHENG
Notes
1. “Zhonghua Minguo Jiaoyu Zongzhi jiqi Shishi Fangzhen [The Goals
and Implementation Principles of Education in Republican China],”
Xingzhengyuan Gongbao, No. 43: 1–3, 1929.
2. “Jinhou Zhongxiaoxue Xunyu Gongzuo Ying Tebie Zhuyi Zhi Shixiang
[Matters Requiring Special Attention in Future Primary and Secondary
Education],” in Zhonghua Minguo Shi Dangan Ziliao Huibian [ The
Historical Archives of Republican China] (Education 2, Vol. 5, No. 1),
1062–1065, edited by the Second Historical Archives of China, Nanjing:
Jiangsu Ancient Book Publishing House, 1994.
3. “Zhanshi Geji Jiaoyu Shishi Fangan Gangyao [The Implementation Plan
of Education at All Levels in Wartime],” in Jiaoyubu Gongbao 10 (4–6):
1–3, 1938.
4. “Xiaoxue Xunyu Biaozhun [The Standard of Training and Educating
Students in the National Elementary Schools],” in Guomin Jiaoyu Ziliao
Yuekan 1(4): 51–65, 1941.
5. Ibid.
6. “Woguo Ertong Jiaoyu de Jinkuang [The Recent Condition of Child
Education],” in Fujian Jiaoyu Ting Zhoukan 167: 2–4, 1933.
7. “Minzu Benwei Yi Ertong Benwei [Nation-Centered Education above
Child-Centered Education],” in Zhengzhi Jikan 4(4): 39–44, 1944.
8. “Mujiao Zhi Zhongyao [The Importance of Motherhood],” in Jiaoyu
Tongxun Xunkan 5(1): 1–4, 1942; “Guangfan Tuixing Mujiao Yundong
[The Wide Promotion of Mother Education Movement],” in Hunan
Funv 3(5): 7–9, 1941.
9. “Working Hard for the Construction of New Chinese Education,” in
Renmin Jiaoyu 1(1): 7–16, 1950.
10. See Shanghai Municipal Archives, No. C21–1–32–6.
11. See Shanghai Municipal Archives, No. B105-1-84.
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CHAPTER 7
Primary Education and the French Army

During the Algerian War of Independence
Brooke Durham
The assertion of most Algerian1 nationals today that, when the Algerian
War of Independence ended in 1962, over 90 percent of adults and chil-
dren were illiterate is not unfounded. After over a century of French
colonial rule in Algeria, most children did not have access to compul-
sory, primary education. Despite attempts at reform after the Second
World War, the paltry French investments in educating Algerian chil-
dren remained wildly insufficient. In Algeria, as elsewhere in the French
Empire, settler colonial politics, ethnicity, gender, and religion shaped
children’s educational opportunities (Barthélémy 2010; Bryant 2015).
Colonial authorities in Algeria failed to deliver on a central tenet of the
‘civilizing mission’—spreading the French language and culture through
education. Faced with civilian failure in matters of education, both the
French military and the National Liberation Front (Front de Libération
B. Durham (B)
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
e-mail: bdurham@stanford.edu

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74788-6_7
124 B. DURHAM
National, FLN) invested in alternative educational programs for Alge-

rian youth as part of their military strategy (Heggoy 1973; Galula 2006;
De la Ferrière 2015). Tens of thousands of Algerian children attended
schools run by French military personnel during the war. Yet these mili-
tary interventions in education are often excluded from the history of
primary education in Algeria. Historians have drawn attention to the over-
whelming militarization of the French civilian administration in Algeria,
during the Algerian War of Independence (Branche 2001; Thénault
2001) but few studies focus on Algerian children’s wartime experiences.
The history of children and childhood in twentieth century Algeria
has been woefully neglected.2 One way in which historians have begun
to approach the study of Algerian childhoods is through the history
of children’s education.3 Sources for the study of Algerian childhoods
include colonial administrative documents regulating children’s daily lives,
oral interviews, and written testimonies. School attendance figures promi-
nently in autobiographical memoirs of individuals who grew up in Algeria
during the period of the revolutionary war, as evident in the literary
sources used in this chapter. Studying the primary education provided by
the French military is crucial to a better understanding of children’s expe-
riences of a militarized society during the Algerian War of Independence.
This chapter demonstrates the detrimental effects of the French military’s
educational strategy in three phases: the conflict over school buildings; the
French military’s efforts to break the general strike of January 1957; and
the organization of primary education in regroupment camps of forcibly
displaced Algerians. The final section explores the conflicts that arose
between civilian and military instructors.
Between 1830—when French armies invaded Algiers and launched the
conquest of what would become a vast settler colony after 1848—and
1954 when the Algerian anti-colonial revolution began, French colonial
investments in educating Algerian children had been minimal. Following
the French Revolution, the French state took on greater responsibility
for the nation’s children. In metropolitan France, this led to invest-
ments in the physical protection of minors, in education, and in the
provision of material assistance to orphans and other vulnerable chil-
dren (Jablonka 2011). But despite these state interventions, the Catholic
Church remained the primary protector and provider of children’s welfare
and education into the late nineteenth century. The fin-de-siècle institu-
tion of secular, compulsory primary education for all children inaugurated
the figure of the schoolchild in the French national imaginary. Third
7 PRIMARY EDUCATION AND THE FRENCH ARMY … 125
Republican schooling in France cultivated children’s allegiance to the

Republic in an effort to curb the power of the Catholic Church over
the lives of French citizens (Jablonka 2011). In contrast, outside of
metropolitan France, missionaries and religious orders played a major role
in educating local children. Missionaries established and staffed places of
learning where the French state fell short of providing the free, secular,
compulsory primary education for all boys and girls promised by the
Third Republic. In Algeria, the White Fathers missionary order founded
a number of schools in the Kabylie region and many children attended
Islamic schools focused on the Qur’an.
During the Algerian Revolution, however, the French military imposed
itself in the lives and education of Algerian children. This was not a repub-
lican project, but part of a broader human development and military
strategy designed to perpetuate French rule in Algeria. Over the course of
the conflict, the French military carved out significant space for itself in a
mixed landscape of religious and secular republican schools. According to
the French military’s counterinsurgent strategy, youth, women, and chil-
dren were critical target populations to control, monitor, and dissuade
from supporting the nationalist revolution (Peterson 2015). For General
Salan, an imposing figure in the brutal conflict that would oppose the
Algerian nationalist army and the French Army between 1954 and 1962,
the conquest of bodies, hearts, and minds was essential for winning what
would later be called the Algerian War (Denéchère 2017). As Benjamin
Claude Brower (2017) has argued, while Algerian nationalists referred to
Algerian civilians as “the people,” the French military designated civilians
as “the population.” This terminology allowed French military planners
to transform “real people into abstractions, making them available for
a special sort of politics and opening them to war’s violence” (Brower
2017: 390). Algerian youth, women, and children experienced the war
unprotected by the ‘civilian’ markers that proved their noncombatant
status.
For each “population” category, the French military developed a
specific counterinsurgent strategy. To reach Algerian women, the French
military created all-female corps of nurses and social workers: the Itin-
erant Medical-Social Teams (Équipes médico-sociales itinérantes, EMSI)
created in 1957 which directly reported to military authorities, and a
civilian corps, Auxiliary Rural Social Hygiene Assistants (Adjointes Sociales
Sanitaires Rurales Auxiliaires, ASSRA) created in 1959. These civilian
and military corps were tasked with entering Algerian women’s homes to
126 B. DURHAM
inquire about their health and other socio-medical and material needs that
the French military could meet (Capdevila 2017). For youth above the
age of fourteen, the French military created vocational training centers—
the Training Service for Algerian Youths (Service de Formation des Jeunes
d’Algérie, SFJA)—and sports leagues designed to turn them away from
supporting the Algerian nationalists (Capdevila 2017; Peterson 2015).
And for children under the age of fourteen, the French military sought to
remedy the colonial authorities’ lack of investment in the Algerian educa-
tion system by enrolling as many students as possible in French-language
primary schools.
French military encroachment into civilian matters was not a novelty
of the Algerian War of Independence. Marshal Hubert Lyautey (1900)
wrote about his participation in the wars of “pacification” and colo-
nization in Southeast Asia and in Madagascar and argued that colonial
warfare, in addition to subduing local populations militarily, should
include setting up a functioning civilian administration and “organizing”
the conquered territory. This meant clearing roads and building schools.
Lyautey instituted both practices as Governor of Morocco once it became
a French protectorate in 1912. In the Algerian case, the French schools,
Christian missions, and hospitals that followed on the heels of French
military conquest in 1830 legitimized the violence of colonial war and
bolstered French colonial claims to “civilize” local populations (Turin
1983). Over a century later during the Algerian revolution, the French
military repeated old patterns of colonial warfare in Algeria, and estab-
lishing schools again played a significant role in French military strategy.
Yet French military-run primary schools barely qualified as such, since the
education dispensed in these ad hoc institutions served first and foremost
to quell anti-colonial revolts in regions where the civilian authorities had
failed to fulfill their educational mission. Using archival sources produced
by military and civilian authorities in Algeria, as well as memoirs and
testimonies written during and following the war, this chapter argues
that the French military exacerbated the disorganized nature of the Alge-
rian education system. Under this system, the success of French military
counterinsurgent strategy was measured by the numbers of Algerian chil-
dren attending French-language primary school. Reduced to statistical
data points and pawns in the battle between the French military and the
Algerian nationalists, rural Algerian children witnessed and endured the
violence of displacement due to the war. Most never attended a full year
of school during the revolutionary years.
The numbers of Algerian children enrolled in primary schools varied

by region and year-to-year during the Algerian War of Independence.
More children were enrolled in school in urban areas. School enrollment
in cities was less subject to disruptions related to armed conflict. Across
urban and rural regions, boys’ enrollment in primary schools outpaced
the enrollment of girls. School enrollment rates for both boys and girls
in primary schools increased over the course of the Algerian War of
Independence. This chapter is especially concerned with French military
investments in the primary education of rural Algerian children in Grande
Kabylie.
The mountainous Grande Kabylie region held a special place in the
French colonial imaginary concerning Algeria. French colonial officials
asserted that Kabyles—the inhabitants of Grande Kabylie of Berber
descent—were racially superior to Algerians of Arab descent. The “Kabyle
myth” posited that Kabyles would assimilate into French civilization more
readily than ethnic Arabs (Ageron 1960). This artificial division of Alge-
rian society into ethnic categories of Berbers and Arabs created lasting
tensions among Algerians, even after independence (Lorcin 1995). Addi-
tionally, during the Algerian War of Independence, Grande Kabylie was
a highly strategic region due to its high population density and central
location. For the Algerian National Liberation Front (Front de Libération
Nationale, FLN) and its military wing, the National Liberation Army
(Armée de Libération Nationale, ALN), Grande Kabylie was the vital
connective tissue between their eastern and western operations. If the
French Army succeeded in “pacifying” Grande Kabylie, the anti-colonial
army would be severed in half (Bartet 1998: 6). To win this key region,
the French military established an outsized number of militarized civilian
operations in Grande Kabylie compared to the rest of Algeria. The contest
between the French military and the FLN to win the local population’s
loyalty played out in gunfire exchanges in the mountains and in impro-
vised classrooms under military tents. Grande Kabylie already had high
rates of school enrollment before the war, but the disruptions caused by
the conflict significantly altered the physical and educational landscape of
the region.
Phase One: The Battle for School Buildings

School buildings quickly became arenas of conflict between the FLN
and the French military. The French military requisitioned or occupied
128 B. DURHAM
school buildings for use as lodging or operational bases, and in retaliation

the FLN set school buildings on fire to prevent French military use of
the buildings. Between January 1955 and December 1956, at least 144
of the 243 local schools closed as a result of FLN-inflicted damage or
French military occupation. In the same period in one of Grande Kabylie’s
major cities, Tizi-Ouzou, 27 of 39 schools closed (ANOM n.d. [1956?];
18/9/1956). Kabyle author and schoolteacher, Mouloud Feraoun kept
a journal during the Algerian War of Independence that was published
shortly after his death in 1962. Feraoun (2011: 97), heartbroken to learn
that the FLN had burned down the primary school he had attended in
Tizi-Hibel, wrote in his journal in early 1956, “A shame for all of us.
Indelible Poor kids of Tizi. Your parents are not worthy of you.” Another
Kabyle, M.A. Kheffache was a young boy when the war began, and his
memoir recounts his brief attendance of a local French school and an
Islamic school. Both schools closed as a result of the war and the sudden
departure of his French teachers greatly affected the young Kheffache.
He wrote sorrowfully in his memoir, “One morning in November 1955,
we went to school as per usual. A significant surprise was waiting for us.
The school was closed! The teachers had been evacuated, taking with
them the joy that I had felt and the source of knowledge and hope that I
had savored from my first contacts with the teachers, Mister and Madame
Lopez” (Kheffache 2005: 59, 110). Like Kheffache, an estimated 45,000
children saw their schooling interrupted during the 1955-56 school year
because of the war and the battle between the FLN and the French
military over school buildings (« La Jeunesse Musulmane » 15/9/1956:
2).
Phase Two: The 1956–1957 Schoolyear and the Fight

to Capture Algerian Hearts and Minds
After the initial occupation and closing of schools, the French mili-
tary rebuilt primary school buildings and recruited teachers. By June
1956, various military corps, ranging from the African Artillery Regi-
ment, Infantry Brigades, and Parachute Regiments, ran 18 classrooms
serving 505 students in Grande Kabylie (ANOM 25/6/1956). A letter
from the General Commander of the French Army, Jean Olié, ordered
his subordinates to evacuate occupied schools as soon as possible, so they
could be repaired in time for the start of the 1956 school year (ANOM
15/6/1956). The sub-prefect of Tizi-Ouzou, the major city of Grand
Kabylie, stressed to his fellow sub-prefects, mayors, administrators, and

military officers that the first day of school in October had to occur in
the best possible conditions. The French administration considered the
beginning of this new school year a psychological battle to be won and a
litmus test for the success of the year’s “pacification” campaigns (ANOM
3/9/1956).
For Governor-General of Algeria, Jacques Soustelle, Algerian support
for the FLN’s anti-colonial insurrection stemmed from the colony’s
under-administration, and a lack of contacts between local civilian offi-
cials and the Algerians in their jurisdiction (Fremeaux 2002: 55). To
remedy this situation, Soustelle created the Specialized Administrative
Sections (Sections Administratives Spécialisés, SAS) in 1955. A combina-
tion of military officers and civilian attachés staffed the SAS units (Bartet
1998: 4). SAS units were exemplary of the increasingly blurry boundary
between military and civilian affairs in Algeria. In order to draw Algerians
away from supporting the FLN, the SAS filled local government positions
in isolated areas and ran the day-to-day operations of local administra-
tions. SAS units opened schools and provided housing, medical, and
social services. In addition to these civilian administrative duties, the SAS
were also charged with military and police fact-finding missions. The
SAS possessed the power to arrest, detain, and restrict the mobility of
the populations under their jurisdiction. SAS units consisted of “French
soldiers who in a non-military capacity had to convince Algerians that
France was not the enemy” (Sutton 1999: 246). Over 700 SAS units
were created during the Algerian War of Independence with the majority
established in Grande Kabylie (Fremeaux 2002: 56).
The results of these early military and educational interventions,
however, were not encouraging. According to military intelligence
reports, the FLN still had a firm hold on the inhabitants of Grande
Kabylie. Only a few local Kabyles came to the SAS seeking medical care or
to ask for assistance with administrative paperwork. Kabyle schoolteacher
and author Mouloud Feraoun (2011: 236) spoke with an SAS captain
in November 1956 who was unsatisfied with the low rates of contact
between the SAS and the local population: “He [the SAS captain]
recognized that trust had not been reestablished in the community.”
In Grande Kabylie and beyond, general strikes were flashpoints in the
struggle between the French military and the FLN to determine which
side had more control over the local population. The FLN’s calls for Alge-
rians to go on strike in 1955, 1956, and 1957 were met with varying
130 B. DURHAM
levels of adherence. The largest general strike occurred in January 1957.

The FLN ordered business owners to close their shops, laborers to stay
home, and parents to keep their children home from school, much to the
dismay of SAS officers and military officials trying to pry Algerians away
from FLN influence (ANOM 15/10/1957; De La Ferrière 2015: 88).
This strike strategically coincided with a debate on ‘the Algerian ques-
tion’ at the United Nations. The FLN needed the strike to be widely
observed to prove the existence of an Algerian nation united in its desire
for independence from France. Because the strikes discouraged Algerian
families from sending their children to school, the French military was
able to frame their determination to break the strikes as a positive devel-
opment that ultimately served to enroll more Algerian children in schools
(SHD 7/3/1958; 4/4/1959; Délégation Générale du Gouvernement
en Algérie 1960: 23). This posturing enabled the French military to posi-
tion themselves as the defenders of Algerian children’s rights to a French
education, in contrast to the FLN’s demands that Algerians boycott
French schools.
In order to break the strikes and to motivate parents to send their
children to school regardless of how they felt about the FLN or the
French military, Jacques Soustelle’s successor, Governor-General Robert
Lacoste reformed the Algerian welfare system in decrees published in
December 1956 and January 1957. In order for Algerian families to
receive state financial support—the allocations familiales —the social secu-
rity offices began requesting proof that all male children above the age of
6 were enrolled in a French language school (ANOM 7/1/1957).4 These
decrees aggravated frustrated parents whose children could not find open
seats in overcrowded or military-occupied schools. Because the schools
could not enroll their children, the families risked losing crucial finan-
cial support from the state (ANOM 13/11/1957). Mouloud Feraoun
left Grande Kabylie to teach primary school students in Algiers in the fall
of 1957. He described three weeks of mayhem during which hordes of
parents crowded his office, school hallways, and courtyards, asking for his
signature on the school enrollment certificate that would give them access
to state support. For Feraoun (2011: 354), this new decree, in addition to
creating a panic, would not be successful in breaking school strikes. Apart
from the parents who found a spot for their children in French schools,
many other parents simply sought enrollment certificates to secure their
access to the funds they needed to survive.
The military’s involvement in education further complicated parents’

claims to state support. The Social Welfare Administration was unsure
whether it could accept school enrollment certificates from military
teachers. Faced with a mounting number of school enrollment certifi-
cates signed by military teachers, the Social Welfare Administration came
to an agreement with the General in charge of all military and civilian
affairs in Algeria, General Salan, that enrollment certificates from mili-
tary instructors qualified families to receive their state financial support
(SHD 25/7/1957; 8/6/1957). But even military-run schools had
limited enrollment capacities and had to turn students away because of
over-crowding (ANOM 25/10/1957; SHD 4/11/1957).
Though the 1956–1957 school year did not prove to be the
resounding success French military and SAS officers hoped for, the school
strikes had been broken up by the following school year. School enroll-
ment numbers began to increase across Algeria. In Grande Kabylie, the
French military experimented with another strategy to pry the population
away from FLN influence: forced displacement and constant surveillance
in regroupment camps.
Phase Three: Primary Schools

in Regroupment Camps
By 1957, the French military’s counterinsurgency strategy required that
the isolated rural Algerian populations in Kabylie be “regrouped”—
displaced en masse from their villages and forced to live in camps under
constant military surveillance. Over two million Algerians were forced to
leave their homes and settle in thousands of camps over the course of
the Algerian War of Independence. French military authorities described
these regroupment camps as a humanitarian solution that would “free”
Kabyles from FLN exactions and provide disenfranchised rural popu-
lations with medical attention and education (Cornaton 1967, 1998;
Sacriste 2014). Furthermore, the close contact between the Algerian
population and French soldiers facilitated intelligence-gathering on the
FLN and stemmed Algerian financial, medical, and logistical support for
the anti-colonial revolution. Slimane Zeghidour, who was five years old
when his family was forced to leave their Kabyle village at El-Oueldja
for a regroupment camp, remembered the French soldiers as all-powerful
“demiurges” who “killed and healed, jailed and provided work, flew in the
sky and dug tunnels in the ground, burned villages [mechtas ] and created
132 B. DURHAM
camps” (Zeghidour 2017: 119). Zeghidour and his cousins walked two
kilometers from the regroupment camp to an improvised classroom in a
military tent next to a military check point. A soldier-teacher, outfitted in
a cap and olive-green uniform, led his students, seated on the ground in
the tent, through the typical primary school lessons of a French repub-
lican classroom (Zeghidour 2017: 148–149). For Zeghidour (2017: 142)
reflecting on his childhood in the regroupment camp, the juxtaposi-
tion of military violence and education represented the most despicable
and the most admirable attributes of France. An institution as oppres-
sive and invasive as the regroupment camp seemed to finally fulfill the
civilian and French military imperatives for increased contacts with the
Algerian population. The French miliary’s human development initiatives
were inseparable from the extreme violence of counterinsurgency warfare
(McDougall 2017).
Due to the abrupt population displacements, French military victories,
and the strict surveillance of the regroupment camps, French military
authorities noted a significant decrease in FLN influence in Grande
Kabylie. By 1958, rising school enrollment across the region was offered
as proof of French military gains. The collaboration between the civilian
administration, the French military, and the SAS paid off: local families
seemed increasingly willing to send their children to French language
schools, or at least they no longer had much other choice. In the area
around the large Kabyle city of Tizi-Ouzou, the rates of primary school
enrollment increased from 32,000 children in 1954, to 82,000 in 1960
(Bartet 1998: 16). In Grande Kabylie and elsewhere in Algeria, the
French military played an increasingly important role in the rising rates
of school enrollment. Some 400 schools had been destroyed in 1956;
by December 1958, the French Army had repaired or built 719 primary
schools where 944 teachers—among them, 15 officers, 799 soldiers, and
130 non-commissioned officers (sous-officiers )—taught 58,641 students
(SHD 4/4/1959). Across Algeria, primary school enrollment rates
increased significantly between 1957 and 1960, the height of the Alge-
rian War of Independence (Bartet 1998: 16). Both the French military
and civilian administrators had reason to be optimistic about this statis-
tical progress in school enrollment, but in practice military and civilian
cooperation in matters of education was tenuous at best.
A Contentious Collaboration:
Civilian and Military Teachers
and the Quality of Primary Education
The military and the civilian administration struggled to come to an
agreement about their respective roles in the Algerian primary educa-
tion system. In focusing on breaking the 1956–1957 strikes, the French
military posed as the great defenders of Algerian children’s rights to a
French education. For the National Union of Teachers, however, this was
the privileged position of the public French-language school system. The
Union of Teachers had advocated for greater investments in the education
of Algerian children in French language schools as early as the mid-1940s
but their demands, along with those of Algerian political and local groups
advocating for greater social, economic and political reforms, went unan-
swered (ANOM 26/2/1949).5 The Union of Teachers felt that they
could fulfill their role as the guardians of Algerian children’s best interests
if only they could benefit from the financial and logistical means afforded
to the French military.
In French military circles, it was understood that the education of
Algerian children in public schools remained the exclusive domain of the
French Ministry of Education (Ministère de L’Éducation Nationale). The
SAS and the French military were not intended to replace “these teaching
specialists [spécialistes de l’enseignement ]” (L’Action des SAS n.d. [1958?]:
10). But the war caused schoolteachers of European and Algerian descent
to flee rural teaching posts for the larger coastal Algerian cities or to
France, causing a shortage of teachers in rural areas. Numerous civilian
school construction projects sat unfinished because the French military
restricted access to areas they deemed unsafe. Military and SAS teachers
could set up schools and teach students where civilian teachers could not.
Even though they operated under different circumstances, these military
interventions in primary education were supposed to cooperate fully with
the Ministry of Education. As early as 1957, military teachers were invited
to approach nearby civilian school principals or civilian teachers for help
and their schools were regularly inspected in order to become accred-
ited public institutions (ANOM 31/1/1958). The Ministry of Education
worked in “close liaison [en étroite liaison]” with SAS officers (L’Action
des SAS n.d. [1958?]: 12).
The Algerian Section of the National Union of Teachers (Syndicat
National des Instituteurs, Section Algérienne), however, did not see the
134 B. DURHAM
French Army’s educational contributions as helpful supplements to a

broken system. For the teachers’ union, the proliferation of makeshift
schools engendered competition among the Ministry of Education’s
schools and the Army and SAS-run schools (ANOM 30/4/1960). The
National Union of Teachers argued that competition among these institu-
tions decreased the value of public-school education and was detrimental
to Algerian children. Military and SAS schools had the resources to
provide clothes and meals for their students, for example, even though the
quality of education dispensed tended to be less rigorous than the public
schools. Military and SAS teachers tended to place greater emphasis on
French literacy acquisition, which, for the teacher’s union, constituted a
poor substitute for the more well-rounded public-school curriculum.
For General Commander Cognet, there was no competition between
the military schools and those of the Ministry of Education. Both insti-
tutions served Algerian children’s best interests together in close cooper-
ation. During a press conference in 1960, General Commander Cognet
emphasized that the Army opened schools only with the agreement of the
Academy of Algiers and the Ministry of Education. The French military
was dedicated to getting military-run primary schools accredited precisely
so that civilian teachers could take over from the military teachers where
possible (Délégation Générale du Gouvernement en Algérie 1960: 23).
General Cognet did, however, acknowledge that military-run schools
differed from public schools in two ways: first, in their use by the Army
as a method of contact with local populations; and, second, in the quality
of education dispensed, since military-run schools were oriented towards
literacy acquisition (Délégation Générale du Gouvernement en Algérie
1960: 23–24). For the teachers’ union, the goal of the Algerian education
system should not be limited to French literacy acquisition. Rather, the
objective of Algerian public schools ought to be preparing young people
for professional and modern life, and training “men apt to exercise their
rights as citizens” (ANOM 30/4/1960). Instead of sharing educational
resources between the Ministry of Education, the SAS, and the mili-
tary, the teachers’ union argued that all personnel, financial, and material
assets ought to go directly towards expanding the public-school system,
which alone could provide the high-quality education Algerian children
deserved.
By the end of 1960, the French military decided that no additional
schools should be opened by the armed forces. The reasoning was prag-
matic: many of the military schools were still not accredited by the
Ministry of Education and thus completely dependent on the military
budget, which represented an increasingly cumbersome expense. Mili-

tary officials argued that increasing the number of schools would only
make it more difficult for the Ministry of Education to take over,
given the chronic difficulties in recruiting greater numbers of teachers
(SHD 12/10/1960). In Kabylie, civilian teachers gradually took over
the classrooms run by uniformed personnel, but at least 81 schools (171
classrooms) in the eastern regions of the Algiers department remained
shuttered for lack of teaching personnel (ANOM 1961). In 1961, a Tizi-
Ouzou city official gave a speech thanking the military for collaborating
with the Ministry of Education and together enrolling a total of 90,000
children in school in Kabylie (ANOM 22/4/1961). A new triennial plan
for 1961–1963 projected the construction of 189 classrooms around
the major Kabyle city, a number of classrooms significantly higher than
previous school construction plans drawn up by civilian officials (ANOM
1961).
In Grande Kabylie, between the military’s brutal offensives against
the FLN’s anti-colonial army, SAS units and the regroupment camps,
millions of families saw their livelihoods destroyed. Male relatives were
assassinated or disappeared. After eight long years of anti-colonial war
and over a century of French colonialism, the promise of a French
education had still not become a reality for millions of children by the
end of the war in 1962. In 1944, Algeria had an estimated population
of about 7.5 million people, including 1.25 million Algerian school aged
children. Less than 10 percent of these children, about 110,200 boys
and girls, attended school in 1943 (ANOM 26/2/1949). The Algerian
population significantly increased after the Second World War, multiplying
the rates of both enrolled and unenrolled children. At the beginning of
the 1953 schoolyear, 192,453 Algerian boys and 67,208 girls between
the ages of 6 and 14 attended primary school, about 15 percent of all
school aged Algerian children (ANOM 5/11/1953; Kadri 2007). During
the Algerian War of Independence, 28 percent of 2.5 million Algerian
children of school age were enrolled in primary schools. At the height of
the French military’s involvement in primary education, over 10 percent
of Algerian children enrolled in school attended an institution run by a
member of the French armed forces.
136 B. DURHAM
Military/SAS Military/SAS Military/SAS Total Algerian

schools teachers students students in
primary school
1956 50 250 2000 294,642

(1955)
1957 344 432 23,098 –
1958 504 687 37,615 450,568
1959 824 1118 71,352 695,013
(1960)
Statistics for Military Schools, Teachers, and Students 1956–1959 (De la Ferrière 2015:
140; Des Enseignants d’Algérie se souviennent 1981: 78; Académie d’Alger 1960: 3; Kadri
2012: 29).
The increases in enrollment numbers are misleading regarding the

consequences of the Algerian War of Independence on the educational
opportunities for rural Algerian children. In Grande Kabylie, where the
French military and SAS were most active, in the span of three genera-
tions, educational fortunes were reversed within a single Kabyle family.
In the early twentieth century, M.A. Kheffache’s maternal grandfather
received a French education in Kabylie from White Fathers missionaries
and became a schoolteacher. Kheffache’s father, on the other hand, who
frequently traveled to France as a migrant laborer, was illiterate (Kheffache
2005: 15). Before the Algerian Revolution began in 1954, only two boys
out of Kheffache’s village of 500 people attended school. As a young boy,
Kheffache only attended a French public school for two years before his
teachers abandoned their post and the French military closed his French
and Islamic schools. In Kheffache’s (2005: 61) words, the war destroyed
his “pleasant childhood [paisible enfance]” and that of millions of other
children from Kabylie.
Conclusion
The Evian Accords of March 1962 laid the foundations for negotia-
tions between France and The Provisional Government of the Algerian
Republic. Algerians unanimously voted “yes” for independence on 5 July
1962. The French Army gradually decamped from Algeria during the next
two years. By 1964, the French military presence was reduced to bases in
Mers-el-Kebir and in the Sahara.
Algerian children, women, and youth over the age of 14 were the prin-
cipal target populations for the French military’s counterinsurgency poli-
cies. French military planners envisioned investments in French language
primary education in Algeria as part of a double strategy to diminish local
support for the Algerian nationalist struggle and to radically remake Alge-
rian society (Peterson 2015). Algerian children were not just students, but
potential aides to the nationalist militants alongside their parents. Taking
responsibility for educating Algerian children allowed the French military
to present a ‘humanitarian’ face of its military operations in Algeria and
to pose as defenders of Algerian children’s right to an education in rural
areas where civilian educators could not or would not teach.
Primary schools—whether in a designated building or under a mili-
tary tent—became strategic “children’s places” during the Algerian War
of Independence (Rasmussen 2004). The French military measured its
success in subduing the Algerian population and drawing families away
from supporting the FLN through the numbers of children enrolled
in primary schools. Scholars have characterized the French offensive
against the FLN as counterinsurgency—a new kind of asymmetrical
warfare first experienced during the wars of decolonization in Indochina
(Horne 1977; Galula 2006) but focusing on the military’s involvement in
educating Algerian children reveals the opposite. Even though the French
government would not officially recognize the “events” in Algeria as a war
until 2002, French military personnel and their handbooks used during
the Algerian War of Independence made references to the older forms
of colonial warfare practiced by Marshal Bugeaud in Algeria and Marshal
Lyautey in Morocco (SHD [1958?]) in which schools, roads and admin-
istrative needs were all military prerogatives in order to establish colonial
rule. The French military’s involvement in building schools was nearly as
old as colonial conquest itself.
This chapter’s case study of the French educational operations in
Grande Kabylie has established fruitful terrain for the study of Algerian
childhoods during the Algerian War of Independence. Kabyle families
and children, some of whom were displaced and led to live in regroup-
ment camps, endured one of the most horrific aspects of the French
conflict against the FLN. This contribution has proposed a history of
Algerian childhoods through primary education initiatives. The French
military’s extensive involvement in the education of a significant share of
Algerian children during a critical stage of the Algerian revolution merits
138 B. DURHAM
closer attention in the historiography of education in conflict zones and

in studies of children’s militarized experiences.
Acknowledgement The author would like to thank the editors, Danielle

Beaujon, Lydia Hadj Ahmed, and Rebecca Rogers for their comments on this
chapter.
Notes
1. In this chapter, I use “Algerian” to refer to people of ethnic Berber and
Arab descent native to Algeria. In archival documents used in this chapter
this population would have been referred to as “Muslims” or “French
Muslims.” “Algerian” at the time of the Algerian War of Independence
would have referred to the European settler population in Algeria.
2. Notable exceptions include Christelle Taraud’s (2008) work on urban chil-
dren and youth as symbols of colonial anxiety about interracial urban
proximity and poverty. In Taraud’s reading of the archives, “street chil-
dren” were associated with “sexual deviance” including prostitution and
homosexuality.
3. Lydia Hadj Ahmed is writing a Ph.D. dissertation on the experiences of
schoolchildren and their families during the Algerian War of Independence
under the direction of Raphaëlle Branche.
4. The December and January decrees on the new conditions for receiving
state familial support were limited in their application to several communes
in the Algiers department, including Tizi-Ouzou in Kabylie.
5. The Algerian Assembly elections of 1947 would have allowed for greater
participation from Algerians and their political parties than ever before in
the colony. The Governor-General Naegelen made the decision to falsify
the results of the election, thus maintaining a majority of settler representa-
tives in the Assembly even though Algerians vastly outnumbered European
settlers. The rigged election robbed Algerian representatives of the seats
they won in the election. In the European settler-dominated Algerian
Assembly, funding and building allocations for school construction failed
to keep pace with the real needs of the growing Algerian population. Euro-
pean settlers in the Algerian Assembly and in local municipalities failed to
sufficiently invest in educating Algerian children between the end of the
Second World War and 1954 when the Algerian Revolution began.
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CHAPTER 8
Militarizing Citizenship in Ukraine: “Strategy

for the National-Patriotic Education
of Children and Youth” in Social Context
Vita Yakovlyeva
Introduction
Young people have always been affected by war and its aftermath, as
soldiers, non-combatants, victims, migrants, etc. Between a myriad of
international peace-and-security-oriented organizations and a solid foun-
dation of international law regarding children in situations of armed
conflict,1 efforts to protect the wellbeing of children are well estab-
lished, and yet their implementation varies in different states, cultures, and
circumstances. The very understanding of children’s wellbeing is affected
by social contexts, and what may seem to be acceptable or desirable
in conditions of war can become intolerable and impermissible during
peacetime, and vice versa.
V. Yakovlyeva (B)
Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta,
Edmonton, AB, Canada
e-mail: viktoriy@ualberta.ca

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74788-6_8
144 V. YAKOVLYEVA
Presently, Ukraine is partially torn by an armed conflict. Peace and

relative prosperity in some parts of Ukraine coincide with brutal condi-
tions of war in others. Not everything legislated in the capital, Kyiv,
is applicable to the entire country. The Strategy of patriotic education
discussed in this chapter is one such example. Although efforts to develop
a unified system of military-patriotic education are common to both parts
of Ukraine—its government-controlled territories and those occupied by
non-government forces—the majority of the existent criticism of such
a policy has been applied exclusively to the non-government-controlled
territories (Krestovska 2018; Lapayev 2019), whilst persistent attempts at
the organized state-funded system of national military-patriotic education
that have come from the central government of Ukraine have hardly been
discussed.
In this chapter, I analyze the Strategy in the context of its renewed
actualization, brought about by the crumbling territorial unity of the
state under conditions of armed conflict, and problematize the legisla-
tive framework and an infrastructural network allowing and encouraging a
single version of patriotism, based primarily on ideas of militarization and
territorial defense. When I speak of militarization, I do not only refer-
ence the traditional meaning of the term, limited primarily to a state’s
mobilizing actions to prepare for war, but also the cultural product of
socio-economic and political relations of power that it involves, including
the notion of citizenship. My perspectives are informed by theoriza-
tion of militarization in the Ukrainian context by Olesya Khromeychuk
(2018), who relies primarily on Cynthia Enloe’s (2000) interpretation of
the phenomenon in relation to the value a given society derives from
the military as an institution, and other militaristic criteria, as well as
Lorraine Macmillan’s (2011) conceptualization of militarization as a form
of production of militarized subjects. Relying on, among others, Michel
Foucault (1976, 1991) and Giorgio Agamben (1998, 2005), Macmillan
sees militarization as an organized infrastructure of means and technolo-
gies, “through which such subjects adopt the identity and consciousness
required of their position” (Agamben 1998: 5 quoted in Macmillan 2011:
63). Agamben (1998, 2005) describes the state of exception as a working
paradigm of the government in the twentieth century, an insight that
resonates strongly for me in analysis of events in contemporary Ukraine.
The period 2013–2019 is defined by a series of disruptive events—consti-
tutionally and otherwise—stretching from the exceptional political events
of Maidan, the annexation of Crimea, the declarations and movement for
8 MILITARIZING CITIZENSHIP IN UKRAINE … 145
independence in multiple eastern regions, the mass mobilization of self-

organized militias—including children—from across the country, years of
sustained and compulsory mass military conscription of men at the age of
18, the exodus of students from universities to the front lines of war, the
displacement of millions of people, and the numerous other exceptional
conditions and activities that in many ways continue to define the reali-
ties and experience of Ukrainians in all regions into the third decade of
twenty-first century. Agamben’s work on the state of exception is useful
for looking at the way Ukraine’s laws and policies regarding the state’s
relationship to children (and vice versa), as embodied by the Strategy,
have been rewritten in the image of a nation at war.
Context of the Strategy:

Humanitarian Crisis and the War
Ukraine has been in a state of war with the anti-government sepa-
ratist territories of Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics located at
its eastern border since March of 2014. In its Report on Preliminary
Examination Activities, the Office of the Prosecutor of the International
Criminal Court assessed that “the level of intensity of hostilities between
Ukrainian government forces and anti-government armed elements in
eastern Ukraine had reached a level that would trigger the application
of the law of armed conflict and that the armed groups operating in
eastern Ukraine, including the LPR and DPR, were sufficiently organized
to qualify as parties to a non-international armed conflict. The Office also
assessed that direct military engagement between the respective armed
forces of the Russian Federation and Ukraine indicated the existence of
an international armed conflict in eastern Ukraine from 14 July 2014 at
the latest…” (International Criminal Court 2018: 28).
According to a report on the human rights situation in Ukraine by the
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the
total civilian death toll of the conflict reached at least 3331 as of 15 May
2019 (United Nations 2019), whilst the estimated death toll reported by
Radio Liberty on 26 February 2019 included 4000 members of Ukrainian
forces and 5500 from “armed groups” (Radio Liberty 2019). In 2016,
UNICEF reported that some 3.7 million people, including 580,000 chil-
dren were declared internally displaced, with 800,000 people, including
100,000 children, still living near the front line and facing daily risks from
shelling, mines, and unexploded ordinance; an astonishing 234,000 out of
146 V. YAKOVLYEVA
500,000 children had yet to be reached by international humanitarian aid

(UNICEF 2016). According to a 2018 UNICEF report, after four years
of the violent conflict in eastern Ukraine, 500,000 children remained
in need of immediate humanitarian assistance and “nearly half a million
girls and boys continue to face grave risks to their physical health and
psychological well-being” (UNICEF 2018). Conducted in 2016, another
international monitoring report, on the conditions of life of the civilian
population in the government-controlled territories of the conflict zone,
stated that 22,541 objects of public real estate were already destroyed in
the armed confrontation. Those included 422 apartment buildings, 6713
houses, 25 healthcare institutions, 39 schools, 19 daycare centers, 2 post-
secondary educational institutions, 10 professional colleges, 21 cultural
sites, and 3 sport facilities (Aseev et al. 2016). According to UNICEF,
since the beginning of the conflict, “over 750 educational institutions on
both sides of the contact line have been damaged by the hostilities and
many more have experienced disruption to education” (UNICEF 2019).2
A study by University of Alberta professor and international human
rights expert, Linda Reif (2018)—conducted as part of the Research
Initiative on Democratic Reforms in Ukraine project and published in the
Harvard Human Rights Journal —acknowledges a strong legal frame-
work created after the country’s independence in 1991 and relatively
robust practices enacted earlier this decade, but points out the precarious
state of human rights protection in Ukraine. Among the many extra-legal
factors that influence the effectiveness of Ukraine’s national human rights
institution, the Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights (PCHR),
Reif (2018: 156) names not only the internal armed conflict, but also
weak courts that are largely politicized and corrupt, and “a legislature
without sufficient checks and balances that curbs human rights protec-
tions by underfunding them.”3 Evidently, the Ukrainian children’s rights
framework is incomplete, and its violations are not limited to the mili-
tary conflict at its eastern front alone, but have a long history within the
state-regulated network of educational and correctional institutions.
Content of the Strategy

The 2016–2020 Strategy for the National-Patriotic Education4 of Chil-
dren and Youth was ratified by a decree of the President of Ukraine on
13 October 2015 (Ministerstvo Osvity i Nauky Ukrainy 2015). In May
2019, by the President’s decree, the Strategy was amended to reflect its
applicability to all age groups and is currently called the Strategy for the
National-Patriotic Education, suggesting applicability to the entire popu-
lation. Despite the name change, the Strategy is to be implemented in the
setting of public educational institutions and, thus, is primarily directed
at school-going children, youth, and young adults (Prezydent Ukrainy
2015). The same decree defines the national-patriotic education as the
main priority of public education and calls for the 2020–2025 Strategy
implementation plan (Prezydent Ukrainy 2019).5 The new edition of
the Strategy takes into consideration the “irreversibility of the European
and Euro-Atlantic direction of Ukraine,” which is also reflected in several
amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine. State-sanctioned patriotic
education has been part of the program, “Youth of Ukraine,” since
approximately early 2000. It was a key element of other such programs
realized between 2004 and 2008 (Krzaklewska and Williamson 2013).
There are some subtle but fundamental differences between different
versions of the Strategy. The 2015 Strategy outlined the government’s
agenda for the development of the citizen, defined in the preamble as a,
Highly moral individual, who cherishes Ukrainian traditions, spiritual

values, possesses appropriate knowledge, skills, and competences, capable
of realizing own potential in conditions of contemporary society, professes
European values, and is ready to complete the duty of defense of the Moth-
erland, independence and territorial sovereignty of Ukraine. (Prezydent
Ukrainy 2015: preamble, paragraph 1)
The Strategy targets the country’s young citizens as those who are “in
the process of identification of their life perspectives and are in need of a
worldview basis.” Such a patronizing conception of youngsters is a prob-
lematic articulation of the developmentalist view on children and youth
that stems from imagining them as blank slates, “incomplete individuals
waiting to become adults,” conceptualized in terms of adult expecta-
tions to be redeemed in the process of development (Yakovlyeva 2020:
1540). Young citizens are framed as empty vessels to be ‘filled’ with values
as defined and redefined by each subsequent administration, and which
are currently oriented towards a vague conception of moral values of a
“European” kind that are not elaborated or themselves defined, creating
a situation ripe for exploitation.
The document of 2015 was largely based on pre-existing policy from
2009, from which it differed in several important ways. The 2015 Strategy
148 V. YAKOVLYEVA
evidenced a major reduction in content from the earlier policy, elimi-

nating some aspects of the earlier Conception for the National-Patriotic
Education of Children and Youth, including references to the intellectual,
ecological, and legal aspects of citizenship, human rights, and human-
istic perspectives. Whereas the 2009 version of the Strategy targeted
“youth” or citizens age 14–35, its later versions included no age speci-
fication. However, the Provision on the Pan-Ukrainian Military-Patriotic
Game “Sokil” (“Falcon”) for Children and Youth of 2018, which is
part of the program, do characterize the actors of the game as those
age 7–18. Noticeably, the 2015 Strategy hardened its emphasis on the
military-patriotic duty of citizens. The mechanism of the Strategy’s imple-
mentation consisted of developing a collaborative network involving the
state administration, local municipalities, and newly established regional
councils of national-patriotic upbringing, none of which included any
representation of actual children and youth, but which are supposed to
serve as advisory boards to local administrations. At the level of regional
councils, the appointed committees consist largely of educators, social
workers, public administrators, and even military personnel. At the state
level, the responsibility of the Strategy’s implementation was delegated
to several ministries, such as the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of
Youth and Sport, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Social Policy,
the Government’s Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, the Ministry
of Defense, and even the State Border Security Service. Noticeably, the
structure established by the Strategy presents not a model of collegial
governance but one of subordination. It invites children and youth to
participate exclusively as “receivers,” whose political bodies are to inter-
nalize the predetermined meaning of the national-patriotic education.
This approach to young people as “becomings” rather than “beings” has
been extensively critiqued and problematized over the past four decades
by the scholars of contemporary Childhood Studies and other disciplines
(James and James 2004; James and Prout 1997; James et al. 1998; Jenks
1982, 1996; Uprichard 2008; Qvortrup 2005).
Both the 2015 and 2019 versions of the Strategy identified three foci:
the civic patriotic, military-patriotic, and moral-spiritual aspects of the
national-patriotic upbringing. The Strategy further explains the manner
of its implementation by carefully constructing the meaning of each
aspect. For instance, encouragement of “formation of the moral compass
and civic self-consciousness” is to be achieved based on “examples of
heroic struggle of Ukrainian nation for the sovereignty of its own state,
ideals of freedom and independence.” Examples of that struggle are

carefully chosen and go back to the time of the princedom of Kyivan
Rus, and include Ukrainian Cossacks, Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, armies
of the Ukrainian National Republic and Western Ukrainian National
Republic, participants in the anti-Bolshevik peasant uprisings, troops of
the Carpathian Sich, Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Ukrainian rebels in Stal-
inist camps, and participants in the dissident movement.6 The list is
complemented by the more recent examples of “bravery and heroism”
demonstrated by the participants in the anti-terrorist operation in the
occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and the republic
of Crimea. Although omitted from the earlier conception of the Strategy,
Ukrainians who fought against the fascist state on the Soviet side in the
Second World War also appear here as an example of heroic struggle.
Implementation of the moral-spiritual aspects of the Strategy targets
“solidification of national identity based on the spiritual values of
Ukrainian nation and it national idiosyncrasy,” “development of spiritu-
ality and morality in society,” “solidification of traditional family values,”
as well as a functional “national lingual-cultural space,” and “raising
the quality and popularization of the Ukrainian-language cultural-
informational product,” etc. (Prezydent Ukrainy: part 2). Here, young
people are not offered much room in the interpretation of spirituality.
“Spiritual” values mandated by the documents are replaced by preferential
categories of linguistic normativity, cultural functionality, and patriarchal
moral values established by the nation-state.
The 2019 Strategy maintains that “readiness of the citizen to fulfill the
responsibility of defense of independence and territorial unity of Ukraine”
is its main goal (Prezydent Ukrainy: part 3). The cultivation of defense
preparedness is to be implemented through a recreational “network of
national-patriotic centers of self-education for children and youth in the
secondary educational institutions and outside of public schooling,” and
is laid out in a different parliamentary document, the Provision on the
Pan-Ukrainian Military-Patriotic Game “Sokil” for Children and Youth,
ratified in October 2018. The all-Ukrainian network of military-patriotic
competition camps targets persons 6–17 years of age, and requires
parental permission for participation (Kabinet Ministriv Ukrainy 2018a).
As one of its final outcomes, the Strategy identifies the following “con-
solidation of Ukrainian society around the idea of common future, and
protection of the territorial unity of Ukraine, as well as reforms, and state
150 V. YAKOVLYEVA
building.” In order to nurture the development of civic consciousness in

Ukrainian children and youth, the Strategy mostly suggested appealing to
examples of “courage”7 in Ukraine’s “heroic struggle” for independence.
Militarization of Society
In late August 2018, the Ministry of Questions of the Temporary Occu-
pied Territories released a report on the monitoring of public attitudes.
The report documents a rapid increase in the number of acts of violence,
vandalism, interethnic and interreligious provocations, unlawful use of
weapons, as well as “manipulation of historical facts.” Simultaneously with
the conditions of instability, the report documents increased frequency
of “unlawful production and distribution of illegal weapons and explo-
sives among civil population, as well as acts of violence employing these
weapons” (Kabinet Ministriv Ukrainy 2018b). Examples of organized civil
violence quoted in the report testify that the instances of violence are not
limited to the zone of the military conflict, and “occur” in the majority
of oblasts of Ukraine.8 The report documents the escalation of violence
and radicalization of Ukrainian society that has spread to all of its borders,
but does not further clarify the nature of the radicalized activities. One of
the most publicly debated instances of violence was an attack on a Roma
camp in the suburbs of Lviv in June of 2018, which resulted in loss of life,
and which was conducted by perpetrators born between 2000 and 2002.
In the press, this tragedy was reported as not an isolated incident, but
one of many also occurring in other parts of Ukraine (Hromadsky Prostir
2018). According to a 2015 survey, youth is not an exemption when
it comes to intolerance: “54 per cent of Ukrainian youth are intolerant
of the Roma community, whilst 45 and 33 percent respectively would
not like to live in the same district as homosexual or people with HIV-
AIDS (the country has one of the highest incidences of HIV in Europe)”
(Mangas 2016). Recent radicalization within the Ukrainian society specif-
ically in regards to ethnic and other visible minorities has been noticed on
both left and right of the political spectrum, and connected to a lack of
means for self-fulfillment (Hromadsky Prostir 2018).
Militarization of Ukrainian society has been also discussed by historian
Olesya Khromeychuk (2018). Relying on Enloe (2000), she unpacks the
term “militarization of society” and explains how, under certain circum-
stances, which include an armed conflict, the mood of militarization in a
given society starts to expand beyond the front lines, and populates other
forms of social relations, such as policy, cultural norms, and their artistic
expressions. Khromeychuk observes a perpetuating tendency within the
contemporary Ukrainian society to derive the meaning and structure of
its social relations from the military confrontation in both present and
past. She observes prestige associated with heroic efforts in the fight for
the Motherland that populates contemporary Ukrainian media, as well
as pointing out the many inequalities that a militarized society produces,
such as the discrepancies in gender roles prescribed by the war that defines
manhood and soldiering as “the ultimate expression of masculinity” and
other illusions embedded in a symbolic structure of a militarized society
(Khromeychuk 2018). The Strategy is an example of such tendencies.
Children and Youth’s

Involvement in Armed Formations
Taking into consideration the circumstances of the ongoing war and
conditions of humanitarian crisis, the Strategy’s aim to increase the
number of young people “ready to take on the obligation to defend their
Motherland, independence and territorial unity of Ukraine” (Prezydent
Ukrainy 2015) could seem almost understandable. However, paired
with the observed radicalization and polarization of society, as well as the
general condition of corruption, persistent violations of human rights, and
other descriptors of what Reif calls the “shallow democracy” of Ukraine,
the Strategy, which promotes heroization and glorification of Ukraine’s
participation in an armed conflict, appears to be against the welfare of chil-
dren and society in general. Its aim is also against many recommendations
to the Youth Policy in Ukraine, issued by the Council of Europe interna-
tional review team in 2013, as well as the provisions of the Convention
on the Rights of the Child, the Geneva Convention, and the Rome
Statute of the International Criminal Court against any involvement of
minors in armed conflict (Krzaklewska and Williamson 2013).
Back in 2008, when the draft Law on Youth Patriotic Education had
passed its first reading, there was a suggestion from the National Hearing
to reflect on the name of “patriotic education,” to define it clearly or to
change the name of patriotic education to “civic education.” The Council
of Europe international review team repeatedly expressed concern over
the ambiguity of the policy and at times “seemingly all-embracing nature
of the concepts” that it linked together, such as “nationalism,” “human
values,” “militarism,” “veterans,” “folklore,” and even “sport” and
152 V. YAKOVLYEVA
“health” (Krzaklewska and Williamson 2013: 111). The international

review noted that the Strategy was trying to create a strict and defined
model of patriotism, derived largely from experiences of previous gener-
ations, and then retroactively fit young people into these forms. “Far
from connecting young people to their past, this could simply alienate
them from it,” stated the report in 2013 (Krzaklewska and Williamson
2013: 111). The team urged the government of Ukraine to focus on the
diversity of expressions of being patriotic, which should include promo-
tion of flexibility, openness, critical thinking, tolerance, and positive
change. A decade prior to this report, in 2003, the Council of Europe
and European Union issued a toolkit on the development of European
citizenship. The values defined by the European Citizenship education
included equality of all human beings, human rights, solidarity, pluralism,
environmental responsibility, respect, interdependence, and sustainable
human development. However, none of these values is mentioned in
the Strategy. Instead, the recommendations for openness to change,
inclusivity, and community engagement remained largely unheard by the
Ukrainian government. Rather than a much more embracing notion of
citizenship, the Strategy still mainly focuses on nationality, ethnicity, and
militarism as its expression.
An important part of the Implementation Plan of the Strategy
for 2017–2020, approved by the government in 2017, is financial
support to the many non-governmental organizations of the “military-
patriotic direction” in order to organize the “military-historical festi-
vals,” “military-patriotic meetings” or congregations, “reconstructions
of the military-historical event,” as well as “military-patriotic games
and military-sport camps for the youth.” The institutions assigned the
responsibly of implementing the training are the Ministry of Defense,
Ministry of Education, Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Ministry of
Youth and Sport. The plan also foresees financial assistance to secondary
and extracurricular educational institutions for various activities of the
“military-patriotic direction.” Other important targets of the Strate-
gy’s implementation are publicity and promotion of Ukraine’s Armed
Forces, incorporation of the national-patriotic subjects into the secondary
curriculum, its promotion in children and youth literature, etc. (Kabinet
Ministriv Ukrainy 2017).
As a result of the Strategy’s implementation, a network of training
camps for children and youth (ages 7–18) was established. According
to the 2016 report, “Involvement of Children in Armed Formations
during the Military Conflict in Donbas,” conducted by the Coalition

of Human Rights Organizations, there were 27 such camps operating
in Ukraine, four of which were based in the non-government-controlled
territory; together, they were serving roughly 730 children within the
government-controlled territories and approximately 415 children in the
non-government-controlled territories (Burov et al. 2016). Examples of
the training provided to children and youth at the military-patriotic camps
includes combat tactics, individually and as a unit, handling weapons
(e.g. assembly and disassembly of machine gun), firearms training (e.g.
pneumatic and low caliber gun shooting, and occasionally shooting
military weapons, such as AK and AVD), and physical training (e.g.
hand-to-hand combat or obstacle courses). The report concludes that
the development and implementation of a military-patriotic education
has been identical in the east of the country, controlled by the rebels,
and the rest of government-controlled Ukraine. Since 2016, the number
of military-patriotic camps and children’s involvement in them has only
grown.
A journalistic investigation entitled, “American journalists made an
impressive film on children’s military-patriotic camp in Kyiv” (Magnolia
TV 2017), looked at an NBC News report on “Ukraine’s Nationalist
Military Summer Camps” (NBC News 2017). In its introduction to the
phenomenon of military-patriotic youth camps, NBC News reported:
In 2014, a group of armed Ukrainian civilians known as the Azov Battalion

banded together to fight pro-Russian separatists for control of the country.
Three years later, they’ve been absorbed by the National Guard of Ukraine,
and when they’re not engaged in the ongoing conflict, they run an annual
children’s summer camp featuring pro-Ukrainian campfire songs, rigorous
military drills, and a hardline stance on national identity. (NBC News 2017)
In response to the negative publicity, Ukrainian journalists conducted

their own investigation into the camps, reporting that they accept chil-
dren 7–18, and that the demobilized participants of the war whose real
names are unknown train children, though every person is assigned a nick-
name. In one report, an organizer of a military-patriotic competition is
introduced by his name, as an “Anti-Terrorist Operation” Zone veteran
with three years of experience in intelligence, who said that “his work with
children was a form of post-war rehabilitation” (Sanduliak 2018). Not all
of the camps are government-operated. In fact, the majority are private
154 V. YAKOVLYEVA
or run by NGOs. However, and as indicated in the Strategy, they are

mostly funded by the Ministries. The Ukrainian journalist’s investigation
references the warning issued by the Coalition of Human Rights Orga-
nizations that “building within the organization of the relations, which
fully copy statutory military relations (vertical hierarchical subordination,
ranks, discipline, system of rewards and punishment, etc.) increases the
risk of recruitment and use of children in illegal militarized formations.”
Several Ukrainian legal experts and parents interviewed as a follow-up
spoke in favour of military training and reminded the viewer that Ukraine
was at war. Based on the legal opinion sought, the journalist concludes
that “if the camps were the state camp, it could have been possible to
talk about violation of the European Human Rights Convention, but
because the camps are organized by the non-governmental organization,
we cannot point out any such violations” (Sanduliak 2018). She then
concludes that responsibility for the decision, as well as for fees, in this
case rests with the parents. Although a couple of children interviewed in
this brief report do not reflect the fuller spectrum of political subjecthood
of Ukrainian children and youth, they do demonstrate how capable these
young people are of assigning meaning to the event. In response to the
question of why they joined the camp, two boys, perhaps 9 years of age
from their appearance, say the following:
Dmytro: Because the situation in Ukraine is such that there is war… I am

also a part of Ukraine… I love Ukraine, and I want to protect it, which is
why I joined the military-patriotic camp.
Ivan: Practicing physical and military training is useful for one’s body, and
also one can join the military, and protect one’s country.
This journalistic investigation reveals an evident disconnect between the

political bodies of children actually affected by the war and those who
participate in the military-patriotic camps, at least within the government-
controlled territories of Ukraine. Whilst the actually displaced children as
well as those who continue living on the front line are still affected by an
acute crisis of displacement and deficit of even basic survival means, such
as water, food, and shelter, a different group of children, largely better
socially equipped through access to families, educational institutions, and
often enough financial stability to cover the cost of camps, become actual
participants of the military-patriotic education. Although all young citi-
zens are equally involved in the process of making and re-making the
Ukrainian state, their contribution is contested by a kind of “moral mili-

tarism” (Lee-Koo 2011) where certain moral superiority is attributed to
the children who actively participate in the state-mandated networks of
military training.
The design of the proposed network of the military-patriotic training,
including the summer camps, although recent, resembles the system of
a very similar kind, which used to be embedded in the educational
curricula and which targeted primarily children and youth in the Soviet
Union, of which some regions of Ukraine were a part for almost seventy
years. Drawing on, among others, the work of Olga Kucherenko, Natalia
Krestovska (2018) draws some similarities between the military-patriotic
training for children that also exists in the self-proclaimed people’s
republics of Luhansk and Donetsk and the Soviet tradition of education,
which incorporated military training and obligatory instruction in “Civic
Defense.” “Children’s participation in combat and guerrilla warfare…was
included in Soviet propaganda, promoting a kind of cult around ‘pioneer
heroes’,” recounts Krestovska (2018: 264). What Krestovska fails to
observe is that the Ukrainian model of its military-patriotic education also
contains a reference to the persistent legacy of the Soviet heritage in the
Ukrainian government, its policy, and worldview. Upon a close exami-
nation, the new Strategy and the Soviet “Labour and Defense Ready”
doctrine have much in common. “Labour and Defense Ready” (GTO)
was initially a sporting movement, founded in 1930, but soon became
increasingly more militaristic despite its declared intent to “overcome
the empire-totalitarian rudiments in collective consciousness” (Prezydent
Ukrainy: Chap. 2). As Kucherenko (2011: 88) notes in her book Little
Soldiers, in the official Soviet discourse, athletes constituted the reserve
of the army. Kucherenko further historicized the movement by tracing
its implementation in educational curriculum. In 1934, a series of fitness
standards, designed to reflect a desired average of physical training suit-
able for young and future solders, were implemented in all primary and
middle-stage schools all over the Soviet Union (Kucherenko 2011: 93).
This coincided with a switch in Soviet domestic policy towards building
the Soviet version of patriotism under the “real perceived military threat
emanating from National Socialist Germany” (Nikonova 2010: 367).
Soviet patriotic narrative was presented by Stalin in his collection of arti-
cles On Soviet Patriotism in 1952, and drew largely on construction of a
selective version of heroic history and “the officially ascribed ‘love of the
Fatherland’,” which itself is a rudiment of the earlier “imperial practices
156 V. YAKOVLYEVA
or the infusion of old content into new forms” (Nikonova 2010: 373).
Resembling the Soviet patriotic education, the hyperfocus on physical
health and abilities, athleticism, masculinity, and military service (Cooper
1989; Janmaat and Piattoeva 2007) are all present in the most recent
edition of the Strategy.
Some Conclusions
Put in the context of the armed conflict and humanitarian and economic
crises, Ukraine’s military-patriotic education of children and youth gener-
ates a spectrum of responses. Some of them, including the state’s position,
are encouraging of such education and its growing value, whereas others
call for the re-examination of Ukraine’s understanding of children’s rights.
What is evident is that promotion of military training and encouragement
of children and youth to take on an active role in defense of Ukraine’s
sovereignty and territorial unity is actively and routinely extended to chil-
dren in all of Ukraine and is implemented through a network of state
and non-government educational institutions and governed by social and
educational policy, such as the Strategy of National-Patriotic Education in
both its 2015 and 2019 renditions.
Despite some positive achievements, such as promotion of cultural
literacy, support for national media production, as well as the need for
systemic infrastructural support for existent and emerging youth orga-
nizations of various kinds, many aspects of the most recent edition of
the Strategy remain concerning. It is concerning not only because it
extends the obligation of territorial defense of the state to its youngest
citizens, and mandates it as a requirement of citizenship, but also because
it promotes no diversity in the expression of patriotism and civic iden-
tity. Furthermore, the version of patriotism the Strategy promotes is not
new, but instead is full of remnants of the Soviet patriotism doctrine with
its hegemonic masculinity, selective historical memory, and promotion
of territorial unity above the value of human life.9 Disconcertingly, and
unlike the earlier 2015 version of the Strategy, the most recent version of
no longer mentions respect for human rights, superiority of law, tolerance
toward others, and equality of all before the law as desirable features of
the “new Ukrainian” (Prezydent Ukrainy 2019: preamble). What is new,
however, is the state’s attempt to re-inscribe children as defenders in the
political order of the country by appealing to what Agamben calls the state
of exception, an opportunity of re-fashioning the state’s policy towards
maximization of the value of militarism. By targeting young people, the

Strategy, and ultimately, the government, appeals to the potential of a
growing population—a classic developmentalist trope—to be redeemed
in service to the country. By passing this legislation whilst the country is
at war, and as it has yet to deal with polarization of its society, the govern-
ment also puts children from the non-government-controlled territories
in a condition of an unfair competition, where now and in the future, the
value of their Ukrainian citizenship and validation of their experience and
expressions of patriotism will have to be contested.
Although the real perceived threat to Ukraine’s territorial unity
evidently complicates the context of the Strategy, the experience of some
global multicultural states, preoccupied with issues of patriotism and
nation building for centuries, demonstrates that the values and opin-
ions of citizens are fluid and cannot be frozen by the state. Instead,
they need to be continuously negotiated through public dialogue and
openness to self-criticism (Robbins 2008; Mirel 2010; Soutphommasane
2012). As of now, it appears that formation of a unified Ukrainian
national-patriotic identity receives more consideration, whilst achievement
of patriotic pluralism, which arises from the value and ultimate equality
of all citizens before the law, remains a challenge.
Acknowledgements An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the

conference, Rethinking Child and Youth Marginalities: Movements, Narratives,
and Exchanges, hosted by the American Anthropological Association’s Anthro-
pology of Children and Youth Interest Group (ACYIG) and the Department of
Childhood Studies, Rutgers University-Camden, 7–9 March 2019.
Notes
1. These include: the United Nations Millennium Declaration; Optional
Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involve-
ment of children in armed conflict; Convention 182 on the Worst Forms
of Child Labour, of the International Labour Organization; Rome Statute
of the International Criminal Court, Vienna Declaration and Programme
of Action; African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child;
The Convention on the Rights of the Child; Geneva Convention—Addi-
tional Protocol I; Geneva Convention—Additional Protocol II; The Fourth
Geneva Convention; Universal Declaration of Human Rights, United
Nations Charter.
158 V. YAKOVLYEVA
2. UNICEF’s 2018 humanitarian appeal requirement for Ukraine was

US$23.6M, of which, as of 31 October, $10.1M was available, including
funds carried forward from the previous year. This addressed only 43
percent of required resources, which include basic means of hygiene and
survival, such as water, medication, and food, as well as psychological and
counselling assistance, safety training, HIV-testing, and more (UNICEF
2018).
3. Examples of the most obvious violations include poor conditions in prisons
and other detention centers, including violence and torture, institutional-
ization of children (in orphanages) and many internally displaced people,
and rights violations, including the omnipresent gender-based violence.
4. In the original, the Ukrainian word “vykhovannia” encompasses both
“education” and “upbringing.”
5. A new edition of the Conception of the State Target Social Program of
the National-Patriotic Education Strategy 2020–2025 further arguing in
favour of the Strategy was published on 9 October 2020 (Kabinet Ministriv
Ukrainy 2020).
6. For more on these military formations, see Subtelny (2000).
7. Depending on the context, Ukr. “muzhnist” also means “masculinity,”
“manhood,” and “manliness.”
8. According to the monitoring, the highest number of “destabilizing” situa-
tions in July of 2018 occurred in Lviv oblast, at 17 percent, compared to
10 and 8 percent in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, respectively (given that
there were 200 instances of public violence documented in July alone). The
report states: “Excessive activity of the radical organizations, whose actions
discredit the work of the executive government and [local] municipalities”
is observed all over Ukraine, and not “just the East” (Kabinet Ministriv
Ukrainy 2018b).
9. For an investigation into similarities in key constructions of the Nazi
rhetoric about youth and populist notions of British national identity, see
Basham (2020).
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PART III
Contingencies of Children in Peace

and Conflict
CHAPTER 9
More Than a Victim: Childhood Resilience

in Malik Sajad’s Munnu
Suniti Madaan and Cijo Joy
Introduction
An article covered by the BBC (Biswas 2017), entitled, “The stolen child-
hoods of Kashmir in pencil and crayon,” focuses on childhood being
“stolen” from and “lost”1 by Kashmiri children. It reveals an acute sense
of fear, uncertainty, and horror of being a child in Kashmir. Several draw-
ings are dominated by red colour, and pellet wounds appear on most
bodies depicted. The article asks the reader to respect the children’s
participation in their own narrative and the anguish they feel through
their drawings. It invites the reader to focus on the trauma of growing
up in Kashmir and the political turmoil to which their lives have been
subjected. However, among these, are many drawings that indicate a sense
of political awareness emerging from a life lived in situations of armed
conflict. Several drawings focus on education, schools, and books which
have been denied to the young children of Kashmir and which could have
provided access to a desired future. Thus, while the title of the article
S. Madaan (B) · C. Joy

University of Delhi, New Delhi, India

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74788-6_9
166 S. MADAAN AND C. JOY
suggests loss, it also notes that the children themselves are reaching out
to a future even if it might be in the dark or even if it is articulated from
restrictive circumstances.
Amidst general reportage of trauma, detention, crackdowns, and PTSD
of children in Kashmir, there are also narratives that record a child-
hood that exists not because of, but in spite of “chaos.” A photo-article
by Manan Mushtaq Hakak (2017) conveys his nostalgia for the fond
memories of the childhood he shared with other Kashmiri children,
which include myriad common games, food items, and objects possessing
cultural value. From the Associated Press, another article on Kashmir
(Khan 2019), entitled, “Indian Lockdown upends Kashmir Children’s
Lives,” shows images of cramped schools, closed shops, and heavy mili-
tarization which brings Kashmir to a complete standstill. Yet alongside
these images are also pictures of children riding bikes, playing carrom,
flying kites; their childhood, playful and defiant, sprouts in desolate empty
streets.
Malik Sajad’s (2015) graphic autobiography, Munnu: A Boy from
Kashmir, is also a portrait of childhood and growing up in Kashmir. As
opposed to looking at the child merely as an instrument to unpack larger
social realities in which he or she exists, our chapter locates Munnu’s
participation in the world, not as a passive bystander, but as an active
participant, who contributes to the political discourse of the life that
envelopes him. Munnu has seen enough death and bloodshed to terrorize
his mind and to give him nightmares, yet despite witnessing traumatic
events, he is also equally shown to be relentlessly preparing for a future.
Jo Boyden (2003: 2) notes that protection and conservation are global
concerns for children in conflict zones, however the shortcomings in
implementation are often based on, among other things, “erroneous
conceptualization of children and childhood.” Moreover, global concerns
for children are guided by Eurocentric understandings of childhood
(Nieuwenhuys 2013). Manfred Liebel (2020: 13) further problematizes
the Eurocentric conceptualization of childhood as the norm, and insists
on the plurality of childhoods, especially in the Global South. Liebel
critiques the Eurocentric notion for its paternalism, as it overlooks the
agency of the child, and ends up endorsing a childhood associated with
passivity. His critique points to the erasure in imagining how different life
conditions engender expressions of various kinds of agencies that children
enact in the Global South.
9 MORE THAN A VICTIM: CHILDHOOD RESILIENCE … 167
Jo Boyden and Joanna de Berry (2004 [2007] xiii) draw attention

to how children respond to the exceptional and extraordinary circum-
stance of war and life in conflict zones. They challenge the received
wisdom in which the impact on children, and their responses to war
and trauma, is mostly read as destructive and debilitating and is univer-
sally accepted. In her article “Children under Fire,” Boyden (2003: 2)
notes how traditional scholarship has not stressed enough the agency that
children possess: “I maintain that the dominant idea of childhood as a
universalized and (paradoxically) very individualized construct that is built
on notions of vulnerability and incompetence has led to the interventions
that, unintentionally, undermine children’s resilience and denigrate their
coping.”
Drawing primarily on Boyden’s (2003) research on the diversity of
children’s experiences in conflict zones, this chapter studies Munnu’s
participation and the exercise of his agency within the specific socio-
cultural and political environment of Kashmir. It also traces the various
cultural, social, and artistic routes which sustain and consolidate his
resilience and help him assert a strong sense of self in circumstances that
potentially endanger his life and existence.
Munnu as Autobiography
In an article entitled, “Hope in the Past: On Walter Benjamin,” Peter
Szondi (1978) discusses Walter Benjamin’s autobiography about growing
up in Berlin and Marcel Proust’s deep influence on him. However, Szondi
notes how both differ considerably. Proust’s interest in retelling events of
the past is compelled by a desire to revisit it, to fuse it to the present and,
in the process, escape the onslaught of time. Benjamin, on the other hand,
undertakes an examination of the past in order to establish the premoni-
tions of a future which appear in episodes of his childhood. Sajad’s interest
in his autobiography is also not from an impulse to escape the present
through past revisitations, but to establish the importance of childhood
in constructing a personhood for the adult Malik Sajad. In the context of
his Munnu 2 (2015) it is this claim on the future that we invoke.
Sajad devotes the larger part of his graphic autobiography to his expe-
riences of growing up as a child in Kashmir. Munnu’s childhood is
traumatic, and Sajad’s recollection is poignant and moving, however, his
depiction refuses to be limited by the binary of trauma and nostalgia. The
subject position of Sajad’s child protagonist is an active one mired in the
rhythms of his daily life. The reconstructive imagination of Sajad is not

nostalgic, which often tends to fantasise or romanticize the innocence of
childhood. The uncertainty in Munnu’s life has not deterred him from
engaging in art, which lays the foundation for his identity as an artist
when he grows up. Munnu’ s narrative resonates with Emma Uprichard’s
(2008) discussion of the temporal entanglement of present and future via
the categories of “being” and “becoming.”
Uprichard (2008: 304) traces the “being” child as “…a social actor
in his or her own right who is actively constructing his or her own
‘childhood.’” The “becoming” child, on the other hand, is “an adult
in the making” but lacking in the “universal skills of the adult.” The
‘becoming’ child narrative, she notes, has been criticized for its neglect
of everyday realities of the child as well as for viewing the child as lacking
competence, whereas only focusing on the ‘being’ child denies future
experiences as well as reinforcing the hierarchy of child and adult which
is part of the ‘becoming’ child discourse. For Uprichard, reading the
categories of being and becoming together is central to the questions of
empowerment and agency, as the everyday reality of the child and his/her
future prospects are not mutually exclusive but impinge on each other.
She states, “The ‘being and becoming’ discourse extends the notion of
agency offered by the ‘being’ discourse to consider the child as a social
actor constructing his or her everyday life and the world around them,
both in the present and the future” (Uprichard 2008: 311). Munnu’s
childhood is a layer in the palimpsest of past, present, and future, not an
event in the past, whether idyllic or traumatic. The reconstruction of his
childhood is to acknowledge its contribution to his adult self.
Philippe Lejeune (Smith and Watson 2001: 8), in his study on autobi-
ographies, defines the ‘autobiographical pact’ as a contract or pact which
exists between the author and the reader: “What defines autobiography
for the one who is reading is above all a contract for identity that is sealed
by the proper name, and this is true also for the one who is writing the
text.” For Lejeune, what distinguishes autobiography from fiction is the
trust the reader puts into the narrator being the same as the author; the
reader expects that the life, the narrative, unfolding before him/her really
exists in the world, and is verifiable. The authorial “I” is same as the
narratorial “I” who is sharing with the reader the experiences of his or
her life, fusing into one. Munnu often takes departure from this tradition
and looks at the child protagonist from an objective distance so that the
author does not talk of an “I” but addresses himself in the third person as
Munnu. Such a distancing of the present from a recalled past is also preva-
lent in other autobiographies—for example, Howard Eiland (Benjamin
2006: xvi) similarly reads a double voice in Walter Benjamin’s autobiog-
raphy as a “dialectical consciousness, both detached and engaged…which
is at once sunny and melancholy.” In an interview, Sajad (2016) reveals
his method for writing Munnu: “And so I sat down and started drawing,
narrating things as a witness, without making comments.” The seeming
distance that Sajad creates between himself as the author and his narrated
self, however, does not undermine the palimpsest of past and present that
make his self, but can be interpreted as a conduit between the two.
Sajad (2015) makes his authorial intent clear in the title of his auto-
biography, Munnu: A Boy from Kashmir. In doing so he instructs and
guides the reader to focus on childhood as the coordinate to reading and
understanding his life. Sajad, the biographer of his life, both frames and is
in turn framed by his childhood and, thus, the future self is already antici-
pated in the depiction of his childhood. Extending Uprichard’s discussion
on the ‘being and becoming’ child, Karl Hanson (2017: 281) situates this
relationship within a ‘dynamic temporality’ that includes the past in the
form of the ‘been’ child. The autobiographical nature of Sajad’s narrative
allows for this dynamic temporality of the ‘being,’ ‘becoming,’ and ‘been’
child to play out, where the ‘been’ child in terms of his/her “individual
and collective past” informs his/her ‘being’ and ‘becoming.’
Sajad’s (2015) autobiography serves two political purposes: one is to
contest the representation of Kashmiris in the popular imagination; and,
the other is to reimagine and reconfigure dominant representations of
childhood in conflict zones. Sajad’s depiction of childhood echoes Kate
Douglas (2010: 67) where she suggests, “to write an autobiography of
childhood is to inhabit and/or challenge the identities that are available
for articulating childhood experiences at a particular cultural moment.”
Generalized accounts of Kashmiri children tend to focus primarily on their
victimhood; Sajad’s autobiography responds to this practice of inadver-
tent reduction of Kashmiri childhood by insisting on the myriad facets of
growing up as a child in a region of armed conflict. Sajad also does this by
visually rendering the Kashmiri people as the endangered hangul/deer.3
When asked in an interview (Sajad 2016) why he chose the image of
the hangul to depict Kashmiris, Sajad replied that, on one occasion in a
newspaper, the threat to the endangered Kashmiri hangul occupied the
headline whereas the news of the death of a few Kashmiris was pushed
to the margins. This inspired Sajad to build on this cruel irony and to
create a paradoxical symbol out of it. The humanoid hangul, as Toral

Gajarawala (2016) suggests, is “…to defamiliarize its protagonists, trans-
forming them into deer, in order to make them visible-so that they can
be seen ‘as they are’, not ‘as they appear to our eyes.’” The child hangul
figure similarly defamiliarizes constructions of childhood as passive victim-
hood in areas of armed conflict, and instead radically reclaims its identity
from a history of monolithic representations.
Krisjon Rae Olson (2004 [2007]: 146) observes that, “Childhood is
often seen as an account of the passed life of an adult person which has
been recalled but not present.” She contests this simplified claim and
recognizes, “…children not only emerge from the memories of the past,
but also make the past memorable through their participation in their
social life.” The memories presented in Munnu not only point us to
the shaping up of Sajad’s life but also contain this important truth of a
resilient childhood which is otherwise neglected in narratives about chil-
dren in Kashmir. The next section explores this “memorable” childhood
in Sajad’s autobiography.
Childhood and Resilience

The question of agency is both significant as well as complex when
thinking about children and childhoods in the Global South. As several
scholars have noted, the universal model of childhood is derived from
dominant Western standards and is unable to envision the different ways
in which agency is articulated by children from postcolonial contexts.
Works such as that of Lorenzo I. Bordonaro and Ruth Payne (2012)
complicate conventional notions of agency and suggest instead the notion
of ‘ambiguous agency,’ especially with respect to African children. Olga
Nieuwenhuys (2013) speaks for the need of postcolonial perspectives to
approach the question of agency. Sarada Balagopalan’s (2014) postcolo-
nial critique of Eurocentric normative childhood and the response to it
within the ‘multiple childhoods’ paradigm pushes both these registers to
understand childhood as embedded in questions of modernity inflected
by power, market, and the state. Andrea Zarif (2020) further challenges
representation of the “ideal victim,” and argues for a more nuanced
understanding of children’s agency in armed conflict zones.
The general perception of children growing up in Kashmir is that they
do not possess will and agency because of a climate of perpetual anxiety
and fear. While the trauma and mental disarray caused due to violence
and threat to life is common in Kashmiri children, we note instances in

Munnu in which Munnu and his friends refuse to be passive and make
attempts to cope and reclaim agency. The narrative often registers defi-
ance, disobedience, and trickery which children exercise vis-à-vis adults
in positions of power (parents, teachers, principals, etc.). Boyden (2003:
11) stresses the tendency in children to preserve their self even in adverse
situations: “…there is some evidence that children who try actively to
overcome adversity – by attempting to resolve the problems they face,
regulate their emotions, protect their self-esteem, and manage their social
interactions – are likely to be more resilient than children who accept their
fate passively, especially in the long run.”
The narrative begins with Munnu and his siblings playing book cricket
in the secrecy of their room, hiding from their father, who expects them
to take their schooling sincerely. Munnu shows a dislike and repulsion to
school from the beginning of the narrative. After his first school is shut
down due to the arrest of the principal, Munnu ceases to look at school as
relevant to his life. His mother wants him to study and become a doctor,
but Munnu is clear that he wants to become an artist and his studies have
to be in service of this primary ambition. The school, and its oppressive
structure as well as the darasgah he is sent to subsequently, are frequently
depicted as a hindrance to his carefree nature. However, Munnu and
other children find creative means to survive the discipline and rules of
these institutions. For instance, when the Molvi at the darasgah forces
Munnu to wash his hands after urinating, he urinates on his hand to
avoid a beating; at another school Munnu attends, children are shown
wearing their shirts inside out and cleaning their teeth with their ties to
pass inspections. Outside of school, Munnu’s creativity and imagination
emerge in his philosophical moorings over death and post-death scenarios,
his fascination with sex in his chats with his friend Hilal, and in dreams
like the one in which he flies away from Kashmir in a makeshift helicopter.
These children are also exposed to global media culture, via Holly-
wood and Bollywood, which appeals to their imagination, and their sense
of self is structured by it. Munnu copies the hairstyle of a child who
appears on a poster with Michael Jackson, but gets beaten and humili-
ated for it by his principal. Thus, while the act of choosing his hairstyle is
an imitation of global popular fashion trends, the hair cutting episode also
reveals his investment in his body and identity. Jason Hart (2004 [2007]:
180) notes the influence of global media on Palestinian children living
in refugee camps: “In addition to discourses of national and religious
community encountered in their immediate surroundings, young people

were consumers of television programmes from around the world… These
programmes conveyed imagery of lifestyles and alternative realities and
were a resource for the ideas and aspirations of the young residents of
Hussein Camp.” In a lived reality where bodies, both young and old, are
routinely tortured and broken down, Munnu’s gaze mediated via popular
culture, on his own body, marks varied articulations of a life affirming
subject. In this, one can infer a refusal to be damned and subjected to a
regime that demands obfuscation of Kashmiri bodies.
Child as an Artist
Commenting on Benjamin’s autobiography, Eiland (Benjamin 2006: xiv)
observes that Benjamin views the child as someone who is deeply and
creatively involved in his surroundings:
The child is collector, flaneur, and allegorist in one. He lives in an antiquity

of the everyday; for him everything is natural and therefore endowed with
chthonic force. His relation to things is wholly mimetic. That is, he enters
into the world of things (Dingwelt ) with all his senses, as the Chinese
painter in “The Mummerehlen” enters into the landscape of his painting.
This capacity for an immersive and creative relationship with one’s

surroundings is a less valued attribute in children growing up in conflict
zones. In his fieldwork with Palestinian refugee children of Hussein
Camp, Hart (2004 [2007]) asked them to click photographs which would
capture significant aspects of their lives. The photographs they clicked
established their relationship to their surroundings and, in the process,
revealed a sense of their world and their lives:
…they expressed the children’s strong sense of belonging to social

networks. Members of the neighbourhood community (al-haara) and
of the camp (al-mukhayyam) were frequently represented along with
photographs of kin. The bond between children and others within these
different, localised networks was explained by reference not only to
emotional attachment but also to a common origin and history, and a
shared experience of struggle as refugees. (Hart 2004 [2007]: 172)
Hart contrasts his research on photography by refugee children with

pictures that appeared in the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and
Works Agency for Palestine refugees) magazine, Palestine Refugees Today,

between 1968 and 1996. The photographs in this magazine, Hart (2004
[2007]: 171) notes, are of children either as “individual cases of need” or
represented as an “undifferentiated mass of humanity” showing them as
passive beneficiaries of UNRWA assistance. As opposed to this represen-
tation by UNRWA, Hart (2004 [2007]: 172) concludes in his research
that children are in fact “social and economic actors as well as members
of communities defined by history, politics, and religious faith.” What
one can also discern is the creative agency which the children exercise
in choosing their subjects, thus asserting ownership of their lives and its
representation. This enabling power of creative agency can similarly be
observed in Munnu.
Munnu’s art takes many forms, from carving on woodblocks and
marble, to copying pictures from the newspaper, to carving shrines and
human figures out of chalk pieces. The desire to improve in Munnu
leads him to hours of unwavering practice; his artwork even makes him
famous in school, fetching him the prestigious position of writing quota-
tions on the blackboard. Many other facets of Munnu’s childhood and
his personality emerge via his relationship to art. Munnu builds a friend-
ship with Mubashir, who has lost his father and finds comfort in art.
However, Munnu also feels jealous when he cannot draw as well as
Mubashir. Artwork provides Munnu refuge when he is humiliated by
those in authority and even when he is molested. Creativity and artwork
become instrumental in allowing young children like Munnu to find a
voice and often alleviate the pain, loss, or trauma they have faced.
Munnu’s artistic progress can be broadly sketched into two trajectories.
One ties him up to the annals of his own cultural past as well as to the
members of his community in the form of wood block carvings tradition-
ally practiced by his father. The other is a much more individuated artistic
expression, culminating eventually in cartooning which ties him up to his
surroundings in a much more political fashion. The political angle of his
art, whether conscious or inadvertent, comes from his exposure to the
violence engulfing his life as a Kashmiri. The beginnings of his eventual
professional life as a political cartoonist germinate even while he is still a
child. This section will look at how these two trajectories intersect and
spill into each other to forge Munnu’s artistic self.
Sajad shows that Munnu has a strong affinity towards the artistic work
of his father and a fascination for his tools. He risks reprimand and punish-
ment from his father in order to get his hands on his father’s tools and
wooden blocks. So, when his father is taken away during a crackdown,4
Munnu is more occupied with the opportunity to gain access to his
father’s tools and wood blocks without interference. At other times he
pores over a newspaper, copying mangled bodies, or tracing the compar-
atively easier AK 47. The AK 47, which is ubiquitous in the life of a
Kashmiri child, is a fascination for Munnu and his classmates. Munnu’s
drawings of the AK 47 become a rage in his school and push his artistic
limits and ingenuity to carve the gun from an eraser into a stamp, to meet
the growing demand from his classmates. In the process, the children are
shown trading with and bribing Munnu in order to get his drawing on
their notebooks, bags, etc. Thus, art work is not just a means for surviving
trauma but also signifies moments of levity and transgression.
Munnu’s love for art and his stubborn determination to pursue it make
his story more of a Künstlerroman than a tale of helplessness. He defies his
parents’ expectations of a white-collar job, and argues instead for a liveli-
hood as an artist. He is engrossed in his drawings during crackdowns even
as his older siblings are cleaning up the house after it has been ransacked
by the army. Even while passing through Mustafa’s (a neighbour who is a
militant) grave, whose death had given Munnu nightmares, his artistic eye
notes the marble epitaph and the calligraphy carved on it. Afterwards he
feels an immediate impulse to carve on marble and begins to experiment
with his father’s chisels, and ends up blunting them in the process. Despite
his father’s displeasure at his disobedience, Munnu continues to follow his
desire. At the darasgah, he falls in love with a young girl and decides to
impress her with a portrait. When that proves difficult, he copies Urdu
love poetry in his diary so he can gift it to her. The diary is discovered
by the Molvi, who punishes him for this supposed flagrant behaviour.
Munnu’s desire to express himself gets him beaten up regularly, but his
defiance and minor rebellions often arise vis-à-vis art.
Munnu discovers that his art has a political bent when he realizes in
conversation with his brother, Bilal, that he does not wish his art to be
included in the Sunday children’s edition of Urdu daily, Alsafa. His inter-
ests, however, are more aligned to the political cartoons which appear in
the editorial section. Subsequently, Munnu studies day and night to fill
the gaps in his knowledge of contemporary politics concerning Kashmir
and when he cannot understand much, he takes help from Bilal. Munnu’s
dream of being recognized and published as an artist is tied up with
his desire to be looked upon as a political cartoonist who is also the
voice of his people. He tenaciously chases editors of various newspapers,
faces rejection, and yet persists until he can find one who will publish
his cartoons. Alsafa publishes one of his cartoons, but is irregular in
publishing more, so he pursues the editor of Greater Kashmir until he
agrees to publish Munnu’s cartoons in his newspaper.
Munnu’s cartoons are satirical. In one of them, he shows the Kashmiri
people as dogs wearing identity cards; another shows the Indian army
caricatured as an aggressive bear. Munnu’s observations of life in Kashmir
and the resulting anger form an integral part of his creative expression.
In a dream, Munnu sees himself receiving a uniform from the news-
paper, which denotes his rise and importance in society. In contrast to
his cartoon about the average Kashmiri as a dog wearing an identity card,
when Munnu later receives an actual identity card from the newspaper, he
feels empowered as it becomes symbolic of reclaiming dignity. Munnu’s
transition into adulthood coincides with and derives from his identity as
a political cartoonist, and as a member of the press.
Resilience Through Culture

When we argue for Munnu’s resilience, we do not wish to insist on his
resistance or resilience as atomized individuality. Munnu’s life is grounded
in the socio-cultural history of resistance and resilience of the Kash-
miri people. Boyden (2003: 12) suggests that children interpret their
experience through a culturally mediated life:
By decontextualizing and privileging the individual as representing the

psychic unity of humanity, society and culture are regarded as mere
variables in human development, adaptation and healing, rather than as
foundational in these processes… adjustment to adversity, suffering, grief
and loss are all experienced in context and are patterned by the cultural
meanings they manifest.
Alison M.S. Watson (2015) navigates this messy space between

resilience and what is more often than not perceived as resistance.
Without negating the possibility or forms of resistance or essentializing
resistance, Watson (2015: 53) suggests, “…one way to consider agency,
vis-à-vis children is to ‘consider agency and structure as integrally relat-
ed…as the interplay of subject and object within the social world.’ Even
in their resilience they are demonstrating a form of agency, and in their
actions that follow that they may be demonstrating a form of resistance.”
Participation of children in protests is a common occurrence in

Kashmir (Mushtaq 2018; Giri 2019).5 Sajad shows Munnu joining his
classmates for a protest to demand the release of their school principal
who is being detained by the army. Munnu makes posters for this protest
and joins his schoolmates and his brothers to assert his right to educa-
tion. The protest proceeds to Lal Chowk, where other people join it
and raise slogans of azaadi, even as the students have been instructed to
avoid political sloganeering. Sajad thus points to the perpetuity of polit-
ical protests in Kashmir in which people join processions to show their
affinity with each other and their anger towards the Indian state. It is in
these sites of protest that a culture of resistance is passed on and Munnu
becomes at once a witness and an active participant in it.
In an EPW article about funerary processions in Kashmir, Inshah Malik
(2018) points towards the radical transformation of public mourning
by Kashmiri women, where the intimate relationship with grief is made
public and public mourning becomes personal for all the participants.
Malik (2018: 66) reads this as a feminist political intervention in resisting
the “state’s sovereignty by grieving for lives that the state deems ‘non-
grievable6 ’.” Malik suggests that women have transformed the culture of
public mourning with their participation and have inserted themselves in
the politics of the region. Similarly, Munnu’s story is entrenched in this
culture of resistance and agency and such cultural practices allow him to
express himself as more than a victim.
Mourning processions and personal mourning have a very significant
and overbearing presence in Sajad’s autobiographical narrative. The first
mourning procession in Munnu is for Mustafa, who is recognized as a
martyr for Kashmir. Munnu’s parents, siblings, and neighbours join a sea
of people in the funeral procession. Sajad’s graphic description becomes
dense with an infinity of mourners that seem to spill beyond the panel,
and the sky is darkened with terror and sorrow. Munnu is crouched in a
corner, buried in his sister’s arms and terrified of the scene but remains
tethered to this mass of people who have merged in their grief that spills
over from their lives and the panel (Sajad 2015: 35). The funeral is
followed by the gritty details of Mustafa’s torture and death and, even
though these details are not available to Munnu, he suffers from night-
mares which are haunted by Mustafa’s prostrated body in the grave,
gasping for breath.
The cultural memory of fake encounters in Kashmir is a reality for
the Kashmiri child, even if he is not directly exposed to its grim details.
They are a part of common knowledge and are passed on to children

as collective memory. Death becomes a constant companion in Munnu’s
life, as is the case with other Kashmiri children. The perpetual presence of
death, apart from being traumatic, becomes a practical problem. Munnu
broods over his last rites, as well as obsessing about being buried alive
and suffocating in the grave. Despite an excessive curiosity about death
and dead bodies, his engagement with death is about looking at it as a
problem which needs to be tackled and managed.
Munnu’s nightmares are cured when he starts to sing songs which
the Molvi at his new darasgah teaches him. Munnu sings these songs
non-stop at home and irritates other family members. Scenes of Munnu
singing into the cooker or on the toilet, while appearing to be ludicrous,
are significant instances that capture for the readers Munnu’s enthusi-
astic spirit in spite of the trauma that surrounds it. These songs, which
he eventually sings at the funeral of another young martyr, are part of
a culture which helps Munnu keep himself afloat and even distract him
from his nightmares. Boyden (2003: 12) theorizes processes of healing as
socially specific when she says, “…while healing and similar processes may
be experienced in ways that are intensely personal, individuals understand
and engage with misfortune through mechanisms that are socially medi-
ated.” Thus, the cultural mechanisms available to Munnu to deal with
grief, trauma, and loss, interspersed with his limited agency, allow him to
confront his world instead of escaping it.
The family also plays a significant role in providing security and stability
to the child in conflict-ridden places. Boyden and de Berry (2004 [2007]:
xv) note that, “Even in the most stressful of situations, young people’s
psychological and emotional health, as much as their development, is
heavily mediated by relationships with caregivers, peers, and others, by
access to services and availability of opportunities.” Munnu’s siblings
often step up as foster parents whenever the need arises. Their relevance
in his life is registered on the very first page in which all the siblings are
having a picture taken, while the parents are absent from this photograph.
Being the youngest in his family, Munnu enjoys the special attention of
his elder siblings as well. There are moments of levity, awkward outbursts,
and absurd humour that mark Munnu’s life. These moments of banality,
although trivial, maintain the continuity of life amidst interruptions from
deaths and protests. There are moments of shared intimacy between
Munnu and his grandparents, who visit the family because their house has
been shelled in the crossfire between militants and the army. They look
after Munnu’s sick father and offer relief to the family with their presence.
The cruel discontinuities in Munnu’s life are turned into opportunities for
familial interactions consisting of jokes about the shelling of the grand-
parents’ house, or Munnu making suns and stars in his grandfather’s hair
when he cuts it, or even visits to the shrine with his grandfather which
make “Fridays special.”
Munnu’s family visits Eidgah, (where his grandparents live) because
of tensions arising as a result of a confrontation between militants and
the army on election day. The visit, however, is couched in terms of a
vacation where each day, each minute is “fun”. These “fun” activities,
include fixing the rattling house littered with bullet holes, playing hide
and seek with abba (his grandfather), receiving sweets, cookies, chips,
orange candies from grandparents, and going to the Eidgah square to
witness the evening spectacle rapt with the air of protest calling for
azaadi. Munnu draws comfort and security from older members of the
family but, with his ingenious questions and playful presence, also brings
them comfort. Munnu’s father feels like a young boy when he takes him
for bike rides to the old city where he lived; his grandfather also finds in
Munnu a helpful companion for his trips to the shrine. Thus, Munnu is
shown as capable of offering emotional reprieve to his family.
Taking from relational social theories, like the Actor-Network-Theory
of Bruno Latour, Liebel (2020: 25) problematizes the conceptualization
of agency and suggests that agency is “not an inherent personal prop-
erty but is always inherent in and interwoven with social relationships.”
Munnu’s engagement with his family on a daily basis is grounded in
possibilities of enacting agency and is a formative aspect of his life.
Food also plays a vital role in shaping Munnu’s life and identity. The
different sections in Sajad’s autobiography are inscribed with the memory
and taste of food and drink. Moments of both grief and respite are fused
with the taste and smell of food, connecting it inextricably to signif-
icant life experiences. Research on food and memory emphasizes the
social significance and the importance of food in constructing bonds of
kinship (Douglas 1972; Meigs 1987). Food plays a vital role in shaping
Munnu’s relationship not just with his kin but also with the community.
The section entitled, “Chocolates, toffees, almonds and cashews,” begins
with the ritualistic practice of collecting mulberries from a sacred burial
mound under a mulberry tree; later in the same chapter, Munnu feels
jealous towards the Molvi’s assistant at the darasgah, who flirts with the
girl Munnu likes by giving her chocolates, toffees, almonds, and cashews.
These same items are also showered over the grave of the martyr Mustafa,
from where the Molvi’s assistant has stolen them to give to the girls
in darasgah. Food thus becomes associated with rituals of both life and
death, establishing the two as inseparable. It offers a way to endure expe-
riences of loss and suffering in its connection to both life and death.
The autobiography is dotted with memories of food occurring as a life
affirming practice amidst the continual presence of death and loss.
Conclusion
Children who grow up in regions of armed conflict are often dissoci-
ated from their contexts and are reduced to individuals in need of rescue.
Zarif (2020: 221) observes that the discourse on childhood operates on
the dichotomy of innocence and exploitation, thus alienating children
from their realities. The poignancy associated with victimhood makes it
the most apparent and hence pervasive discourse to discuss the lives of
such children. In this patronizing approach, a nuanced understanding
of their participation in their socio-political environments is compro-
mised and opportunities for them to express agency are neglected. Malik
Sajad’s Munnu challenges the erasure of both community and individu-
ality in Kashmiri children who are projected exclusively as victims. Munnu
attempts to reclaim the story of “A boy from Kashmir” and portrays a
tender but complex narrative of Munnu’s resilience in the face of routine
violence.
Salwa Massad et al. (2018) describe resilience as a desired category
to overcome stress and disturbance. They see this process operating in a
two-pronged manner, along the axes of the personal and the social. The
personal axis involves the individual talents and inner strengths, whereas
the social axis relies on socio-cultural environments and systems such
as family, friends, community, etc. Both these work in conjunction to
promote possibilities of resilience. In searching for resilience in Munnu’s
life, the lasting impression one is left with is not trauma, but a life char-
acterized by the cultural edifices, artistic endeavours, and familial support
system which allow Munnu to create space for defiance, humour, and
ambition.
Notes
1. “Stolen” childhood emerges from a notion of childhood which is Eurocen-
tric, where disruption in the dominant pattern implies a childhood “stolen”
or “lost.” See Liebel (2020).
2. One of the debates that often preoccupy the study of autobiography is
the authenticity of the accounts narrated, and the veracity of memory and
its fictionalizing function. However, without engaging in debates about
authenticity, fictionality, or even fabrication of memories, we would like to
focus on autobiography as an instance of assertion of the self.
3. This method is reminiscent of Art Spiegelman’s award-winning graphic
novel, Maus, where the Jews are depicted as mice, and the Nazis as cats.
However, Munnu is different in that it has human figures who repre-
sent non Kashmiris, and the Hangul is chosen for its endangered status to
signify the vulnerability of Kashmiri lives.
4. Crackdown is a specific term used for army raids and search operations in
Kashmir, where the male members of the family are made to stand in lines
for identification and are frisked.
5. See https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/children-kashmir-dec
ades-long-conflict-180225090512115.html; https://religionunplugged.
com/news/2019/9/2/in-photos-estimated-50-injured-in-kashmirs-worst-
protest-since-indias-crackdown.
6. Similar research articles in the same volume written by Uzma Falak (2018)
and Mir Fatimah Kanth (2018) register the contribution of women in
resisting army presence in Kashmir.
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CHAPTER 10
Children and Childhood on the Borderland

of Desired Peace and Undesired War: A Case
of Ukraine
Urszula Markowska-Manista and Oksana Koshulko
Introduction
At the heart of the discourse and practice of children’s rights lie basic
assumptions about the relationship between the young and the nation-
state ... Yet, for young people displaced across national borders by armed
conflict and political oppression the connection to sovereign states is often
far from natural or automatic. (Boyden and Hart 2007: 237)
U. Markowska-Manista (B)
University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
e-mail: u.markowska-ma@uw.edu.pl
O. Koshulko
Department of Global Economy, Alfred Nobel University, Dnipro, Ukraine
Polissia National University, Zhytomyr, Ukraine

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74788-6_10
184 U. MARKOWSKA-MANISTA AND O. KOSHULKO
To begin, we would like to say that this chapter is co-authored by a Polish

scholar researching childhood and children’s rights in so-called fragile
contexts (contributing theoretical and empirical analyses in this chapter),
and a Ukrainian scholar analysing migration, refugees, and asylum-seeking
processes from her country of origin to the West as an aftermath of
the occupation and war (the case studies in this chapter). Through this
collaboration, we wish to draw attention to the importance of interdis-
ciplinary and international cooperation as well as discussions on and a
plurality of understandings of meanings, which we label and categorize
also in academic discourse. Our cooperation also stems from the need to
better understand children’s situation and experiences in contexts of war
in academic and media discourse in Central and Eastern Europe.
Armed conflicts and wars are waged in all parts of the world. We hear
and read about those notorious and bloody ones (Machul-Telus et al.
2011) on a daily basis, while those marginalized conflicts, arousing only
momentary compassion, break the news less frequently. The majority
of official discourses about war and conflict concern people who fight,
escape, live in fear and a sense of helplessness, seeking meaning in
the brutal reality surrounding them. These discourses are frequently
incomplete: showing the part of reality ‘as it is’ and rejecting realities
constructed ‘here and now’ through human choices. In many discourses
connected with childhood in fragile contexts, the so-called ‘lesser evil’
(adolescent marriages, child labour) is analysed as either ‘black or white,’
failing to consider all the shades of grey. In others, such practices may be
cast as problematic, judged but not explained. Prophylactic measures are
proposed that, at times, instead of ameliorating the problem, do greater
harm and are inadequate to the context in which the drama is unfolding.
We wish to look at discourses constructed about childhood—specifically,
about the situation of children affected by war—on the borderland of
desired peace and undesired war. For the most part, these discourses are
focused on the deficit and tragic aspects of the situation of the youngest
(passive and active) participants of armed conflict. They overlook or
take only vague notice of children’s voices, their own perceptions, and
perspectives on their experiences in times of war. Additionally, a large
part of research in this area has been grounded in a Western under-
standing of childhood, while constituting a fundamental Western concept
for developing support programs for children in crisis situations (Zarif
2020).
10 CHILDREN AND CHILDHOOD ON THE BORDERLAND … 185
This chapter is an outcome of reflection aiming to understand

how childhood is perceived—the costs of an adult-centric standpoint
(Brocklehurst 2009, 2015)—and presented as well as how militarized
discourses about children affected by armed conflict are constructed
in the context of the conflict in the eastern territory of Ukraine: a
conflict that is barely covered in the Western media. We also attempt to
interpret “other realities” of constructing childhood (Liebel 2012, 2017)
in a wartime context, connected with local grassroots practices, agency,
and the rights of children entangled in the complicated history of the
formation of the Ukrainian nation and the state of Ukraine. These “other
realities,” composed into new global processes and transformations with
children as important participants, enable a broader insight into their situ-
ation. At the same time, they necessitate decolonial reflection on changes
in research approaches applied in research on children in so-called fragile
contexts of their functioning (Markowska-Manista 2020: 9).
The Topography of Childhood

on Territories Under Effective Control
In all parts of the world, war and armed conflict do not fit into the ideal
of childhood (Boyden and Hart 2007: 246) understood as a stage of
safety and development and a period free from the burden of respon-
sibility. The experiences of children living in the Donbas region are a
literal antithesis to these assumptions. This is particularly true about
the eastern territories of Ukraine—the region affected by the military
operation, where, since 2014, numerous instances of human rights viola-
tions against adults and children (including sexual abuse, torture, and
cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment) have been reported by various
international organizations (Tzivaras 2018).
Recent years have been a difficult period for Ukraine. In 2014, the
Crimean Peninsula was annexed by Russia. The same year marked the
beginning of the war in Donbas—the region near the border with Russia.
These events have had a major influence on the Ukrainian and Crimean
Tatar population in general, particularly children. Since the annexation of
Crimea and the onset of the war in Donbas, children’s rights, enshrined
in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Declaration on the
Protection of Women and Children in Emergency and Armed Conflict,
have been violated in many forms and areas.
Donbas and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea are defined in

international political jargon as territories under effective control (Knoll
2004). This type of fragile context, with places and spaces in which chil-
dren function every day, is full of children’s experiences connected with
abuse and coercion. Abuse and coercion trigger the construction of grass-
roots activities aiming to alleviate or eliminate these processes. Legal
instruments implemented in Ukraine in 2014 in connection with the
regulations of international humanitarian law and human rights (referring
to the protection of children affected by armed conflict) reveal deficiencies
in national legislation concerning the status of underage children affected
by armed conflict and their persecution. They are a proverbial ‘Achilles’
heel’ as, in many situations, instead of helping they aggravate the suffering
and fear of those minors whose experiences and choices are questioned.
These issues are addressed by Natalia Krestovska (2018) who analyses
children’s participation in warfare, loss of parents, deprivation of school
education, human trafficking, and other severe violations of children’s
rights in the zone and territory of uncontrolled hostilities.
Reports by UNICEF and humanitarian organizations involved in
providing aid to populations affected by armed conflict provide estimated
numbers of children who have died, been killed, wounded, or who have
experienced other forms of abuse during the war in Donbas: around
200,000 in all (Koshulko 2018).
As the Preamble of the Convention on the Rights of the Child
(OHCHR 1990) states, the conditions of a harmonious childhood should
be as follows: “the child, for the full and harmonious development of his
or her personality, should grow up in a family environment, in an atmo-
sphere of happiness, love, and understanding” (OHCHR 1990). Since
2014, the childhoods of adolescents and children of the occupied Donbas
and Crimea are neither happy nor harmonious. The rights of children
living in these territories are not guaranteed, which means that they are
unable to grow up in an “atmosphere of happiness, love, and understand-
ing” (OHCHR 1990). There are initiatives on the part of international
organizations to help them.
Among groups of children needing assistance are those who:
• have left the occupied territories of Donbas and the Crimea, with or
without parents, and have become internally or externally displaced
(since 2014);
• have remained in the occupied territories of Donbas and the Crimea;
• live in the ‘grey-zones’ near the contact-line of both sides of the

front line in Donbas;
• grow up as half-orphans with only one living parent as the other was
killed in the war or arrested as a political prisoner in the occupied
Crimea; and,
• became soldiers in the armies of either side of the contact line in
Donbas.
As a consequence of the conflict, the majority of the children from the

occupied Donbas and the Crimea have experienced the following:
• various kinds of physical and psychological traumas, resulting in

PTSD;
• lack of freedom and basic human rights for children and adults on
these territories;
• loss of parents and other relatives due to the occupation and war in
Ukraine;
• the systematic shelling of entire cities and villages in the occupied
territories of Donbas;
• the use of landmines in the occupied territories of Donbas;
• frequent searches of the homes of Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians
and arrests of political prisoners, fathers, and other relatives of
children, in the occupied and annexed Crimea; and,
• other types of violence witnessed in the occupied territories.
Childhood on territories under effective control is a childhood between

temporary periods of peace and violations of the ceasefire, gunfights,
military confrontations, and explosions. It gives rise to questions about
children’s physical and psychological safety, protection, and care that can
(if at all possible) be guaranteed in such fragile and uncertain contexts. It
also generates questions about children’s participation in education and
care practices connected with the protection of children’s life and health
in the discourse of ‘the language of hostility.’ The authors of the “Ukraine
Education Cluster Strategy, 2019–2020” report “735,000 children and
teachers learning and teaching in 3,500 education facilities in the wider
affected areas” (Ukraine Education Cluster Strategy 2019). According
to UNICEF (2018), military confrontations between Ukrainian forces
and militant groups have left over 700 schools in Ukraine damaged or
destroyed. The destruction of the school infrastructure, the military use
of schools, or their proximity to military sites has made them unprotective

environments.
Voices of the ‘Unheard’

There are numerous cases of children and their parents from Donbas
and the Crimea becoming externally displaced persons, asylum seekers,
or migrants due to the war and occupation. The reconstructions of their
stories can be found in NGO reports, on international agendas, websites,
and social networking sites, which are becoming today’s ‘virtual wailing
walls.’ Every history is different, every story is a metaphorical element of
the mosaic representing the situation of children and adults affected by
the conflict in their country of origin. Every story arises as a consequence
of undesired war and a search for desired peace for children and their
agency.
The case studies presented below, illustrating some of these stories,
were collected between 2014 and 2016 in Poland and Turkey (Koshulko
2018). The study employed qualitative research methods, conducted by
way of semi-structured interviews in Ukrainian and Russian. The duration
of each interview was 40–45 min to avoid burdening families with diffi-
cult memories. The study aimed to explore the influence of the war and
occupation on life decisions of Ukrainians, many of whom had fled war as
externally displaced persons or seeking asylum in neighboring countries.
In total, six case studies were conducted in various locations: three in
Istanbul, Turkey (2014–2015), and three in Krakow and Warsaw, Poland
(2015–2016).
Case 1: A semi-structured interview conducted in 2014 in Istanbul,
Turkey with a 9-year-old boy and his mother who fled the war to Turkey
from the occupied Donbas. The boy and his mother were forced “to run
from the war in Donbas” [IM_1]. The mother married a Turkish man,
which allowed them to remain legally in Turkey. Despite being able to
flee from the war-affected territory, the mother expressed an opinion that
the boy had suffered psychological trauma as a result of the conflict.
Case 2: A semi-structured interview conducted in 2014 in Istanbul,
Turkey with a 10-year-old girl from the occupied Crimea and her mother
who “were forced to move” [IM_2]. In 2014, the two fled to Istanbul
following the occupation of the peninsula. The mother married a Turkish
man there. In the opinion of her mother, the girl shows “some symptoms
of the post-traumatic stress syndrome” [IM_2]. Moreover, the forced
relocation to another country had a negative influence on the girl’s well-

being due to the following factors: the language barrier, adaptation,
and integration into Turkish society, cultural differences connected with
traditions, and religion.
Case 3: A semi-structured interview conducted in 2015 in Istanbul
with a 14-year-old girl and her mother. They fled from Donetsk to
Istanbul to live with the mother’s older sister, residing in Istanbul with
her husband. The girl was very sad because of “the situation in her native
city Donetsk” [IG_3], the occupation, and war there as well lack of
information about the situation of some friends from her school.
Case 4: A semi-structured interview conducted in 2015 in Krakow,
Poland with a 10-year-old boy and his family. The family had left the
occupied territory of Donbas in 2014 and had relocated to Poland as
externally displaced persons. They viewed their surviving the 2014 occu-
pation as miraculous. When asked: “Did you come to Poland because of
the undeclared war in Ukraine?” the boy’s mother answered, “Yes. We
escaped from the Russian separatists and by luck and the will of God, we
were not killed and did not die” [KM_4] (Koshulko 2018: 69). PTSD
had seriously affected the whole family, especially the boy.
Case 5: A semi-structured interview conducted in 2015 in Krakow
with a 9-year-old boy, his mother, and grandmother who moved together
from the occupied territory of Donbas to Poland as refugees. In 2014,
this family came to Krakow because they “could not stay in Donbas
anymore” [KM_5]. The mother, who was a dentist, was unable to work
in this field after migrating to Poland due to the complexity of the legal
process of recognizing her professional qualifications. She worked as a
cleaner in a hostel in Krakow for over a year.
Case 6: A semi-structured interview conducted in 2016 in Warsaw,
Poland,with a 14-year-old girl, her mother, and a younger sister. They
came to Poland from the occupied Donbas as asylum seekers in 2014
“intending to survive” [WM_6], and for several months lived in a camp
for asylum seekers. In the camp, the mother was very much concerned
about the security and well-being of her daughters. In the opinion of the
mother, PTSD had seriously affected both girls. In 2016, they received
the status of asylum seekers in Poland and currently live in Warsaw
(Koshulko 2018).
Every war and conflict disrupts childhood characteristics for a given
place, given community, society, or region. In the situation of political
conflict and the outbreak of war, when legal protection mechanisms break
down, many rights granted to children are compromised and it is children

who suffer the most in social, psychological, and general developmental
dimensions, being burdened with the baggage of difficult experiences.
In the case of children whose histories are signalled above, they have
managed to implement their strategies of functioning and being active
in their new educational, social, linguistic, cultural and political envi-
ronments after a long and arduous process as refugees, migration, and
adaptation to their new place of residence. However, the experience of
war does not disappear from the child’s psyche—it disrupts childhood
but at the same time ‘in a way’ (a relative term) prepares children for
challenges in the future. On the one hand, it leaves a mark in the shape
of difficult memories based on painful experiences and unhealed wounds
(withdrawal, emotional ‘freeze,’ fears, PTSD symptoms resulting from
deep psychological trauma). On the other hand, it allows various indi-
viduals and groups of children and young people to activate their agency
and emphasize the role they play in resistance politics and practices in
their country of origin and as refugees abroad.
A Dissonance of Terms
and Discourses: Childhood and War
Childhood and war are two contradictory designates. Childhood, as
ideally conceived, is a period of growth, holistic development, play, and
study. As Michelle O’Reilly, Pablo Ronzoni, and Nisha Dogra argue, “the
term childhood is non-specific and relates to a varying range of years
in human development in different contexts” (O’Reilly et al. 2013: 2).
Childhood is a social construct (Liebel 2012: 10), and it is always context-
based. Thus, it will always be “a matter of imagination and imaging”
(Robson 2004: 64). This means that real contexts cannot be separated
and are inseparable from media messages and humanitarian represen-
tations which, while being incomplete and fragmentary, are suggestive
and remain permanently in the collective imagination. We deal with a
media-created demonisation of conflicts in which children participate and
instrumentalization of childhood in political discourses about wars that
fail to present the situation from the perspective of children participating
in armed conflict: whether they act voluntarily or under duress (Liebel
2015: 300).
The images of a vulnerable child—a helpless, suffering victim of war—
and, on the other hand, a child as a soldier, are deeply rooted in Western
culture (Denov 2010; Markowska-Manista 2019). The iconic image of

the child soldier of the twenty-first century is “a small, one-dimensional
and selective (re)presentation of the issues facing children who are associ-
ated with conflict and militarism” (Lee-Koo 2011: 725). Simultaneously,
and for many decades, the child has functioned as a metaphorical “ideal
victim” (Christie 1986). Both are of great importance for the way modern
media inform about children’s participation in war, constantly reinforcing
both the first and second images. What is more, these stereotypical,
one-dimensional images can further reinforce the distortions of how chil-
dren’s life and functioning in the context of war are represented. These
distortions are aggravated by humanitarian campaigns using and repro-
ducing suffering through the slogans and images of “childhood at war”
(Gorin 2015: 941). Key role is played here by international practices of
shocking viewers with images of children’s bodies or faces. ‘Aid’ provi-
sion is exposed as a category imbued with stereotypes and the power
of adults, as a category that colonizes childhood and children’s daily
lives as potential aid recipients (on both sides of the barricade). What
is more, media representations of a particular child or group of children
with weapons in their hands, or against the background of ruins, that
fail to consider social, economic, and political factors contributing to the
narration about war in a particular place, particular space or time, will be
taken out of context. Every child is a victim of adults’ ideological, media,
and military wars, which is evident in the past and currently waged armed
conflicts, wars, and the brutalization of media discourse. This is coupled
with increasing radicalization on the institutional level in many nation-
states and indoctrination encompassing early processes of upbringing and
education (Markowska-Manista 2018a).
Thus, to understand the militarization of childhood, we need to
examine how national states use patriotic education and social practices
for indoctrination in national discourse in times of war and armed conflict
or in times of anticipated war. Of equal importance is time (period of
time) in which, due to ongoing armed conflict or anticipated armed inter-
vention, educational, cultural, and social institutions and agendas become
spaces and places of socializing young people to the culture of militarism.
The Militarization of Childhood

Militarization is a multifaceted process through which militarism—i.e., the
reproduction of war or readiness to fight and protect one’s homeland—
through nurture, education, and media discourse becomes grounded in
the deepest social layers (McSorley 2013: 234). States have always relied
on the militarization of public life, including the sphere of education
and nurture, to indoctrinate local populations. One of the key strate-
gies adopted by countries engaged in armed conflict is the glorification
of war and the patriotic education of children. This education envisages
not only verbal indoctrination but also practical preparation to protect
oneself and one’s homeland and to kill the enemy. The militarization of
childhood in Eastern Europe, which our chapter addresses, results from
the militarization of adults who then transfer it to children, as in many
cases their emotional focus on the past1 (revolutions, uprisings, wars,
cleansings, displacement, repression, starvation, communism—still alive in
familial memory as well as in historical-patriotic memory) is more impor-
tant to them than the future of their children. Adults wield political power
to direct projects of militarization. These are adults who represent the
familial and educational environments as well as institutions in the system
of care and education; they are also adults who contribute to or magnify
these children and youth-oriented processes as social, political, religious,
or media (local, state) authority figures. Militarization is also a result of
the militarization of places and spaces of education and social functioning
in the conditions of conflict and the persistent threat of war.
What we signal above does not undermine children’s agency or the
importance of historical memory, but indicates contexts of the region
where the process of raising and educating new generations is still based
on structural oppression, usurpation of power, and violence of adults, all
of which serve to perpetuate the traditional position of the child in society
(as a Polish proverb says: children and fish have no voice) and tradition-
ally reproduced intergenerational relations (children’s position of social
subordination vis-à-vis adults).
According to a contemporary interdisciplinary paradigm within Child-
hood Studies, children are political beings with their own agency and
rights, who ally with or against militarism in various ways. An equal
relation between generations of adults and children and recognizing chil-
dren as competent actors are elements of the definition of justice (Liebel
2013) and, as scholars, we take these to be essential. In various regions
where modern conflicts take place, we must not lose sight of representa-
tions of children’s agency in the context of rights and the possibility of
their participation in militarism as something more than mere objects of
adult instruction. The context of constituting children’s agency and the
possibility of its development from below is of great importance here.
On the other hand, under the influence of adults, children become
more vulnerable to aggressive ideologies and undertake radical action
going beyond accepted frames, norms, and legal provisions. The funda-
ments for this type of behaviour are rooted in children’s communities
and countries of origin and result from the process of constructing young
people as useful to adults ‘here and now,’ particularly in the situation of
war.
The way children are raised and the mechanisms of psychosocial propa-
ganda oriented towards them (being raised surrounded by military toys
or authentic weapons, which is connected with distinct regulations and
historical contexts in different countries) shape the actions of adolescents
and become the actual cause—the engine driving them to further action
fitting into the familiar slogans: ‘God, honour, homeland.’ These are prin-
ciples that guide both the countries that occupy conquered territories
and countries trying to defer an enemy’s attack and prevent the foreign
military from annexing their territories.
In this light, we turn to reflect on instances of militarization of child-
hood in the Crimea and the territory of Ukraine affected by armed
conflict. We cannot overlook the contexts of both states party to the
conflict (the Russian Federation and Ukraine) as these regional activities
fit into national strategies of patriotic education directed at both child and
adult citizens.
Iryna Matviyishyn draws attention to the practice of “military-themed
education” through which Russia reaches children in the occupied terri-
tories of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Luhansk People’s Republic,
and the Crimea. Matviyishyn (2019) notices, “Its core message references
the ‘formation of moral, psychological, and physical readiness of youth to
defend the Motherland, loyalty to the constitutional and military debt in
peacetime and wartime’.”
It must be stressed that programs of military-patriotic education
primarily directed at adolescents, supported by war veterans—both
volunteers and recruits—are not new in the Russian Federation (Sieca-
Kozlowski 2010). However, they have to be interpreted through a
broader perspective than a simplified mirror image of propaganda that
forces children and adults to be patriots. There are new needs of the
state, oriented towards encouraging children and adolescents to mili-

tary service in the future in the spirit of constructing a new national
history and a new nation. Consequently, there are innumerable ways of
constructing modern Russian patriotism in parallel with the official ideo-
logical image (Sanina 2017). Thus, as Anna Sanina (2017) argues, having
at their disposal the patriotic habitus inherited in the process of socializa-
tion during their childhood in the Soviet Union, the older generation of
teachers, school heads and local community authorities support the new
patriotic direction grounding their beliefs about what patriotic education
ought to look like in their knowledge and experiences from the past.
This is how the gap between new patriotic programs and the idea of
co-producing patriotic education is bridged—co-producing not with the
hands of central authorities, but low-level executors (the representatives
of local communities in cities, towns, and villages). This way, patriotic
programs spread in the social tissue of the nation and reach the occupied
territories. There, in conjunction with supporting practices—the intro-
duction of new textbooks with new content, patriotic poems, and songs
as well as parades and student assemblies—it is designed to ‘help’ children
understand the citizen’s new role in society.
The media and human rights activists report that thousands of children
in Donbas and the Crimea have undergone military training or have been
engaged in other initiatives connected with military activity and recruited
in non-state armed formations. These practices are present on both sides
of the conflict and are reported to have intensified. Despite being orga-
nized by both pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian groups, military camps
on the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions (that have illegally
proclaimed independence from Ukraine) are more common and estab-
lished on the incentive of the local authorities. While the establishment
of military camps for adolescents is not a breach of international law, the
practices that raise particular concerns include training children in mili-
tary strategies, camouflage, and handling explosive devices as is reported
by some sources (Burov et al. 2016: 3).
Each armed conflict inhibits, prevents, and paralyzes upbringing,
teaching, and learning. The fight between pro-Kremlin separatists and
pro-Ukrainian state forces taking place since 2014 has exacerbated nation-
alist sentiments and brought chaos to the system of education, curricula,
and among students. In the absence of peace and stability, when educa-
tional institutions are unable to fulfil their designated roles, curricula
in war zones are become political tools. These practices in the Donbas
region in eastern Ukraine were described and visually presented by the

photographer Diego Ibarra Sánchez in 2018–2019. He documented,
inter alia, patriotic youth organizations actively training children how
to fight, survive the war, use weapons, ‘hate the other,’ and how to
defend oneself and one’s country against the neighbour-aggressor. In his
summer diary, he mentions that “hundreds of children play war games
while they are getting trained in military disciplines and firing tactics. …
Time for playing with toys is gone. Childhood in Ukraine and Donetsk is
being eroded by the conflict and it has turned in another way to spread
propaganda” (Sánchez 2018).
The militarization of childhood on a territory appropriated by the
enemy involves a number of mechanisms of propaganda, coercion, and
exerting pressure on society, including parents, schools, and children,
to adapt to the new conditions. Both in the dimension of upbringing
and education, militarization entails the glorification of military service
and war, popularization of military ideology, modification of accounts of
history, and implementation of activities that reinforce the new narra-
tion among children and adolescents. These practices include changing
the names of schools and education institutions, using new symbolic
domains (erecting new monuments), introducing school uniforms with
new insignia, organizing military sports and games at schools and among
local communities (in which children are taught to shoot, assemble,
disassemble, and load firearms such as Kalashnikov machine guns), and
engaging patriotic groups in teaching children how to defend their
country. For instance, the Eastern European Group of Human Rights
reports that the administration of the temporarily occupied territory
of the Donetsk region promotes a total militarization of children and
adolescents (Burov et al. 2016).
Another element of militarization involves the preparation to react
in the situation of armed mobilization implemented through military-
patriotic camps and recruitment to the so-called ‘Youth Army’
(Yunarmia). According to Halya Coynash (2019: 12), “Russia’s Defense
Ministry is trying to get one million children and young people into this
‘army’ and it is likely that very many schools in occupied Crimea have
their own units. In later October, it was reported that Russia had recruited
1500 children and young people from Sevastopol into Yunarmia.” More-
over, “This ‘youth army’ is the militaristic wing of the Russian Movement
of School Students.” created by presidential decree in October 2015 and
aimed at instilling “the system of values inherent to Russian society.”
The Youth Army is supposed to be “responsible for issues linked with

the military-patriotic upbringing of young people” (Coynash 2019: 12).
Shooting courses dubbed “Colorful childhood” for secondary school
children serve as another illustration. The courses are organized by a
paramilitary formation, “The Republic of Donetsk.” Among activities
conducted with the students on military training ranges are shooting
training using automatic weapons such as machine guns and building
general firearms skills.
The strategy of the national-patriotic education of children and youth
has existed since Ukraine gained independence and has been updated
the new generation of Ukrainian children. By decree of the President of
Ukraine on “The Strategy of National Patriotic Education” (Prezydent
Ukrainy 2019) as well as the letter of the Ministry of Education and
Science of Ukraine “On National Patriotic Education” (Ministry of
Education and Science of Ukraine 2019), recommend that schools and
universities provide a more effective patriotic education for children
and adolescents. This can be done, for example, through meetings with
ex-political prisoners, including soldiers and sailors, and other veterans
of the Russian-Ukrainian war. National-patriotic education for children
and adolescents is defined as the “…formation of patriotism and love for
the motherland, spirituality, morality, respect for the national Ukrainian
heritage, imitating the best examples of courage and valor of fighters for
the freedom and independence of Ukraine and the definition of effective
mechanisms of systemic interaction of government and civil society
institutes on issues of national and patriotic education” (Press Service
of the President of Ukraine 2015). The aim of the implementation of
national-patriotic education is “… to contribute to a major national
revival and protection of democratic European vector of Ukraine” (Press
Service of the President of Ukraine 2015). A meeting held in 2018 in
Kyiv between a ‘Hero of Ukraine’ and university students serves as an
example of such national-patriotic education for the young (Ministry of
Information Policy of Ukraine 2018). This type of meeting is designed to
instill in young people courage and heroism necessary for unconditional
protection of their homeland.
Under article 65 of the Constitution of Ukraine “Defence of the
Motherland, of the independence and territorial indivisibility of Ukraine,
and respect for its state symbols, are the duties of citizens of Ukraine. Citi-
zens perform military service under the law” (Constitution of Ukraine
1996). According to Ukrainian Law “On Military Duty and Military
Service,” the minimum age for military service in the country is 18 (Law
of Ukraine 1992). However, since 2014, some adolescents, feeling the
need to defend their motherland from Russian aggression, have joined
the armed forces of Ukraine as soldier volunteers (Shevchenko 2014;
Krestovska 2018), signing a contract with the Ukrainian Army despite
being underage. Some of these underage volunteers were killed during
hostilities.
As Giovanna Barberis points out, it is unacceptable for armed forces
to use underage recruits in combat (Barberis in Shevchenko 2014). The
number of minors recruited and trained to fight on both sides of the
barricades is unknown. Those who have died are regarded as heroes for
the nation they represented. The “Book of Memory of fallen for Ukraine”
shows that 31 adolescents under the age of 19 were killed during the
conflict in eastern Ukraine (Memory Book 2019). The youngest of them
was 16 (Memory Book 2019). In some cases, their contribution to the
struggle was recognized in the form of posthumous orders. The war in
the occupied territories of Donbas and Crimea has thus contributed to the
phenomenon of the militarization of childhood. According to the data
of portal Vchasno, “children in the occupied territories are extensively
taught to fight and kill” (Vchasno 2019). Children as young as nine are
reported to have been active members of rebel militias, an illustration of
which is a story of a 9-year-old girl who was awarded several medals by the
rebels in recognition of her active role in their group (News of Donbas
2016). The militarization of childhood during the period of the war and
occupation in Ukraine is a highly damaging process, radically changing
the lives and destinies of children in the occupied territories of Donbas
and Crimea.
Conclusion
In this chapter, we outline representations of childhood in zones affected
by military activity in so-called “fragile contexts” (Markowska-Manista
2017) as well as a broader ideological context of the assumptions
of national-patriotic education curricula in Eastern Europe. These are
contexts in which we deal with various models of childhood (Qvortrup
2005; Prout 2011) that condition (or not) the social consent to the
conscious development of children’s social and political activity and the
fulfilment of their tradition-based obligation to fight. The practices of the
militarization of childhood discussed here make up a certain sequence of
activities and changes with a pre-defined orientation and specific quali-

ties. On the one hand, they fit into a destructive process of educating
the young in societies affected by armed conflict; on the other hand, they
are an inherent element of a survival strategy of countries based on trans-
gressing borders.2 It is important to bear in mind the multidimensionality
of childhood and the danger of “one, incomplete” story of childhood and
war.
The childhoods of children living in the territories affected by the war
and occupation in Ukraine are far from a uniform, stereotypical image
of children’s lives. They are childhoods taking place in an uncertain and
unstable peace. Every childhood in this type of place and space is a
perpetual negotiation of the “here and now” in the changing context
of armed conflict as war and armed conflict are bound up with the
process of “the disintegration of the autonomous identity of the ‘human
material’ and the creation of an individual devoted to the state and its
ideology” (Siegień 2016: 52). One must also bear in mind that the
dynamic development of mass media and the growing importance of
visual communication has broadened the scope and enhanced the connec-
tion between one story of childhood in the context of a particular war
and the danger of recognizing the reality and the stigma of a negative
stereotype, which further contributes to the victimization of children.
Tens of thousands of children in Donbas and the Crimea have lost their
homes, relatives, and any chance of a peaceful and metaphorical ‘happy
childhood.’ At the same time, on both sides of the front line, adoles-
cents have lost their childhoods in deciding to join either the Ukrainian
armed forces, rebel groups, or the occupying forces; some have lost their
lives. For those who have suffered during the occupation and war in
Ukraine, effects of PTSD call for remediation now and for the foreseeable
future. The situation of children in the territory of Donbas and Crimea
needs further investigation and “non-intrusive ways and a rights-based
approach in researching childhood” (Markowska-Manista 2018b: 60). It
also requires an exposure (in the context of the specific conditioning in
the region) of activities for children’s rights that strengthen their agency
and, thereby, children’s active role in social and political life.
Notes
1. History (the so-called “tragic past”) and hence also deeply rooted thought
patterns and sentiments in East European countries play an important role
and have dominant influence on upbringing and education (e.g., schools

focus on preserving national sentiments, national media base their message
on historical martyrology while neglecting the present). This celebration
of the past leads to blurring the present reality and obscured reasoning
about why the current situation is “bad.” This mechanism tickles a sense
of wellbeing among citizens, gives them a sense of value and self-worth
that “allows” them to explain their inauspicious reality and subject their
life to provisory “catharsis.”
2. We should take into account the social, cultural, and political context,
as media and academic discourse on children, war, and conflicts are very
diverse in the West and in the East and in the Global North and Global
South.
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CHAPTER 11
Production of ‘Safe’ Spaces for Adivasi

Children and the Armed Conflict of Bastar,
India
Rashmi Kumari
Introduction
“Children need to be safe within school and en route to schools.” This was
one of the many recommendations of a 2013 report by Save the Chil-
dren (Save the Children. 2013) on conditions of children’s education
in India in the regions affected by civil strife. Schools and classrooms
present themselves as uncritical ‘safe’ spaces that create a dialectical sepa-
ration between the worlds inhabited by adults and children, where adults’
spaces—from which children need to be ‘protected’—are violent. This
formulation, on the one hand, relegates schools as spaces mostly inhab-
ited by children understood to be ‘vulnerable’ and ‘innocent,’ and on
the other, leaves out the possibility of considering children’s agency and
experiences in occupying hostile spaces (Tabak 2020). The assumption
R. Kumari (B)
Rutgers University, Camden, NJ, USA
e-mail: rl698@scarletmail.rutgers.edu

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74788-6_11
204 R. KUMARI
that children’s place is in schools also overlooks the local social construc-
tions of childhoods that do not follow the linear trajectories of childhood
offered by developmental psychology (Basham 2020; Jenks 1996).
In contrast to the developmental psychology-driven understanding of
childhood as happy, ‘innocent,’ and a transitory phase in a human life,
childhood in the southern central region of India, Bastar, stands as a
signifier laden with meanings. At one level children here are Adivasi,1
which literally translates to “original inhabitants;” at another, they are
portrayed as ‘child-soldiers’ and ‘child informers’ in popular media
discourses (Murty 2017). At Yet another level, they are also considered
to be “caught-in-crossfire” (Save the Children. 2013) in the decades-
long civil war between the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA)
of the Communist Party of India (Maoist)2 and the Indian state. Situated
at the intersection of indigeneity and age, young people, in the highly
militarized context of Bastar, receive attention from several national and
international developmental programs. The lives of these children have
become the topic of discussions in the policy circle of the Ministry of
Education, the regional and national offices of the United Nations Inter-
national Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), in various news media
discourses, and in the reports of organizations working on the issues of
education, child protection, child abuse, and human rights. Children’s
safety, thus, becomes central to a wide range of discourses in projects
dealing with transnational politics as well as rights-based advocacy.
The notion that schools are ‘safe havens’ was advanced by the Indian
state in promoting ‘portacabin’ schools in the aftermath of violent
incidents of Salwa Judum. Salwa Judum in the local Gondi language
means a ‘purification hunt.’ Though a people-led movement, Judum was
supported by the state to fight against the PLGA (or the Maoists, as
they are locally called). This movement lasted over five years (2005–
2011) and resulted in disruptions in about 644 villages that led to people
fleeing their hamlets and living in the makeshift, temporary houses clus-
tered together all over Bastar. Salwa Judum left thousands of children
displaced and out of school. In the region where the difficult terrain
was already a hindrance for children to attend the few existing schools,
the conflict between the Salwa Judum and the PLGA left no avenues of
gaining formal education for the Adivasi children. After Supreme Court
of India ordered disbandment of the Salwa Judum in 2009, the central
government of India launched ‘Operation Green Hunt’ to get Chhattis-
garh ‘rid of the Maoists.’ Under this, a bulk of Central Reserve Police
11 PRODUCTION OF ‘SAFE’ SPACES FOR ADIVASI CHILDREN … 205
Forces (CRPF), along with forces from other battalions, were sent to
‘quell’ the violence. During this period, as the schools became camps for
security forces—CRPF and paramilitary forces—school children faced the
brunt of this struggle. As a result, some of these ‘camps’ were destroyed
by the PLGA. This led to debates around issues of safety, education, and,
in general, the lives of children in the area. In an immediate response to
this, the step taken by the government was to establish makeshift schools
(Bagchi 2013) called ‘portable cabins’ for they could be easily shifted to
other locations in order to provide uninterrupted education.
The ‘portacabin’ schools were deemed “safe havens” and a “home
away from home” (Priyam et. al. 2009) for children affected by the
conflict. In this chapter, I look at the ways in which the discourses of
‘safety,’ ‘vulnerability’ vis-à-vis ‘risk,’ and ‘threat’ get produced, discussed,
and circulated, which embed the Adivasi children’s lives within the
context of rural Bastar. This chapter complicates the understanding of
‘safety’ and asks: how does ordering of space through the residential
school system help maintain the legitimacy of the state in a society amidst
conflict? In other words, how does the discourse on ‘safety’ of children
get deployed in order to shape Indigenous children into ‘civilized adults’?
In order to address this question, I first situate the discourses on school
as ‘safe’ spaces for children living in adversity. Here, I complicate the
role of schools in the lives of Indigenous youths in general, and in the
regions of civil strife in particular. I argue that the residential schools
for Indigenous youths have historically been instrumental in the assim-
ilation or in the integration of youths into national subjects to promote
and maintain colonial and hegemonic rule. Moreover, in the context of
conflict, such schools assume a primacy in the subject-formation of youths
as national subjects who owe allegiance to the dominant ruling bodies.
In the following section, I show how this process of subjectification of
youth in central India, as national subjects, takes place by deploying the
framework of children’s vulnerability. This section delves deeper into the
rhetoric of ‘vulnerable children’ in the discourses on Indigenous child-
hoods and the need to create ‘safe’ spaces for the children living in
the areas affected by armed conflict and contrasts the written official
discourse with a perceived ‘unsafe’ physical geography in which the resi-
dential school is located. The final section presents my field experiences in
Ankaluru Girls’ Residential School in rural Bastar, that is set against the
backdrop of conflicts over resources between the state and local inhab-
itants vis-à-vis the need to create ‘safe’ residential schooling spaces as
206 R. KUMARI
articulated in official discourses. I argue that the construction of Adivasi

childhoods in residential schools in central India, although contested and
negotiated, takes place at the intersection of age, indigeneity, and mili-
tarization. Further, I show that these imaginings of childhoods ‘in crisis’
and ‘in need of saving’ is produced and circulated in official and everyday
discourses of education.
Schools for Indigenous

Children Living in Adversities
The Adivasi children from Bastar live in multiple adverse conditions
including, but not limited to, extreme poverty at about 49.2 percent in
the rural areas, low literacy rates at 54.4 percent, and at a low human
development index value of 0.449 (Bastar 2011). These indicators reflect
historical, colonial, and post-independence exploitations of the region for
natural resources like timber and minerals (Sundar 2007), and neglect
in terms of developmental infrastructure including health and education
services (Xaxa 2012). Added to these structural inequities is the context
of conflict that renders the lives of Adivasi children more precarious.
Given these complexities engulfing the youth from Adivasi communities,
discourses surrounding a quest for addressing these pertinent problems
usually arrive at the school as a potent site in providing the ‘textbook’
solution.
School education, thus, becomes an indicator of socio-economic devel-
opment and political stability in the face of a continuum of adversities.
Schools, in classical Marxist literature, act as ideological apparatuses that
are integral to the political mechanism of the state (Althusser 1970;
Giroux 1983). Apart from being a space of regulation, or what Stuart
Hall (1997: 233) calls “moral governance by culture,” schools are spaces
of friendships (Froerer 2012), employment, livelihoods, and protection
(Anderson 2009). In this section, I briefly describe the multiple functions
that schools, especially residential schools, have played for Indigenous
communities. Further, I analyse how schools gain primacy in situations
of violence to show that schools have long played an instrumental role
in the subjectification of Indigenous childhoods. This subjectification
exhibits a dual characteristic, as a process which inscribes Adivasi children
into state subjecthood through the day-to-day rigmarole of normalized
cultural and socialization practices (Rose 1990), as an event it inscribes
national identities on these children by the very process of enrolling them
into portacabin schools infused with national markers in the forms of

curriculum, medium of instruction, among others.
Residential Schools and Indigenous Child:

Contrasting Settler with Postcolonial Contexts
Mass and compulsory education for Indigenous peoples has tragic roots
in the colonial history of residential schooling in settler colonies like
those of the Americas and Australia. Residential schools, in the history of
British colonies, became the means to assimilate and perpetuate colonial
rule (Miller 1996; Milloy 1999). The first residential school, which was
established in 1879, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, served as a model for 500
such schools established in the Americas through which 100,000 Native
Americans studied until compulsory schooling ended (MacDonald 2007).
Strongly influenced by the American system, Canadian and Australian
residential schools were established to “civilize, educate, and foster habits
of industry and decency” among the Natives (MacDonald 2007, 60).
These schools continued until the late twentieth century, working towards
political integration and religious conversion of the Native societies.
Missionary schools that sprung in the British colonies carried similar
objectives. Working within a clear assimilationist policy framework, the
residential schools, in settler-colonial contexts, meant both to break
Indigenous children’s links to their communities and cultures and, at the
same time, to absorb them into a dominant society (De Leeuw 2007).
Although missionaries in British India did not achieve similar ‘suc-
cess’ compared to the settler colonial contexts (Cole 2011), there is a
continued legacy of using modalities of residential schooling in the polit-
ical integration of children from historically oppressed castes and tribes
in post-independence India. In post-colonial India, the education policy
kept Indigenous communities in isolation, while their political assimila-
tion and ‘preservation’ of their culture and languages were organized
through education (Sundar 2007; Guha 2013). Present-day residential
schools, for the Indigenous castes and communities in India, are complex
institutions established during different educational policy planning years
to develop the rural, underdeveloped, and scheduled areas.3 Histori-
cally, residential schools and facilities like ‘tribal dormitories’ for Adivasi
children played different roles—bridging a perceived “educational gap”
between Adivasi and non-Adivasi children, minimizing “the influence of
home” (Sarangapani 2003) in order to help them learn modern ways,
208 R. KUMARI
and, lastly, as institutions of “holistic development” of Adivasi children.

However, “integration of Adivasi communities into mainstream societies”
(Sundar 2007), while preserving their Indigenous cultures, was one of the
main objectives.
The extant literature on residential schools discusses the prob-
lems—assimilation, enrolments, inequality, displacement, language gap,
textbooks, and curriculum—prevalent in modern education policies.
However, the production and legitimation of school spaces as ‘safe’ zones
for Indigenous children provides a rich avenue for theoretical advance-
ment. Towards this end, I ask: how do schools, despite being politically
charged spaces, become ‘safer’ than homes, and how do children within
the schools construct their own meaningful worlds?
Constructing Schools as ‘Safe’ Spaces

for Children Living in Conflict Zones
In situations of conflict, schools are noted as key sites for “political contes-
tations” (Winthrop and Kirk 2008) and indoctrination. Schools become
paradoxical spaces in recruiting child-soldiers and child-informers as well
as providing a space for children to “return to normalcy and protection”
(Winthrop and Kirk 2008). In ISIS-controlled territories, schools were
used to train teachers. In Guinea, there was sexual abuse of students
(Nordtveit 2010). Schools are also used as demonstrative strategies by
both the government and the non-government actors. For example, in
the context of the struggle between Maoists and the government in
Nepal, van Wessel and Hirtum (2013) note that schools were attacked
because of their physical properties and symbolic meaning. By attacking
the schools, Maoists demonstrated the government’s inability to secure
the schools and children within them, while also gaining access to school’s
human and financial resources (van Wessel and Hirtum 2013: 16). While
these examples draw on negative spectacles of armed conflict working
within school premises, UNICEF initiatives in Afghanistan and Rwanda
provide a model for using “education as a powerful tool” in rebuilding
the countries (UNICEF 2003).
Schools in Bastar have been targeted by both the state paramilitary
forces and the PLGA rebels. School premises were occupied by the
paramilitary forces who also made children their informers. The PLGA,
on the other hand, sought to recruit children into their movement while
also attacking schools that were occupied by the paramilitary forces. In
occupying and attacking school premises, both the state and the non-state
actors sought to establish their credibility while simultaneously discred-
iting their antagonistic others. By attacking the schools occupied by the
paramilitary forces, the PLGA highlights the government’s inability to
take responsibility for its citizens, and also contests the state’s control of
these key sites. The discursive strategies employed by state forces, both
in occupying school premises and providing protection to Adivasi chil-
dren, highlight that children are ‘inherently vulnerable.’ These competing
assertions over school premises demonstrate a combination of local and
national claims over schools as ideological spaces.
The Indian state used the portacabin schools not only to bring a
‘normalcy’ to the lives of Adivasi children, but also to “demonstrate”
to citizens and armed rebels alike that the government is “fulfilling its
promises of development” (Priyam et al. 2009). The understanding of
‘normalcy’ not only overlooks the history of marginalization and symbolic
and structural violence towards Adivasi communities, it also defines chil-
dren by deficit, as in the phrase ‘vulnerable children.’ With a limited
acknowledgement that schools are embedded in larger socio-cultural
and political milieus, this understanding of bringing children into ‘nor-
malcy’ overlooks children’s role and their agentic potentials within their
socio-cultural and political contexts (Jenks 1996; Tabak 2020).
Complicating the Child

in the Image of ‘Child-Soldiers’
Popular media discourses portray the involvement of children in the
Maoist/PLGA movement as forced. A national news daily, Hindustan
Times, reported in October 2017, “when children of her age ought to
have been solving simple arithmetical problems, Sara (name changed) was
learning guerrilla warfare in the dense jungles of western Jharkhand with
men and women more than twice her age.” The report further develops
the coercion involved in children’s ‘participation’ in the Maoist/PLGA
movement. Alpa Shah (2019) complicates the idea of the forced recruit-
ment of child soldiers, highlighting several reasons that Adivasi youths as
young as ten years old join the guerrilla movement. Shah asserts that they
are not necessarily in the movement for the same reasons as the revo-
lutionaries. For the Adivasi, the “struggle is for tribal autonomy, against
a state that they see as repressive, brutal, and prejudiced” (Shah 2019:
xiii). However, for many of them, the reason to join the movement is
210 R. KUMARI
also a personal one, ranging from “finding a home with the guerrillas”
(Shah 2019: 111), to finding “love and intimacy” (Shah 2019: 131), to
escaping parental control and supervision. All of these reasons are inter-
twined with the histories of their “migration for livelihood” (Shah 2019:
153). Many of these youths’ involvement with the movement is in flux as
they move in and out of the movement, transitioning between home and
jungle, school and work, and city.
Nandini Sundar (2016) further problematizes the protectionist lens
around ‘child-soldiers’ by saying that these youth who join the guerrilla
revolutionaries are not forced, but join them freely and with consent. On
the other side of this debate, Sundar also highlights the use of youth (of
about 14–15 years of age) by the Chhattisgarh state in the form of Special
Police Officer. An understanding of youth as complex beings is often
missing in the writings that render school education and the revolutionary
movement as two dichotomous places of being. Jana Tabak (2020) writes
that the dichotomy created by the vulnerability framings of children versus
soldiers creates a barrier between childhood, assumed to be “carefree and
happy,” and soldiers. Tabak (2020: 116) further writes, “construction of
child-soldiers as deviation from the ‘normal’ and a threat to the inter-
national peace and security participates in a production of this particular
version of world, whose ideas are carefully articulated by and through the
ideas of sovereignty, authority, order, and protection.” The imaginings of
children ‘in need of protections’ and ‘at-risk’ assumes them to be passive
actors (Jenks 1996) and often overlook the everyday practices of children
and adults in their extra-ordinary lives where they have not only suffered
the neglect of the government but have also been rendered ‘backward’ in
discourses. On the one hand, the children are deemed ‘at-risk’ of partici-
pating in the conflict and thus “falling out of childhoods” (Tabak 2020);
on the other, they are also considered potential and future ‘threats’ in the
course of becoming adult rebels. In the following sections, I show how
Adivasi children’s ‘vulnerability’ and ‘safety’ was the topic of discussion in
the policy reports of local, national, and international organizations, and I
problematize questions as to what children’s safety entails and where the
claims and counterclaims of children, local communities, and the state
overlap, contest, or compete over the discourses of safety.
Children’s Safety in the Discourses

on Portacabin Schools
The Indian state’s response to the education of the children ‘caught in
the crossfire,’ along with the implementation of the Right to Education
(RTE) Act, resulted in the establishment of 60 portable cabins or resi-
dential schools in the ‘fringe areas’ directly affected by the violence. The
primary objective of portacabins, as narrated to me by officials and NGO
workers, was to cater to children who were out of school, especially due
to the conflict. I call these schools as potacabin instead of porta-cabin
because of the local usage of the word, which officials tried to clarify
repeatedly without success. The officials in the Department of Education
repeatedly clarified that the term is portable cabin but has become pota-
cabin because the “Adivasis don’t know how to pronounce it.” Potacabin
also has its origin in Gondi, a language spoken by the Indigenous Gond
community, in which ‘pota’ means stomach. These residential schools
are perceived as places where children can receive adequate food and
education—hence the name potacabin.
A national report on educational initiatives in the region discusses that
the initial purpose of potacabins was to “demonstrate” to the Adivasi
communities and “of course to the Maoists” that the state is fulfilling
its responsibility of providing ‘safe’ education and, hence, development
to the most ‘backward’ communities in the country. It emphasizes that,
linked to all the educational initiatives, one can see the construction of
roads, bridges, and electric lines, among other infrastructures that will
bring ‘development’ to the area. The “fringe” locations, on the borders of
the Maoist-dominated areas, of the potacabin sites were also very impor-
tant because, “there was a constant threat of Naxal (PLGA) violence.
The fringe area schools were developed as clusters of development—the
building of roads, bridges, electricity, drinking water, and health facilities
was veered around them. It helped to create a demonstration effect for
the people from interior villages” (Priyam et al. 2009).
Yet another report on education by the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA),
an Indian Government Initiative to “universalize primary education,”
lauded potacabins as an “innovative” concept. Potacabins, introduced by
Rajiv Gandhi Siksha Mission (RGSM), a mission-mode initiative of SSA
to implement the universalization of free and compulsory primary educa-
tion for children in the age group of 6–14, were prefabricated structures
212 R. KUMARI
providing residential facilities to the children of internally displaced fami-

lies in Bastar. YouTube videos were used to promote how the opening up
of these residential schools for displaced children has improved the state
of education in the aftermath of the armed struggle, now famously called
“Left Wing Extremism.” Potacabins also found their way into the Good
Practices Resource Book (2015), published by the National Institution for
Transforming India (NITI) Aayog4 of the Government of India in collab-
oration with UNDP. The case study on potacabins in the Resource Book
says,
Potacabins is an innovative educational initiative for building schools with

impermanent materials like bamboo and plywood in Chhattisgarh. The
initiative has helped reduce the number of out-of-school children and
improve enrolment and retention of children since its introduction in
2011. The number of out-of-school children in the 6-14 years’ age group
reduced from 21,816 to 5,780 as the number of potacabins rose from 17
to 43 within a year of the initiative. These residential schools help ensure
continuity of education from primary to middle-class levels in Left Wing
Extremism affected villages of Dantewada district, by providing children
and their families a safe zone where they can continue their education in
an environment free of fear and instability. (NITI Aayog 2015: 33)
One of the commonalties in these various local and national reports

was that the school and education were used to create a demonstra-
tive effect towards the development of the communities. Further, in the
context of violence, ‘safety’ was the main driving point in all of these
reports. However, these uniform versions of the official narratives failed
to mention the local narrative of displacement and larger political implica-
tions of education in residential schools like potacabins. This was covered
by international organizations like the United Nations, Save the Chil-
dren, and Human Rights Watch, which highlighted the use of children
by armed groups with a limited mention of such ‘exploitation’ of children
by the state military.
A United Nations (2015) report mentions recruitment of children
between 6 and 12 years of age. Maoists use the children as informers
and teach them to fight with crude weapons. Children over 12 years of
age are sent to specific units where they are trained in weapons handling
and in using improvised explosive devices. The UN report further notes
that the recruitment campaigns of these groups target poor communities
where parents are forced to offer up children under the threat of violence
and, on the other hand, children are also threatened with the killing of
family members should they escape or surrender to security forces. The
report remarks that the schools were used as recruitment grounds, which
has adversely affected access to education for children.
While the UN report does not mention the use of children and school
spaces by military forces, a report by Save the Children (Save Children
2013) offers a different narrative.
For children and teachers therefore, schools have become a fearful and
unsafe place. There is evidence of schools and areas in the vicinity of
schools still being occupied/ encroached by security forces, especially in
Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. Contrary to common belief, it was found
that there has not been a single instance of schools being attacked by
Maoists, except when these schools were being used by the security forces.
Occupation of schools therefore has not only rendered children school-less
but also made them a target for Maoist attacks.
It was further reported by Save the Children (Save the Children. 2013)
that the history of violence and lack of security has rendered school-going
children vulnerable to the various factors, resulting in high drop-out
rates in an area that was already marked for its harsh landscapes. Recom-
mending that the schools be made ‘zones of peace’ the report raises the
safety issues with residential schools (potacabins ) constructed as substi-
tutes. A joint report by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties and People’s
Union for Democratic Rights, “Of Human Bondage: An Account of
Hostage Taking in Bastar” (People’s Union for Democratic Rights 2011),
notes the responses of the PLGA to the question of attacks on schools.
For them, the revolutionary movements have never been against educa-
tion and denial of formal education is a result of the policy of privatization
of education. They provide a list of schools which have been occupied
by security forces, have been converted into police stations and police
camps, and have also been moved next to police/relief camps rendering
them inaccessible for the villagers who fear going close to the police
stations. They also highlight the plight of the teachers who, out of fear of
being branded as Maoist sympathizers, have stopped going to the schools.
According to the report, the seizing of staff residences by the security
forces has led to the shutting down of schools.
The emphasis in the governmental reports on the use of children
as human shields and in combat roles by the Maoists, but not as
214 R. KUMARI
victims of state policy of armed action, is one side of the discourse that
further overlooks the role of children’s local social ecologies in shaping
their childhoods. Moreover, alongside the policy of armed action, the
rationale for constructing potacabins as safe environments works well
with the schema of maintaining state control and legitimacy while also
constructing children’s safety and protection as the state’s responsibility.
Children’s safety concerns took precedence in the official discourses as
the media portrayed the children as ‘child-soldiers’ and ‘child-informers.’
Whose Safety?
The ethnographic component of the research was conducted over four
years, in a girls’ potacabin in Ankaluru6 village in Bijapur. Bordering on
two states—to the west, Maharashtra, and Telangana to the south-west—
Bijapur is one of the most linguistically diverse districts of Chhattisgarh.
The commonly spoken languages of the district are Gondi, Halbi, Dorla,
Telugu, Marathi, and Hindi as the state language. While the district is
located at an intersection of different cultures and languages, the geog-
raphy of the school is unique in itself. It is situated at a distance of eight
kilometres from Koyeru village, which hosted a relief camp for people
who were internally displaced due to the conflict as this village is one
among the many that suffered the violence of Salwa Judum. The interior
hamlets of Koyeru are identified as the ‘border’ between the accessible
and inaccessible places of Bijapur district. However, one cannot make a
clear distinction between the villages which are PLGA strongholds and
those that are not. Further, the girl’s potacabin in Ankaluru was the last
infrastructure on the ‘developed’ and accessible (by the government) side
of the village. The school marked the boundary between the village and
the ‘liberated villages’ that were under the control of the Maoist leaders,
separated by two rivers between them. A police station, a paramilitary
camp, and a settlement camp separated the school from the hamlets where
villagers lived.
The potacabin school was maintained by an all-women staff—all
“anudeshaks”5 —and men were not allowed on its premises without
permission. The school demonstrated an interesting case of a ‘safe’ resi-
dence for girls that was claimed to exist in the perceived heart of the
conflict, where there is a police station and a CRPF camp right behind the
school. Moreover, the soldiers from the camp and policemen constantly
patrolled the area around the school. The locations of potacabin, and
weekly patrolling of the potacabin by paramilitary forces reveal more

about the shielding function that these schools performed towards saving
the state machinery than the children.
The potacabin was not the only site where the children encountered
patrolling uniformed men. Right next to the taxi stand, near the entrance
of the CRPF camp, was a store run by the relatives of the potacabin
school-warden. The store, though general in nature, also sold alcohol
and very often the soldiers would congregate at the shop buying alcohol.
There were also instances where the CRPF personnel sent children to
buy alcohol. The scenes around buying and selling of alcohol, espe-
cially by mostly outsiders (non-Indigenous CRPF men) is interesting as
the Indigenous children were taught about the evils of drinking as it is
common among Indigenous communities to brew and drink traditional
drinks. Even though one did not see the so called ‘child-soldier’ in this
setting, as presumably all the children were in school, children were no
strangers to armed patrolling, and some of them also interacted with these
military personnel in other settings.
The above portrayal of the potacabin school ecology shows a
dichotomy in the presence of the state in rural Bastar. On the one hand,
there was a hypervisibility of the state in forms of uniformed soldiers
and, on the other, the state’s presence was invisible in the infrastruc-
ture and development side. Though state apathy in this region has been
a constant topic of discussion in research and media for decades, the
reality is that the infrastructure is only visible in papers and discourses.
For example, there were electric lines, television and set-top boxes, and
also computers in the schools, but the power-cuts were so common that
the school children finished their dinner, their visit to the river, and their
homework before sunset every day. The direct and indirect relationships
between the “repressive state apparatus” of police stations, military camps,
paramilitary, and auxiliary forces and the “ideological state apparatus” of
schools, anganwadi centres (pre-kindergarten centers), health centres, and
panchayats (village councils performing the role of local governance at the
village level.) were witnessed in the constant surveillance of these spaces.
The presence of the state was felt in the humiliating gaze of suspicions by
the security forces on road, in shops, in weekly markets, in health centres,
and in school premises.
Apart from these formal offices, there were also school management
committees (SMCs) that function to serve the ideology of coercive devel-
opment. The members of these committees are the Sarpanch (Head) of
216 R. KUMARI
the village, headmaster/headmistress of the school, teachers, and parents

of the children. There were fortnightly meetings of SMCs, where the
members are encouraged to participate in the discussions around educa-
tion and other welfare plans. Apart from the meetings held by the school
exclusively for SMC members, the village meetings also involved SMCs. A
couple of the village meetings that I attended had been about the overall
welfare of the village, that included education as one of the matters on
the agenda. Education, especially in the boarding schools, was seen to be
the most ‘viable’ solution for all the children at ‘risk.’
The school and residences for children and staff are spread over a vast
land without any kind of ‘physical safety measures’ like boundary walls.
Moreover, unlike urban-based formal schools, children from this pota-
cabin displayed more agency as they were often seen moving in and out
of the school, going back and forth to the river for a bath, and performing
adult-like duties in caring for younger siblings, cooking and helping in the
mess, and shopping for groceries for the entire school. While the vulner-
ability of children was discussed in official reports, some of the responses
of local people about potacabins emphasize a more-than-vulnerable status
of children. The purpose and the objective of potacabins, according to
the local teachers and community members, pointed to a perceived threat
that these children posed to mainstream governance. Some of the chil-
dren were monitored not only for their attendance in the school and for
their overall well-being but for their perceived connection with the Maoist
communities. Below I present excerpts from the interviews I conducted
with the community members about their views on potacabin.
Potacabin is under central government. It is for those children who have

dropped out of school or could never enrol, poor children and the ones
who are not getting any education. Such children are admitted to potacabin
and brought to mainstream education. Not the ones who are admitted in
the primary schools here. But the thing is no one is following rules here.
They take everybody into potacabin. But according to the rules it is for
those who have been deprived of education. All the children from the
young age till 14 years who have dropped out of school or the ones
who have to go to a far place to get educated have to be admitted
in these potacabins. Accommodation is provided. (Kavre Yama, a retired
headmaster)
The main purpose behind these potacabins was for drop-out children –
to mainstream those who are deprived of education, living in jungle, are
engaged in cattle-grazing, farming etc. This was also constructed so that
these children do not join the other sides – galat raste per na chale jaye.”
(Rajesh Jhadi, adhikshak [in-charge] of a boys’ potacabin)
The common belief in these interactions with the communities at the

local level is that the potacabins are established for children belonging to
a certain section of the population. These are mostly the children who are
directly or indirectly involved in conflict with the state and, hence, there
is a need to educate them and bring them ‘into the fold’ of mainstream
education. Mainstream education for them was the education provided by
state government. The community members were aware of the schools
run by the Maoists in the hinterland, but they did not believe them to
be providing mainstream education. It was against such an education
that the children were to be trained in potacabins. Moreover, the phrase
“galat raste per na chale jayen” (they should not join the wrong sides) was
repeatedly narrated by both the local community members and the offi-
cials. By ‘wrong sides’ they meant the Maoist groups. The geographical
location of the school as described in this study hints at a twofold assump-
tion of safety. At one level, the campus is assumed to be safeguarded by
the very presence of a police station and a CRPF camp right by its side.
On another level, the safety of the residents on the premises is ensured
by eliminating the presence of men on the campus. In other words, the
girls from potacabin could not invite their male parents or male siblings
and friends to the potacabin but they were constantly monitored by the
armed male soldiers from the military camp. Here, I find the concept
of this double bind of ‘safety,’ ‘at-risk’ and ‘innocence,’ ‘threat’ useful
as I draw upon Jaqueline Bhabha’s (2019) positioning of migrating chil-
dren who are wedged between a double imperative of protectionism, as
in the phrase ‘in the best interest of the child,’ and exclusion that imag-
ines migrating undocumented and unaccompanied children as ‘potential
threats and offenders.’
Conclusion
With an objective to complicate the notions of safety, this chapter
establishes three themes that emerged from the ethnographic study of
residential schools in rural Bastar. First, the chapter demonstrates how
218 R. KUMARI
discursive strategies around children’s safety are used by the state to

gain legitimacy in their constructions of Indigenous childhoods of Adivasi
children. I do this by establishing the historical role that the residential
schooling system has played in the lives of Indigenous children. Further, I
show that the schools as ‘safe’ spaces become uncritically assumed during
the period of civil unrest, opening up an avenue for the state to lead
a discursive strategy to recast Adivasi children into state-subjects. The
second theme of the chapter engages with discourses on ‘safety’ that not
only create a separation between adults and children while overlooking
children’s participatory role in their socio-cultural contexts, but also the
very framing of safety imposes the construction of children ‘in need of
protection’ on Adivasi childhoods. I explore this by showing that the state
selectively highlights or omits the language of violence, safety, school-
education, and children’s framing as ‘vulnerable,’ not only to establish
state-regulations but also as an instrumentality in producing ‘interlocking’
frameworks of Adivasi childhoods. The last section provides ethnographic
examples to show how the discourses on children’s safety get translated
into the everyday language of education at the local level. Further, this
section contrasts the perceived ‘unsafe’ geographies against the milita-
rized context that is assumed to provide protection to communities and
children.
I show that the policy reports that children’s “lack of exposure to main-
stream society and lack of confidence to perform” makes them gullible
or easily impressionable to accept the path of violence and, at the same
time, this exposure, through the residential schooling system, will “shape
them into valuable citizens in their future” (Glendenning 2012). In offi-
cial discourse, in policy, and in my interactions with the representatives
from the Department of Education, a common strand of anxiety around
education emerged as children’s perceived innocence—an innocence that
not only made the children ‘victims’ of violence but also framed them
as potential threats. This anxiety was articulated by every official whom
I met during my fieldwork. The often-repeated phrase was, we have to
bring these children to the mainstream education, otherwise they would take
the wrong path. The ‘wrong path’ here meant joining the PLGA. The
statement, repeated several times during my stay in the village, was part
of similar narratives that sought to construct this binary image of Adivasi
children who are ‘in need of protection’ and, simultaneously, had to be
disciplined to ensure that they do not pose a ‘threat.’
Notes
1. Contemporary debates on indigeneity in India are informed by complex
definitions of the term ‘Indigenous’ along with other contesting terms such
as ‘Adivasi,’ or ‘tribal societies,’ or ‘Scheduled Tribe’ (an official state cate-
gory, borrowed from colonial administrative dialect, to recognize Adivasi
ethnicities in India under affirmative action policies), and also as ‘Giri-
jan’ (translated as ‘hill people’) in some parts of the country. The term
‘Indigenous Peoples’ is becoming popular in community assertions of inter-
national rights and ILO recognized rights, and also in the celebrations
during World Indigenous Day. However, the Government of India, despite
voting in “favour of United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indige-
nous people” (Cultural Survival 2016), continuously denies the recognition
of the term “Indigenous peoples” to various communities of India.
2. Communist Party of India (Maoist), a union of three parties, The People’s
War Group Maoist Communist Centre, and The Communist Party of
India-Marxist Leninist-Janashakti, was formed in 2004. “The immediate
aim of the party is to accomplish the New Democratic Revolution in India
by overthrowing imperialism, feudalism and comprador bureaucratic capi-
talism only through the Protracted People’s War … The ultimate aim of
the party is to bring about communism” (Party Statement). PLGA is the
armed wing of the CPI(M) and is popularly called ‘Naxals’ or Maoists in
‘India.’ CPI(M) as an organization in banned in India.
3. Scheduled areas, also called fifth and sixth schedules, are the regions of
central and north-eastern India that constitutionally protect the cultural and
economic rights of Adivasi communities. Though the areas were scheduled
as such under British colonial regime for bureaucratic processes, the Indian
constitutions adopted this policy to ensure special governance mechanisms
for certain ‘scheduled areas’ (Manish 2017).
4. NITI Aayog replaced the erstwhile Planning Commission of India in 2015
(Save the Children. 2013; Tabak 2020).
5. Anudeshak are youth teacher-motivators. Young men and women who have
been able to complete their secondary school certificate are appointed in
the role of Anudeshak (Anudeshika for women) as ‘motivators’ whose role
is to survey and bring the ‘out-of-school’ children to the residential schools.
6. The names of people and places have been changed to maintain confiden-
tiality.
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CHAPTER 12
Raising the Empire’s Children? Everyday

Insecurities and Parenting the Privileged
in the United States
Jennifer Riggan
Introduction
While theories of ‘American Empire’ are discussed across disciplines,
little attention has been paid to how subjects of this empire are socially
produced through the highly intimate process of raising children. Despite
a turn toward the examination of everyday security practices and perfor-
mances, there has been no examination of parenting as a performance
of in/security. This chapter contends that examining the securitization
of parenting practices is essential if we wish to better understand the
subject position of childhood as produced in and by early twenty-first
century American Empire. Parenting in America has been transformed
into an incessant project of keeping children safe from an array of threats
and is defined through an array of biopolitically constructed practices of
J. Riggan (B)
Arcadia University, Glenside, PA, USA
e-mail: rigganj@arcadia.edu

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74788-6_12
224 J. RIGGAN
in/security, including categorizing children as threat or threatened, and

enabling a form of playful militarism which intermingles safety and danger
in complex ways. The chapter argues that a particular kind of imperial
subject—the children of empire—is produced through this assemblage
of neoliberalism, biopolitics, militarism, and play. This assemblage is
visible in parenting practices oriented around expert knowledge of risk
and protection, the normalization of regimes of surveillance and sorting,
and the cultivation of playful militarism that blurs the lines between
violence and fun. Based on auto-ethnographic work on parenting, the
chapter illuminates the stories parents tell about our children’s safety.
It argues that parenting in America in the early twenty-first century is
uniquely situated to produce subjects who expect to be kept safe, made
comfortable, and entertained, often with increasingly violent (yet never
physically dangerous) forms of play. Meanwhile, the children of empire
and their parents remain ignorant of the privilege that these assemblages
require them to cultivate. The chapter is organized around four different
stories which illuminate the structures that discipline and give shape
to parenting among a relatively privileged but extremely insecure class:
liberal, middle-class Americans.
The Dinosaur Game

When my son was four, I received an email from his teacher telling me
about the “dinosaur game.” She was letting parents know that in school
that day they had been doing a “lockdown drill” in which they were
expected to hide in silence in their darkened, locked classroom. She noted
that this was one of many drills that they did routinely in schools including
shelter in place drills, evacuation drills, and good old-fashioned fire drills.
She explained that to better enable such young children to remain quiet,
they told them they were playing a game, pretending that there was a
T-Rex outside. Although they assured the children that there were no T-
Rexes on Earth, she noted that some children might still be scared. She
praised our children for moving quietly and following the directions that
came over the loudspeaker. She also noted that there was a somewhat
unusual event during the dinosaur game. While they were quietly locked
down, there was a repeated knocking on the door. They all remained
silent and only later learned that a teacher had gotten locked out of the
room. The children later revealed what they thought happened. Some
thought that the authorities might be testing them. Others thought it
12 RAISING THE EMPIRE’S CHILDREN? EVERYDAY INSECURITIES … 225
might be a real dinosaur. All were relieved to know that it was their
teacher.
I begin this chapter with the “dinosaur game” because it illustrates the
merger of several elements of parenting and childhood in the early twenty-
first century: the discipline of children and their caregivers around rituals
intended to keep them safe, the sense of insecurity that both produces
and is produced through these rituals, and the embeddedness of play and
playfulness within this securitization of childhood. What are the effects of
this array of drills on our parenting, on children’s growing up, and on
our sense of safety and danger? What is the work of these drills? Do they
keep our children safe, or produce a sense of danger, or both?
Drilling, like testing and a range of other biopolitical technologies,
which are core to the experience of parenting and childhood these
days, has been normalized. We do not question its effects. There is
also, always, a looming, invisible presence of authorities checking up on
whether children are being properly kept safe. This increasingly dense
network of people and procedures includes law, law enforcement, emer-
gency personnel, and school personnel. These dense networks mandate,
coerce, and convince institutions to implement these drills.
At the same time, danger and security are transformed into a game but
a game that produces anxiety. The children, apparently, had played this
and other games before. They knew that the entire school was playing
“the dinosaur game.” This knowledge was supposed to make them feel
better, but what a strange way to grow up, knowing that your whole
school is playing a game and pretending that dinosaurs are outside—a
game that, even though dinosaurs are not real, clearly raises anxieties in
children. This interweaving of performances of in/security and gameplay
produces a strange combination of anxiety and virtuality, which is echoed
in children’s play more broadly. While a drill intended to ward off poten-
tial danger is made into a game, children’s play—and society—become
increasingly militarized.
Feminist Security Studies of militarism call our attention to several
things that frame this chapter. First, feminist studies of militarism focus
on the subtle and everyday ways that militarism is infused in everyday life,
often prior to our awareness of it (Enloe 2007; Basham 2018; Wibben
2018). Second, the sub-field calls our attention to the power of narra-
tive approaches to apprehend and convey these everyday realms (Wibben
2011; Rowley and Weldes 2012). With this in mind, while this chapter
is informed by social theory and my research on militarized societies
226 J. RIGGAN
outside of the United States, here I have privileged my experiences as

a parent over academic literatures and framings in an effort to get at
the quotidian and mundane roots of why we, as privileged citizens of
a powerful country, feel so insecure and how the paradox of in/security
may inadvertently reproduce violence, power, and American Empire.
Parenting in America in the early twenty-first century is uniquely situ-
ated to produce subjects who expect to be kept safe, made comfortable,
and entertained, often with increasingly violent (yet seldom physically
dangerous) forms play. In their work on ludic, or playful, geopolitics, Sean
Carter et al. (2016: 62) argue that while popular and academic literatures
debate whether war toys make children more violent, these studies over-
look the more insidious problem that “military-themed children’s toys
might naturalize or sanitize particular military logics.” Meanwhile, chil-
dren and their parents remain ignorant of the privilege that this complex
combination of danger, safety, and play entails.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s (2001) notion of empire is useful
here. They conceptualize empire as a deterritorialized entity which situ-
ates America as powerful, but not as a sovereign power. Rather, Hardt
and Negri argue that this new configuration of empire replaces national
sovereignty with capitalist sovereignty. Under this new dispensation, some
Americans are privileged; however, they are not necessarily protected
or assured of well-being and prosperity. Thus, this conceptualization of
empire is not only concerned with conquest and control of territory
abroad but with the production of domestic inequalities as well.
My focus here is on the American middle class—a group of people
who are liminally situated between vulnerability/insecurity and privi-
lege/safety and are, therefore, at the epicenter of a contradictory Amer-
ican empire. Vis-à-vis the Global South and the American poor and
working classes, the middle class is still tremendously secure, safe, and
privileged. However, neoliberal economics has situated this class in such a
way so as to be acutely aware of their vulnerability and economic precarity,
and, even more importantly, their children’s vulnerability. Several genera-
tions have slowly been becoming aware of the fact that their children will
not be as prosperous as they were. This amplifies a sense of danger, which
takes a variety of forms. My focus here is also on the left-leaning factions
of the American middle class, parents who would not regard themselves as
‘hawkish’ and might even regard themselves as pacifists. These parents are
also liminally situated as their beliefs and value systems are overtaken by
our children’s increasingly militarized childhoods, leaving peaceful parents

even more anxious.
This chapter uses a narrative approach to explore how parental perfor-
mances of security and insecurity are socially producing national subjects
situated to reproduce and defend a decentralized and highly unequal
American empire. To make this claim, the chapter draws primarily on
auto-ethnographic reflections on my experiences raising two bi-racial,
half-African boys in an upper-middle class, predominantly White neigh-
borhood in the semi-urban United States. My children and many
members of their community attend what might be called ‘progressive’
independent schools, many of them Quaker schools with a strong orienta-
tion towards peace. The chapter is a result of an intensive reflexive process
of interrogating my own experiences, decisions, and emotions as a parent,
using social theory to systematically amplify certain components of that
experience. I use an auto-ethnographic and narrative approach and draw
on feminist Security Studies and critical International Relations to focus
on the everyday realms of power and disempowerment. This approach
allows me to illuminate the stories parents tell ourselves about our chil-
dren’s safety and expose the ways in which we are disciplined by these
discourses of threat and security to engage in parenting practices that
unwittingly produce the children of empire. This chapter is organized
around several different stories. Each story illuminates a component of
processes and structures that discipline and give shape to parenting among
liberal, middle-class, Americans. The construction of privilege and excep-
tionality juxtaposed with risk and insecurity is a theme that winds its way
through all of these stories.
Getting the Lead Out: Disciplining

the Parents of Empire (To Worry a Lot)
Following a routine visit to my pediatrician, which included a periodic
lead screening for my two-year old, I received a call saying that my son’s
lead levels were elevated. My stomach dropped. Up to that moment I
had refused to worry about lead. After all, I thought, I grew up in an
old house full of lead and I have a Ph.D. In a moment the phone call
made me wonder, am I bad parent? What have I done wrong? Maybe I
should have shelled out tens of thousands of dollars to strip the layers of
lead from my hundred and fifty-year old house or, at least, disposed of
or repainted the radiators. Maybe I should not have bought the house
228 J. RIGGAN
in the first place. Ironically, the nurse on the other end of the phone
was not concerned. She apologized for the hassle and told me that the
only reason she called at all is because, “they changed the criteria.” She
explained that a few months ago, his lead levels would not have been
considered risky at all and she would not be calling, but now protocols
required that they inform me that his lead levels were slightly elevated
and they would monitor them going forward.
I was confused and asked, “What does this mean?”.
The nurse’s voice was calm, bored even. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We
just need to keep an eye on him.” She actually sounded annoyed with
my pressing her, making me wonder how many times she had had this
conversation.
The cause of the “new criteria” that triggered lead monitoring had
little to do with his being at risk for dangerously high lead levels and
everything to do with a new study that was released warning of the life-
long impact of very low (rather than just low) levels of lead in children. It
was common practice for our pediatrician to check for lead levels and to
monitor children as a precaution if they showed low lead levels, but this
new study had mandated that they now monitor very low lead levels. As a
result of this new study, our pediatrician, who was part of a large citywide
network, decided to halve the lead level required to trigger monitoring. It
was automatic. A protocol. This did not mandate a treatment of any sort,
just monitoring. So, one has to ask what had been accomplished through
these new protocols except to make parents nervous.
I, a parent who does not usually worry, worried. A lot. Lead has
become a specter for parents. Lead is evil, poison. Lead will reduce our
children’s IQ, dooming them in our highly competitive world. The spec-
tral quality of lead leads people to spend enormous amounts of money on
lead removal and to fear even the smallest amounts of lead. In many ways
lead goes to the heart of our anxieties about our children’s future ability
to succeed in a world that we perceive as increasingly competitive.
The spectral quality of fears about lead, like many of the anxieties
that get produced in parents, also individuate our children and require
us to isolate our concern around our own child rather than focusing on
collective solutions to societal problems. Lead, of course, is not good,
particularly when your children ingest it, but it is also not the only toxin
in our highly toxic world. Indeed, a recent study found that “flame retar-
dants and pesticides overtake heavy metals as biggest contributors to IQ
loss” (Gaylord et al. 2020). Additionally, lead, and an array of far more
insidious toxins, disproportionately affect poor children whose families

lack the means to get the lead out. Meanwhile, a lead removal industry,
which only the wealthiest can afford, has flourished. We feel that we—
individual family and individual child—are under attack by lead instead of
understanding that we are living in a collectively toxic world.
This sense of being individually under siege plays out in every facet of
the way we raise our children. In the literature—popular and scholarly—
camps of experts square off against each other, each trying to convince
us that, if we do not follow their advice, we will relegate our children
to a bleak life (Hulbert 2004). This begins before birth. The battle lines
between camps of experts are drawn around birth practices, breastfeeding,
solid foods, toilet training, child safety, sleep. These battles permeate every
possible realm of a child’s and parents’ life.
The passion with which parents defend the camp of experts they
choose is also a striking reflection of the stakes of parenting. I have seen
friendships grow strained because parents choose to follow the advice of
different sleep experts or make different choices about breastfeeding or
birth. There is no middle ground as parents are led to believe in one
orthodoxy or another.
What all of these battles of the experts have in common is their ability
to heighten the sense that children’s health, emotional wellbeing, and
future happiness is being threatened. There is the constant sense that one
misstep on the part of parents will result in a bleak future for the child.
Even before birth, parents are led to believe that having and raising chil-
dren is one long project of sifting through the competing evidence and
making hard choices between camps of experts, all in order to do battle
to protect our children from maladjustment, disease, or even death.
Expert knowledge that disciplines parents and dictates parenting deci-
sions also constitutes larger scale processes, which are intensely biopolit-
ical. This is particularly true of expert knowledge that is supported by
the medical establishment. For example, the lead study which I wrote
about at the beginning of this section not only sparked my individual
parental anxiety and intense feelings of guilt that my failed vigilance may
have damaged my child, but was used to create protocols for the largest
network of pediatricians in a metropolitan area of over two million people.
It, thus, individuated a sense of risk and danger around my child and
totalized that sense of danger to a larger collective.
As scholars, scientists, and parenting pundits square off against each
other, there is seldom much reflexivity about the potential flaws in expert
230 J. RIGGAN
knowledge (Lee et al. 2010). Nor is there much reflexivity about the
kinds of social reproduction occurring through these highly securitized
practices of child-rearing and parent socialization. And yet, the process of
securitizing childhood is tremendously powerful in its capacity to produce
a subject position for parents that is perpetually anxious, nervous, and
insecure. The threats to our children’s well-being are perceived as being
everywhere. And between these various camps of “experts” there is little
space for instinct, intuition, or knowledge gleaned from our elders or even
friends (Jenkins 2006). Additionally, this emphasis on danger and risk has
a powerful emotional impact as parents become increasingly anxious and
insecure about their parenting and its effects on their children’s future
(Lee et al. 2010).
Which Children Get to Be “Free”: Surveilling

and Sorting the Families of Empire
It was somewhere around the third week of September at that time of
day when you cannot decide if it is evening or night. Summer lingered,
holding enough warmth to make children want to play outside even
though the light had long since left. My older son was nine or ten.
His friends, our neighbors, were racing up and down the block having
a raucous, exuberant Nerf gun war. Obviously, my son wanted to join
them. When I told him it was late and time for him to be in the house a
self-righteous wailing escaped his lips, an elongated moan: “but theeeyyy
get to play outside!”.
“I am not their parents,” I explained calmly, “and I don’t think it’s
safe for you to play on the sidewalk after dark with Nerf guns.”
Our neighborhood is just about as safe as a neighborhood can be. I
routinely leave the house and car doors open and often forget to even
close the front door. During the day, I think nothing of letting my chil-
dren run freely around our block and into the alleyways on either side.
My older son can walk with a friend to the drug story three blocks away
and he has on occasion walked the half mile to the playground. I am not
an overprotective parent.
That evening, my prohibition on playing outside after dark surprised
even me. It was an instinct. The Nerf guns had a lot to do with it. In
the seconds that followed, I found myself rapidly calculating a number of
things. I wondered if I was being unreasonable, overprotective, dramatic.
Then I thought about the epidemic of unarmed African Americans, some
children, shot by police, aware that those victims look more like my chil-
dren than me. Then I thought about the number of times my husband has
been walking through our neighborhood and someone, inevitably a white
woman, crossed the street quite obviously as he approached. I calculated
the number of times police have slowed down as they pass him, followed
him, or even stopped near our house to watch him. And, as I always do
in these moments, I began the calculus of skin tone, wondering if police
would see my children as white or Black. What I am really trying to figure
out is will they be categorized as threat or threatened.
It only takes me a few seconds to run through this confused but
familiar thought process. My son is ahead of me.
“Is it because I’m Black?” he asks, calm now. I nod. The fight is over.
We are not all situated by biopolitical regimes in the same way. Privi-
lege manifests not only in thinking—assuming—that you can protect your
children, but also in white parents’ understanding that they can utilize the
state’s instruments of force to do so. However, those state instruments of
force protect some children and categorize others as a threat.
Several years ago, a story got the attention of my community on social
media. The Meitevs, a family in suburban Silver Spring, Maryland who
advocate for “free range parenting” allowed their children, age 10 and
6, to roam freely around their suburban (and very safe) neighborhood.
They were warned that their parenting style was negligent and their chil-
dren were picked up by police. The children were picked up by police
again and detained for several hours a second time while their parents
searched for them. This time the parents were warned that if they did
not see to it that their children were adequately supervised, the children
could be removed (Shapiro 2015). Social media conversations focused
alternately (and sometimes simultaneously) on expressions of shock at the
far-reaching powers of “the authorities,” on one hand, and concern about
the parenting choices of the Meitevs on the other. But in this conversation
about the rights of parents to determine what is safe, what was seldom
noted was that many children are persistently categorized as the threat
rather than the threatened. The Meitev incident not only reveals the far-
reaching powers of the police, law, and child protective services, but the
fact that middle class, white, suburban families are not typically accus-
tomed to having their parenting scrutinized by law enforcement. Poor
parents and parents of color are far more vulnerable to the biopolitical
assemblage of law enforcement and child protective services.
232 J. RIGGAN
Similarly, it is also important to note who and what kind of children

are deemed potential victims to be protected and who and what cate-
gory of children are deemed a threat. Among my electronic community,
the Meitev story experienced a great deal more ‘buzz’ than the tragically
routine stories of the vulnerability of Black children to police violence.
Not all children are protected. Some children are ‘the kind of people’
from whom the innocent must be protected. Additionally, being able to
protect your children by minding them all the time, walking them to
the playground (or hiring someone to do so), is also a by-product of
privilege. The fact that the authorities tend to ‘protect’ some children
while they protect ‘the people’ from others illuminates the privilege of the
largely white, middle classes. The act of protecting reveals the ways that
authorities can intimately insert themselves into the realm of parenting
by scrutinizing and disciplining even the most privileged and thereby
revealing the vulnerabilities in this privileged class.
The Nerf Gun Battle Birthday Party: Playful

Militarization in an Anxious Empire
When my children were four and eight, they were invited to a Nerf gun
battle birthday party. On the campus of a progressive, private school,
twenty or thirty children brought their Nerf guns and Nerf ammunition
and chased each other around in the fall sunlight shooting each other
with Nerf darts. What was particularly intriguing to me was that many, if
not most, of the parents commented on how disturbing this was as they
watched their children. This community of parents were generally left-
leaning, politically. Many would regard themselves as pacifists. I imagine
that at least half of the children attended Quaker schools, a religion in
which peace is a central tenet. So why, if the majority of parents were
disturbed by this, did we allow this to happen? Why did no one say no,
or forbid their child from coming to the party? For most this was not
their first Nerf gun battle party.
Exploring this question sheds light not only on the intimacy of
processes of militarization in the United States, but on the ways in which
militarization and play become entangled. Moving us away from debates
on whether children’s war play is a replica of more adult forms of milita-
rization or a “foil” for it, Carter, Kirby and Woodyer argue that these
forms of play are better seen as a “corollary” to militarization: “It is
our contention that it is precisely play’s banal and take-for-granted nature
that enables widespread domestication and normalization of military tech-

niques and logics and allows for their role in popular imaginaries to go
frequently unchallenged” (Carter et al. 2016: 63).
Building on this thinking on the effects of militarized children’s play
on children, here I explore why parents who are, for the most part, crit-
ical of America’s wars, allow and enable their children to engage in this
banal warplay. One might argue that a playful militarization is shaped
by the combination of corporate marketing directly to children and an
array of parental anxieties—for example, whether or not their children
will fit in, whether or not the parents will fit in, and the desire for chil-
dren to play outside. However, all of this is framed by the ubiquity of
a stealth infusion of militarism into children’s toys and media. Parents
have little control over how products enter their children’s conscious-
ness. Through an extensive network of branding and marketing directly
to children, products enter very young children’s consciousness.
Nerf is a particularly interesting product to look at because of its long-
term association with safety. A 2012 article in Wired magazine details the
historical evolution of Nerf as well as their current efforts to successfully
market to evolving generations (Fagone 2012). The Nerf ball, introduced
in 1970, became instantly popular as a “safe” toy. Since then Nerf has
been an extremely inventive and resilient product line, always maintaining
its brand’s association with loyalty and safety, while also innovating to
keep up with new needs and desires of its consumers. In the late 1980s,
Nerf introduced its first blaster. Then, later in the early 2000s, as chil-
dren became more interested in video games, Nerf became even more
inventive, designing a more accurate toy simulation of larger and more
powerful weaponry. Nerf has been on a constant quest to improve its
products to fire further and faster, in part to keep up with users who were
‘modding’ their products. These efforts have generally been successful.
Their 2011 revenues were $410 million, making them one of only three
Hasbro brands to make more than $400 million that year. And, although
Nerf and other toy lines are supposedly in constant competition with
electronic toys and products, they seem to be doing quite well (Fagone
2012). We might say that Nerf embodies the ideals of safe warplay, which
might be why supposedly liberal, peace-loving parents are accepting of the
infiltration of Nerf guns into our lives. Nerf, it would seem, has done this
not because they have ulterior motives of stealthily militarizing children’s
play, not to promote some kind of militarized agenda, but because that
is what sells. And it has sold very well.
234 J. RIGGAN
Another thing that makes Nerf guns particularly interesting is their

capacity to mimic the real thing. In fact, Hasbro has spent extensive funds
and gone to great effort to obtain blueprints of actual weaponry to make
their toys as realistic as possible (Scott 2010). Nerf guns (along with other
lines of toy guns) can now so closely mimic real guns that there are federal
and state laws that mandate ways in which toy guns must look more toy-
like, so as not to be confused with real guns (CFR 15 Section 272). They
have to have a colored tip, for example, so that they cannot be mistaken
for a real gun. In some states they cannot be painted black. In fact, there
have been instances of police shooting children, ostensibly because they
mistook a toy gun for a real one. But aside from their coloring, these toys
very closely resemble real weapons.
In the public sphere, there is debate revolving around the psychology
and pop-psychology of the use of toy guns; however, the debate mainly
revolves around whether or not violent or militarized toys and media will
make children more violent or not. On one side, parents made even more
anxious about the presence of guns in the face of school shootings argue
that guns are not toys (McKinley and Richtel 2013). On the other side,
many psychologists (and pop-psychologists) say that this kind of play is
healthy and might actually reduce violence by allowing young people to
work out violent impulses safely (Dvorak 2013; Kessler, n.d.). However,
beyond the discussion of whether this will make an individual more
violent, there seems to be little debate or discussion on what the society-
wide effects are as militarized toys and weaponry become more and more
prevalent and normalized. Cutting across this debate, Tara Woodyer and
Sean Carter (2020) explore the effects of layering the geographies of chil-
dren’s play onto the geographies of popular geopolitics. They refocus
us on the ambiguities of children’s play and the ways it may transform
geopolitical imaginaries (Woodyer and Carter 2020). But what does it
transform it into, especially given the fusion of virtual and real which is
present throughout the realm of children’s play?
This process of simulation and mimicry—toying with the real while not
being too real—is reflective of the current state of American militarization
as well as the current state of children’s play. A growing literature notes
the increased militarization of children’s toys (Varney 2000), video games
(Copeland 2011), and culture overall (Beier 2011a, b). But attention also
needs to be paid to the virtuality of these experiences of playful milita-
rization. The prevalence of militarism in video games has been examined,
but the virtuality of the material world, through toys like Nerf guns that
simulate the real while being a toy, has been focused on much less.
An interesting inversion of the fusion of the virtual and material worlds
can be found in the popular video game, Fortnite, and, more specifi-
cally, in the array of dance moves popular among young children that
come from the video game. Fortnite is an animated first-person shooter
game based on a seemingly Hunger Games-inspired, survival of the fittest
scenario. Avatars perform dances when they have killed but may also
dance to form alliances. Like Nerf toys, Fortnite creates a dilemma for
many peaceful parents. Because of its animation and the cute dances, it
sneaks in and seems innocuous. It is also ubiquitous, making many parents
forget that what is being simulated and celebrated here is killing. Not
only is this a fascinating example of the fusion of militarism, violence, and
play, but also of the insertion of the virtual world into the material world.
Because of the popularity of these dance moves, children do them often,
at bus stops, in line at school, in the grocery store, everywhere. Fort-
nite has effectively inserted itself in children’s everyday lives and habits.
Children are effectively acting out a violent game in the least violent way
possible.
As video games become more warlike and as virtual worlds consume
us, and particularly our young, war becomes more game-like, or, as Lesley
Copeland (2011: 145) notes, “digital childhood meets virtual war.” But
so, too, toys have come to approximate reality in a way that simulates the
virtual world. This convergence of war and game into a virtual reality
means that violence is virtually experienced and experience is virtually
violent all without experiencing physical pain. Virtuality may be perceived
as safe, but is it? The process of construing virtual war as safe war assumes
that some lives are there to be killed and some to live, that some lives are
grievable and some entirely irrelevant “bare life” (Agamben 1998; Butler
2006).
If the distinction between life that can be grieved and life that should
be protected is arguably at the heart of American Empire, what does
virtual warplay teach our young? I would suggest that conversations
about whether virtual violence is making children more violent misses
the broader problem. Twenty-first century wars increasingly do not need
warriors predisposed to physical violence. They need virtual warriors with
strong hands, fast reflexes, strong intellects, and a tolerance for long hours
spent alone with a screen. They need warriors with a psychology that buys
into the logic that “this is all a game.”
236 J. RIGGAN
Raising the Children of Empire

and the Backdrop of a Gap in the Skyline
I was watching the 1998 version of Godzilla with my children recently.
In it, most of the landmarks in New York are destroyed by the monster.
In the midst of this rampant destruction, my children, the youngest of
whom was born ten years after 9/11, were fixated on the presence of
the World Trade Towers in the film. This is not the first time they have
given voice to this obsession. Whenever we visit New York, drive past the
city, or watch a movie that features the city, they ask about the towers.
They ask where on the skyline the towers would have been and what they
looked like. They are excited when they show up in a film.
I, of course, experienced 9/11 as a world changing event, but on 9/11
and in its immediate aftermath, my husband and I were actually much
more focused on the political turbulence in my husband’s native Eritrea.
While the world was distracted with 9/11, Eritrea staunchly cracked
down on political and civil liberties, a political move which it has not
come back from since. That had a much more personal effect on our
lives. Why are my children, twenty years later, so much more aware of
9/11 than the political turbulence that changed their father’s country?
Why have they fetishized the gap in the skyline where the towers used to
be?
Many would argue that 9/11 put in place a series of events that have
marked several generations as products of a societal anxiety about security
and preoccupation with risk management. But 9/11 also marks them as a
generation that understands things through absences. Like the toys they
play with and the playfully militarized storylines of their movies and video
games, 9/11 has infused society. They know about it without being told.
They know it through the absence of towers that used to be there.
As I draft the final version of this chapter, COVID-19 has shifted the
landscapes of childhood, parenting, and American empire in ways that we
could not have foreseen. The virus, like the space where the twin towers
used to be, is an example of the power of invisible entities that we do not
fully understand and yet feel the imminent threat of. Perhaps more impor-
tantly, COVID-19 has shattered our illusions that we can, through our
efforts, keep our children or ourselves safe. At one level, expert knowl-
edge has been revealed as partial and flawed. It has been politicized. At
another level, we are all disciplined by our emerging knowledge of the
virus. It has changed everything about our lives: how we socialize, how
we work, how we learn, even the way we calculate our intimacy and the
relative safety of space between our bodies.
Despite these unfamiliar circumstances, the processes I have described
here—the disciplining nature of risk management, the intermingling of
play and danger, and the profoundly unequal packaging of risk, danger,
safety and play—are operationalized in the time of COVID-19 in familiar
ways. Many school districts across the country have gone online, seeing
shutting down as the only way to stay safe. Other districts have thrown
all caution to the wind and opened despite the risks. Where I sit, on
the edges of insecurity and privilege, the school reopening debate has
followed the fault lines of privilege. While public schools are closed,
private schools are opening. An array of experts has lined up to tell schools
precisely how to open safely. Parents who are privileged enough to have a
choice about whether to send their children to school, once again, stake
out their camps and configure their position around weighing different
risks. On one hand, they cite the intellectual, social, and psychological
dangers of children not going to school. On the other, they cite the
dangers of going to school. Meanwhile, the less privileged have no choice
and are either forced to send their children to school so that they can
work, or are unable to do so, thereby limiting parents’ earning capacity.
As with other societal dangers, the fault lines of COVID track along
familiar lines of socioeconomic class and race, with vulnerable, low-
paid workers, and, specifically, African-American communities, facing far
higher infection rates and greater fatalities. In the midst of the pandemic,
we also saw mass uprisings across the United States calling attention to
the value of Black lives and the epidemic of racism and police shootings.
However, despite promising police reforms in many municipalities, the
risks and dangers from the twin pandemics of racism and COVID-19 are
still unequally allocated. As middle-class parents debate whether to send
children to school, allow them to have a playdate, or enroll them in a
beloved extracurricular activity, this inequality is obscured by our privi-
leged preoccupation with dangers that are far less stringent than those
that are faced by many less privileged communities.
The relationship between play, virtuality, and violence also appears
reconfigured, and yet has remained much the same. More and more of
our children’s sociability has gone online. Many well-meaning but belea-
guered parents have loosened restrictions on video games and turned a
blind eye as war games infiltrate their homes. And, in turn, these games
have made themselves better vessels for sociability and, on occasion, sites
238 J. RIGGAN
to educate young people about social issues. Fortnite, for example, hosts
special events, which might be a popular music concert where my son can
gather virtually with his friends, or a public Black Lives Matter event.
Virtuality—the presence of things that are not materially there—is
more central than ever. Indeed, this presence of something that is not,
or is no longer materially there is central to raising the children of Amer-
ican Empire. We must protect and defend them, guard their security
at every moment, but we often have little clarity of what the threat is,
leaving space for our imagination to fill the absence. The danger feels
ever present, but it is marked by something we do not fully understand,
something we cannot see. An array of experts stands waiting to share a
study with us or, indeed, impose it on us, and sell us a product that will
keep our children safer. We have raised them with intense anxiety, our
fears individuating them, singling them out for protection. They matter
to us. We are negligent parents if each of our children is not an excep-
tion, meriting special consideration in a dangerous world. But protecting
children from danger extends far beyond the confines of our individual
choices as parents. Authorities sort and categorize—threat or threatened,
risk or being to be protected from risk—and they mandate that we protect
or single out for elimination in a grizzly calculus of biopolitical catego-
rization. This only heightens the state of parental anxiety. And, finally, in
schools, this charade of protection leads to a panoply of drills and proto-
cols. We demand it, expect it. We have been led to believe that it makes
us safer, but does it? Lurking being these efforts to keep our children safe
is the ‘Wild West’ of potentially armed teachers. Who will they kill? Who
will they save? But no worries, our children’s delicate psychology will be
protected because this is only a game, the dinosaur game. And the games
continue, taking on a life of their own—killing and dancing, playing at
survival games.
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Index
A boys, 26, 28, 32, 36–38, 67, 125,

Afghanistan, 26, 33, 35, 208 127, 128, 135, 136, 146, 154,
African Union, 31 178, 179, 188, 189, 217, 227
agency, 1, 2, 4–7, 9, 25–29, 31, Bush, George W., 26
34, 38, 46–49, 53, 60, 66,
67, 73, 74, 79, 87, 91, 104,
116, 166–168, 170, 171, 173, C
175–179, 185, 188, 190, 192, childhood, 1–12, 14–16, 26–28,
193, 198, 203, 216 36, 46–51, 53, 56, 60, 61,
Algeria, 123–127, 129, 131, 132, 66–68, 73, 75–78, 86, 104–106,
135–138 108, 109, 116, 117, 124, 132,
Al Qaeda, 33 136–138, 165–170, 173, 179,
American Civil War, 26, 28 184–187, 189–198, 204–206,
Armistice Day, 86, 90–93, 95–97, 99 210, 214, 218, 223, 225, 227,
230, 235, 236
social construction of, 204
B Childhood Studies, 3, 8, 46, 67, 68,
Balkans, 29, 49 148, 192
biopolitics, 223–225, 229, 231, 238 children
Black Lives Matter, 238 as ‘becomings’, 16, 115, 148
Boko Haram, 30, 37 as emotional scenery, 2, 72, 76
Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), 9, 10, as innocent, 11, 16, 76, 106, 108,
43–50, 53, 54, 56–58, 60, 61 203, 232
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive 241
license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74788-6
242 INDEX
as objects of protection, 11, 12, 15, developmentalism, 147, 157

67 Donbas, 153, 185–189, 194, 197,
as peacebuilders, 3, 11, 66, 72–74, 198
76, 79
as perpetrators, 11, 66, 72, 74, 79
as victims, 1, 2, 5, 7, 10, 11, 15,
24, 25, 66, 72–76, 78, 79, E
105, 143, 170, 179, 191, 214, empire, 16, 85, 123, 223, 224, 226,
218, 231, 232 227, 235, 236, 238
as vulnerable, 2, 8, 10, 14, 25, 73, ethnonationalism, 10, 43–45, 47–50,
124, 193, 203, 205, 209, 213, 52, 53, 55–57, 59–61
216, 218, 231 Eurocentrism, 166, 170, 180
child soldiers, 1–3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 16, European Union (EU), 31, 152
23, 24, 26, 27, 29–34, 36, 38,
39, 43–45, 47–50, 52, 53, 56,
191, 209
F
former, 10, 45, 60
Feraoun, Mouloud, 128–130
stereotypes of, 44, 45, 50, 52, 60
First World War, 12, 28, 85–92, 94,
China (PRC), 103
95, 98, 99
Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 12,
13, 103, 105, 109–117 Fortnite (video game), 235, 238
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), 12, France, 35, 125, 129, 130, 132, 133,
103–105, 107, 109, 110, 113, 136
114, 117 Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de
citizenship, 13, 86, 91, 106, 114, Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo
117, 144, 148, 152, 156, 157 (FARC-EP), 66, 70, 80
civilians, 24, 27–29, 31–33, 35, 55,
56, 123–127, 129, 131–135,
137, 145, 146, 153 G
class, 26, 28, 86, 88, 89, 98, 99, gender, 37, 44, 71, 86, 89, 123, 151
109–112, 117, 224, 226, 232, Geneva Declaration of the Rights of
237 the Child, 1924, 29. See also
Colombia, 2, 11, 65, 66, 74, 75, United Nations Declaration of
77–80
the Rights of the Child, 1959
colonialism, 135
Girl Guides, 90
conscription, 28, 145
girls, 25, 37, 38, 67, 76–78, 96, 125,
COVID-19, 5–7, 71, 236, 237
127, 135, 146, 174, 178, 179,
Crimea, 144, 185–188, 193–195,
188, 189, 197, 205, 214, 217
197, 198
Global North, 2, 4, 199
Global South, 10, 36, 166, 170, 199,
D 226
Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA), 57 Graça Machel Report (1996), 29, 35
INDEX 243
H militarism, 2, 13, 14, 88, 97, 103–

heroes, 43, 45, 59, 60, 94, 155, 196, 105, 107, 108, 113, 116, 117,
197. See also martyrs 151, 152, 155, 157, 191–193,
humanitarianism, 10, 13, 24, 30, 35, 224, 225, 233–235
36, 44, 45, 49, 50, 53, 57, 60, Molano, Alfredo, 71
91, 131, 137, 146, 151, 156,
158, 186, 190, 191
N
narrative, 6–11, 14, 25, 31, 36,
I 44–51, 53, 55, 57–60, 67, 68,
indigeneity, 204, 206, 219 70, 72, 73, 86–89, 92, 97, 155,
Industrial Revolution, 26, 28 165, 166, 168–171, 176, 179,
infanticide, 107 212, 213, 218, 225, 227
internationalism, 12, 86, 88, 89, 92, National Liberation Front (Front de
97 Libération National, FLN), 124,
Iran-Iraq War, 28, 29 127–132, 135, 137
ISIL/ISIS, 25, 32, 33, 37 neoliberalism, 224
Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), 36 Nigeria, 30
norms, 6, 24–27, 29, 31–37, 39, 46,
69, 97, 117, 151, 166, 193
K North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Kashmir, 165–167, 170, 171, 175, (NATO), 31, 35
176, 179, 180
Kheffache, M.A., 128, 136
Korean War, 13, 103, 105, 110, O
112–114, 117 Otunnu, Olara, 30
L P
League of Nations, 86, 88–95, 97, 98 pacificism, 89
League of Nations Union (LNU), 12, parenting, 2, 16, 223–227, 229–232,
85–99 236
Legion, British, 88, 93 peacebuilding, 2, 9, 11, 66, 67,
Liberia, 29, 75 69–73, 79, 91
Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), 37 People’s Liberation Army, 111
Lyautey, Hubert, 126, 137 play, 9, 32, 35, 56, 72, 77, 86,
96, 98, 169, 177, 178, 190,
195, 198, 224–226, 229, 230,
M 232–237
martyrs, 34, 43. See also heroes popular culture, 44, 46, 172
middle class, 109, 212, 224, 226, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),
227, 231, 232, 237 166, 187, 189, 190, 198
244 INDEX
R T
race, 86, 237 Taliban, 25, 26, 33
refugees, 94, 104, 171–173, 184, toys, 51, 54, 193, 195, 226, 233–236
189, 190 truth commissions, 66–71
remembrance, 43, 55, 85–88, 90, 98
Republika Srpska, 48, 49, 61
resilience, 4, 15, 74, 167, 175, 179 U
Responsibility to Protect (R2P), 31 Ukraine, 2, 13–15, 144–147,
Russell, Cathy, 25, 29 149–158, 185–187, 193–198
Rwanda, 29, 208 United Kingdom (UK), 2, 28
United Nations Committee on the
Rights of the Child, 29, 49
United Nations Convention on
S
the Rights of the Child, 1989
Salazar, Ángela, 71
(UNCRC), 28, 29
Saudi Arabia, 35, 36
United Nations Declaration of the
schools, 4, 12, 13, 15, 24, 30, 35, Rights of the Child, 1959, 29.
50–52, 59, 74, 86, 90–93, See also Geneva Declaration of the
95–99, 106–116, 124–138, 146, Rights of the Child, 1924
155, 165, 166, 171, 173, 174, United Nations Department of Peace-
176, 186–189, 194–196, 199, keeping Operations (DPKO),
203–219, 224, 225, 227, 232, 31
234, 235, 237, 238
United Nations Development
Second World War, 25, 28, 48, 89, Programme (UNDP), 31, 212
99, 123, 135, 138, 149 United Nations General Assembly, 28,
securitization, 223, 225 30
security, 2, 6–8, 15–17, 35–37, 54, United Nations General Assembly
56, 89, 130, 148, 177, 178, 189, Resolution 51/77, 29
205, 210, 213, 215, 223, 225, United Nations International
227, 236, 238 Children’s Emergency Fund
Security Studies, 225, 227 (UNICEF), 25, 28, 29, 31, 44,
Sierra Leone, 29, 75 49, 73, 145, 146, 158, 186, 187,
Sino-Japanese War, 103–105, 107, 204, 208
114 United Nations Office of the High
Somalia, 29, 35 Commissioner for Refugees
Soustelle, Jacques, 129, 130 (UNHCR), 31
Soviet bloc, 29 United Nations Protocol to Prevent,
‘Straight-18’, 26, 27 Suppress and Punish Trafficking
subjecthood, 3, 4, 7, 11, 17, 53, 92, in Persons, Especially Women and
154, 206 Children (2000), 37
Sudan, 29 United Nations Security Council, 29,
Syria, 35 32, 36–38
INDEX 245
United Nations Security Council United Nations (UN), 9, 23, 24,

Resolution (UNSCR) 1261, 27–32, 34, 35, 39, 49, 130, 145,
1999, 30 157, 212, 213, 219
United Nations Security Council United Nations Year of the Child
Resolution (UNSCR) 1460, (1979), 29
2003, 30 United States Children’s Bureau, 29
United States (US), 16, 25, 33, 226,
United Nations Security Council 227, 232, 237
Resolution (UNSCR) 1539,
2004, 30
United Nations Security Council V
Resolution (UNSCR) 1882, Victims Law (Colombia), 66
2009, 30
United Nations Security Council
W
Resolution (UNSCR) 1998,
War on Terror, 25
2011, 30
Warsaw ghetto uprising, 25, 27, 34
United Nations Security Council women, 24, 25, 27, 28, 33, 37, 71,
Resolution (UNSCR) 2225, 93, 107, 112, 125, 137, 176,
2015, 30 180, 185, 209, 219
United Nations Security Council World War One, 12, 28, 85–92, 94,
Resolution (UNSCR) 2427, 95, 98, 99. See also First World
2018, 37 War
World War Two, 25, 28, 48, 89, 99,
United Nations Security Council
123, 135, 138, 149. See also
Working Group on Children in
Second World War
Armed Conflict, 30
United Nations Special Representative
of the Secretary-General for Y
Children Affected by Armed Yemen, 35
Conflict, 24, 33 Yugoslavia, 51, 52

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RETHINKING PEACE AND CONFLICT STUDIES

SERIES EDITORS: OLIVER P. RICHMOND · ANNIKA BJÖRKDAHL ·

More information about this series at

Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies

A debt of gratitude is owed to the many people without whom this

January 2021 J. Marshall Beier

1 Other Childhoods: Finding Children in Peace

Part I Ontologies of Children in Peace and Conflict

Part II Pedagogies of Children in Peace and Conflict

6 Childhood, Education, and Everyday Militarism

Part III Contingencies of Children in Peace and Conflict

J. Marshall Beier is a Professor of Political Science at McMaster Univer-

Brooke Durham is a Ph.D. candidate in Modern European History

in Economic Sciences. Her areas of research are Women’s Studies and

of Education and Lecture & Program Co-Director of M.A. Child-

Dalibor Savić is an Assistant Professor at the University of Banja Luka,

independent Ukraine, focusing on the event of the Chernobyl nuclear

Table 3.1 Dominant discourses on ex-child soldiers in BiH 45

Other Childhoods: Finding Children in Peace

J. Marshall Beier and Jana Tabak

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

sites and practices. Organized according to three broad and overlap-

the spectacular confounds our notice of what may be equally instructive

become the basis for ways of relating to and with children—inasmuch as

interrogation of the homogenizing discourses that flatten alterity in defer-

Other Childhoods and Other Emergencies

material inequality and disenfranchisement from political power as impor-

recognized subjecthood visibly in tension with their enduring disenfran-

Structure of the Volume

organizations) and ‘children’s places’ (as negotiated or constructed by

The first part, “Ontologies of Children in Peace and Conflict,” aims

exploring the international interventions towards children, Dalibor Savić,

In Chapter 4, “‘I Have the Right’: Examining the Role of Chil-

of protection, identifying violations of such protections, and setting the

the intersections between schooling and militarization by addressing how

Strategy for the Ukrainian National-Patriotic Education of Children and

2001) helps us navigate through questions related to children’s participa-

to state security, this chapter invites us to critically reflect on whose best

Acknowledgements Research for this chapter was supported by an Insight

Brocklehurst, Helen. 2015. “The State of Play: Securities of Childhood—Inse-

McEvoy-Levy, Siobhán. 2018. Peace and Resistance in Youth Cultures: Reading

Ontologies of Children in Peace and Conflict

Children as Soldiers or Civilians: Norms

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23

happen primarily to civilian children (where these can be clearly sepa-

Children in Armed Conflict

Western collective conscious). David M. Rosen (2005) has examined the

Girls as young as 12 or 13 have been forced to marry extremists or sold

This description is graphic and emotive, making use of popular norms

discourse, and the contrast to Rosen’s analysis of the empowered child

Such emotive Western characterizations of children’s suffering, but partic-

Norms and Children in Armed Conflict

norms regarding civilian protection in armed conflict by demonstrating

The UN and CaAC: An Emphasis on Child

UNICEF was strongly influenced in its conceptualization of victimhood

The first Special Representative to the Secretary-General for Chil-

proactive, and connected to the use of symbolic technologies. As Lee-Koo

Far from the hard-headed strategies of global conflict, a single image

It is probable that popular norms in the public imagination about chil-

Working Against Norms: Identifying

Power and Politics

Explanations for this phenomenon come from anthropology as well as

Anyone in the habit of reading Security Council resolutions will be

relationships. Rosen (2007: 298) argues that contemporary humanitarian