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Challenging Conceptions
 Challenging Conceptions
Children Born of Wartime Rape and Sexual Exploitation
Edited by
KIMBERLY THEIDON, DYAN MAZURANA, AND DIPALI ANUMOL
 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in
research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press
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Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Theidon, Kimberly, editor.
Title: Challenging conceptions : children born of wartime rape and sexual exploitation /
edited by Kimberly Theidon, Dyan Mazurana, and Dipali Anumol.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2023] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022024339 (print) | LCCN 2022024340 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197648315 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197648339 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Sex crimes. | Children of rape victims. |
Rape as a weapon of war. | Women and war.
Classification: LCC HV6558 .C48 2023 (print) | LCC HV6558 (ebook) |
DDC 362.883—dc23/eng/20220815
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022024339
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022024340
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197648315.001.0001
 Contents

Author Biographies

1. Challenging Conceptions
Kimberly Theidon

PART I LIFE CYCLES: CHILDREN BORN OF WARTIME RAPE ACROSS

TIME AND SPACE
2. “They’re Called Bui Doi”: (Re)framing the Politics of Amerasians and Children Born
of War
Donna Seto
3. Reconstructing the Small Family After Democratic Kampuchea: Forced Marriage,
Ritual Renewal, and Parent–Child Entanglement in Cambodia
Elena Lesley and Hoy Vathana
4. Unintended Consequences or Desired Outcome? Children Born of War and Their Role
in National Rebirth
Sabine Lee

PART II BEYOND STIGMA: GENDER, KINSHIP, AND BELONGING IN

NORTHERN UGANDA
5. Gender, Kinship, and Affiliation of Children Born of War in Patriarchal Northern
Uganda
Eunice Otuko Apio
6. Kinship and Belonging Among Children Born of War in Northern Uganda: “I Am a
Child Who Is Not from Here”
Teddy Atim, Grace Achan Ogwal, and Anne Bunting
7. Missing Fathers: Children Born of Wartime Rape and Their Perspectives on Fathers and
Fatherhood in Northern Uganda
Myriam Denov, Anais Cadieux Van Vliet, and Atim Angela Lakor

PART III (IN)VISIBILITY: CONCEALMENT, DISCLOSURE, AND THE

QUESTION OF CATEGORIES
8. Triptych: Seeing Children Born of Wartime Rape
Bridget Conley
9. The Unknown Youth of Al-Shabaab: Children Born from Al-Shabaab Sexual Violence
Phoebe Donnelly
10. Contested Identities: Gender, Reproduction, and War in Colombia
Tatiana Sanchez Parra
11. The Complexity of Sexual Violence, Birthing, and Status After the Fall of the Caliphate
Fionnuala D. Ní Aoláin

PART IV TRANSFORMATIONS: INTERGENERATIONAL

RECONCILIATION AND JUSTICE
12. “Where Do You Send the Pain?”: Agency and Resilience in Three Children Born of
War in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Tatjana Takševa
13. The Role of Spirituality in the Acceptance of Children Born of Conflict-Related Sexual
Violence
Dyan Mazurana
14. Moving Beyond Rwanda’s “Children of Bad Memory”: A Conversation on Working
with Mothers and Children Born of Wartime Rape
Dipali Anumol and Samuel Munderere
15. Local Inspiration, Global Implementation: Upholding the Rights of Children Born of
Conflict-Related Sexual Violence
Virginie Ladisch and Jacqueline Mutere

References
Index
 Author Biographies

Dipali Anumol, M.A.L.D., is a doctoral candidate at The Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy, where she earned her Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy in 2019. Her
research interests include gender theory, sexual and gender-based violence, child rights, and
human security. Her dissertation focuses on the relationship between feminist activism,
practices of care, and responses to sexual violence in India. Prior to Fletcher, Dipali worked
in development consulting. Dipali also holds a Master of Science in International Relations
(Research) from the London School of Economics and Political Science and Integrated
Master of Arts in Development Studies from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.
Fionnuala D. Ní Aoláin, Ph.D., LL.M, is University Regents Professor; holder of the
Robina Chair in Law, Public Policy, and Society; and faculty director of the Human Rights
Center at the Law School. She is concurrently a professor of law at the Queen’s University of
Belfast, School of Law. In 2017, she was appointed as Special Rapporteur on the Promotion
and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism.
Her teaching and research interests are in the fields of international law, human rights law,
national security law, transitional justice, and feminist legal theory. She has published widely
in the fields of emergency powers, conflict regulation, transitional justice, and sex-based
violence in times of war and continues to write extensively on theoretical aspects of
transition. She is the recipient of numerous academic awards and honors, including a
Fulbright scholarship, the Alon Prize, the Robert Schumann scholarship, a European
Commission award, and the Lawlor fellowship. She had held multiple research awards
including from the British Academy, the US Institute of Peace, DfID (Department for
International Development, UK), Research Council UK, and the Economic and Social
Research Council. Professor Ní Aoláin was a representative of the prosecutor at the
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at domestic war crimes trials in
Bosnia (1996–1997). She is Board Chair of the Open Society Foundations Women Program
and serves on the Board of the Center for Victims of Torture National Advisory Council.
Professor Ní Aoláin received her LL.B. and Ph.D. in law at the Queen’s University Law
Faculty in Belfast and also holds an LL.M. degree from Columbia Law School.
Eunice Otuko Apio, Ph.D., received her Ph.D. in African studies and anthropology from the
Department of History and Cultures, the University of Birmingham (UK) in 2016. In 2017,
she joined the Law School, University of Birmingham as Postdoctoral Fellow in Gender and
Transitional justice, and works on the subject of resilience in survivors of war-related sexual
violence. Her doctoral thesis examined “Children Born of War in Northern Uganda: Kinship,
Marriage, and the Politics of Post-conflict Reintegration in Lango society.” She is founder of
the charity Facilitation for Peace and Development (FAPAD) based in northern Uganda. She
has worked in conflict and post conflict settings in northern Uganda since 2001. She is the
author of Zura Maids, a novel that explores the realities of human trafficking in today’s
African society.
Teddy Atim, Ph.D., is Visiting Research Fellow at the Feinstein International Center, Tufts
University. Atim’s research examines how experiencing armed conflict: forced conscription;
sexual violence, forced impregnation and child bearing; killings and enforced disappearance;
loss of livelihoods; among others, impacts the lives of affected population, both during and in
the aftermath. Her research focuses on: young people affected by armed conflict and their
recovery in the post-conflict period, women survivors of wartime sexual violence and their
children born of wartime rape, youth in challenging situations such as young women engaged
in transactional sex, psychosocial impacts of armed conflict, recovery, transitional justice,
war injuries, among others. She also has extensive experience as a practitioner, working with
young people, their families, and communities affected by armed conflict, where she
supported the psychosocial rehabilitation and reintegration of youth affected by armed
conflict in northern Uganda. In this role, she worked with various national and international
organizations in Uganda, including; the Concerned Parents Association, Save the Children,
CARE International, American Jewish World Service, and the Democratic Governance
Facility. Teddy holds a B.A. in Social Sciences from Makerere University in Kampala,
Uganda and holds an M.A. in Humanitarian Assistance from The Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy and the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. She
has her Ph.D. from Wageningen University, the Netherlands.
Annie Bunting, S.J.D., is Associate Professor in the Law & Society program at York
University in Toronto, teaching in the areas of social justice and human rights. Professor
Bunting is a graduate of York, having studied law at Osgoode Hall Law School (1988). She
received her LL.M. from the London School of Economics and Political Science (1991) and
her S.J.D. from the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto (1999). Her research expertise
includes socio-legal studies of marriage and childhoods; feminist international law; and
culture, religion, and law. She has published articles in Social and Legal Studies, Journal of
Law and Society, Canadian Journal of Human Rights, and chapters in various book
collections. Her recent edited collections include: Marriage by Force? Contestation over
Consent and Coercion in Africa (with Lawrance and Roberts) Ohio Univ. Press (2016) and
Contemporary Slavery: Popular Rhetoric and Political Practice (with Joel Quirk), UBC Press,
Law & Society Series (2017).
Bridget Conley, Ph.D., is Research Director of the World Peace Foundation and Associate
Research Professor at The Fletcher School. At WPF, she is the lead researcher on the Mass
Atrocities program, in addition to contributing to the Famine Research program. She is the
author of Memory from the Margins: Ethiopia’s Red Terror Martyrs Memorial Museum
(Palgrave 2019) and the editor of How Mass Atrocities End: Studies from Guatemala,
Burundi, Indonesia, the Sudans, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Iraq (Cambridge University Press
2016). She has published on issues related to the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia, mass atrocities
and genocide, and how museums can engage on human rights issues. She previously worked
as Research Director for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Conscience,
where she helped establish the Museum’s program on contemporary threats of genocide,
including engagement on research program, policy issues, and public education, and curating
an exhibition, From Memory to Action: Meeting the Challenge of Genocide Today.
Myriam Denov, Ph.D., is Full Professor at McGill University and holds the Canada
Research Chair in Children, Families and Armed Conflict (Tier 1). Her research interests lie
in the areas of children and families affected by war, migration, and its intergenerational
impact. A specialist in participatory and arts-based research, she has worked with war-
affected children and families in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Her current research is
exploring children born of conflict-related sexual violence in northern Uganda, Rwanda, and
Cambodia. Dr. Denov has presented expert evidence in court on child soldiers and has
advised government and nongovernmental organizations on children in armed conflict and
girls in armed groups. She has authored, co-authored, and co-edited nine books addressing
the impact of war on children, including Child Soldiers: Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United
Front (Cambridge University Press). She is the founding Director of Global Child McGill—a
research group dedicated to children and families affected by war and migration. Dr. Denov
is the recipient of the 2020 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
(SSHRC) Insight Award and the Killam Research Fellowship. She is a Trudeau Foundation
Fellow and Member of the Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars, Artists and
Scientists. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, where she was a
Commonwealth Scholar.
Phoebe Donnelly, Ph.D., is Stanley Kaplan Postdoctoral Fellow at Williams College where
she teaches on gender and conflict and security in Africa. She received her Ph.D. in
International Relations from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University
in 2019. Phoebe won the Peter Ackerman Award for the outstanding doctoral dissertation at
The Fletcher. In 2017, Women in International Security (WIIS) selected Phoebe as one of
their “Next Generation Gender Scholars.” Phoebe is also a visiting fellow at Feinstein
International Center, a research and teaching center focused on humanitarian crises.
Previously, Phoebe was Associate Director of the Consortium on Gender, Security and
Human Rights at UMass-Boston. She also has policy experience through her work as a
Legislative Correspondent for Senator Richard Blumenthal and as an intern for the State
Department at the U.S. Mission to the UN. Phoebe earned an M.A. in Law in Diplomacy
from The Fletcher School in 2013 and a B.A. from University of Wisconsin-Madison in
2008.
Virginie Ladisch, M.A., is a senior expert in truth seeking and civic engagement and heads
the children and youth program at the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ). In
that capacity, she has provided support and technical expertise to a wide range of transitional
justice approaches across the globe, including in Canada, Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, Cyprus,
Kenya, Tunisia, and Uganda. Across all her work, Ladisch focuses on how engaging citizens
—particularly youth—in transitional justice processes can serve to catalyze broader public
debate and ongoing civic activism. Prior to joining ICTJ, Ladisch was awarded Thomas J.
Watson Fellowship for independent research, during which she carried out extensive
fieldwork on truth commissions and reconciliation in South Africa and Guatemala. The
results of her research on the challenges of reconciliation have been published in the Journal
of Public and International Affairs and the Cyprus Review. More recently, her reflections on
engaging children and youth in transitional justice have been published in the Journal of the
History of Childhood and Youth. Virginie Ladisch holds an M.A. in International Affairs
from the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University and a
B.A. in Political Science from Haverford College.
Atim Angela Lakor is the founder of Watye Ki Gen (We Have Hope), a Ugandan
organization whose members are formerly abducted women held in the bush, working for the
rights and the welfare of children born in Captivity. Atim Angela was abducted from St
Mary’s College, Aboke with fellow pupils by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) when she
was 14 years old. She holds a diploma in Guidance and counseling and a Bachelor’s degree
in Development studies from Gulu University, Uganda. She is a co-author of The Lord’s
Resistance Army’s Forced Wife System. She delivered speeches in 2014 at the Global Sexual
Violence Summit on Preventing Sexual Violence in Armed and in 2017 at the
Commonwealth Office at the event celebrating the Fifth Anniversary of The Preventing
Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative, TED Talk speaker on prevention of the use of children
as a weapon of war and was awarded the 2017 Marsh Award for innovation in peacemaking
and peacekeeping by MARSH Christian Trust, Wilton Park in London.
Sabine Lee, Ph.D., is Professor of Modern History at the University of Birmingham. Her
research has spanned a range of themes in contemporary history and, more recently,
interdisciplinary research on conflict and security with particular emphasis on conflict-related
sexual violence. She has led several international and interdisciplinary research projects in
these fields, including two AHRC-funded research networks and a European-Union-funded
H2020 international interdisciplinary doctoral training network on children born of war. She
is currently engaged in several projects exploring the experiences of peacekeeper-fathered
children and their mothers in different geopolitical contexts, including Haiti and the
Democratic Republic of Congo.
Elena Lesley, M.S., is Cultural Anthropologist whose work focuses on global mental health,
post-conflict recovery, gender-based violence, and genocide studies. Her doctoral dissertation
research (Emory University) tracked mental health interventions among survivors of the
Khmer Rouge regime, which was responsible for the deaths of roughly 1.7 million
Cambodians from 1975 to 1979. Since 2004, she has lived and worked in Cambodia for a
combined four and a half years, first as a Henry Luce Scholar and Fulbright Fellow, and later
for master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation research (supported by the Wenner Gren
Foundation, the Blakemore Foundation, and the Center for Khmer Studies). Her work has
appeared in the U.K. literary magazine Granta, The Huffington Post, the Journal of Genocide
Studies and Prevention, several edited volumes and numerous other journalistic publications.
A piece about her larger doctoral project is forthcoming in Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology.
Lesley holds a B.A. from Brown University, an M.S. from Rutgers University, and previously
worked as Senior Research Specialist for a center run through Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson
School of Public and International Affairs.
Dyan Mazurana, Ph.D., is Associate Research Professor at both The Fletcher School of
Law and Diplomacy and the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts
University. She is Research Fellow at the World Peace Foundation. She focuses on gendered
dimensions of humanitarian response to conflict and crises, documenting serious crimes
committed during conflict, and accountability, remedy, and reparation. She serves as an
advisor to several governments, UN agencies, human rights NGOs, and child protection
organizations regarding humanitarian assistance and improving efforts to assist youth and
women affected by armed conflict. This work includes the protection of women and children
during armed conflict, including those people associated with fighting forces, as well as
remedy and reparation in the aftermath of violence. She has worked in Afghanistan, the
Balkans, Nepal, and southern, west and east Africa. She has published more than 100
scholarly and policy books, articles, and international reports and her work has been
translated into more than 30 languages. She is currently completing a book manuscript on
children, adversity, violence, and resilience. She edited A View from Below: Conducting
Research in Conflict Zones, with Karen Jacobsen, and Lacey Gale (Cambridge University
Press 2013). Her other books include Life and Security in Rural Afghanistan (Rowman &
Littlefield 2008) with Nematollah Nojumi and Elizabeth Stites and Gender, Conflict, and
Peacekeeping (Rowman & Littlefield 2005) with Angela Raven-Roberts and Jane Parpart
and Where Are the Girls? Girls in Fighting Forces in Northern Uganda, Sierra Leone, and
Mozambique: Their Lives During and After War (International Centre for Human Rights and
Democratic Development, Montréal, Canada: 2004), with Susan McKay.
Samuel Munderere is Chief Executive of Survivors Fund. Munderere is passionate about
international development work and improving the lives of vulnerable people. He has a
profound understanding of the issues faced by women and children in Rwanda and extensive
experience of programmes that seek to empower them and transform their lives. Sam has
worked with Survivors Fund Rwanda for the last 13 years. He has particular experience in
managing educational and counselling projects and has led a programme supporting 850
youth born of genocide rape. He has also coordinated SURF’s provision of counselling
programmes for their mothers. In his career he has developed an array of livelihoods projects
including ground-breaking initiatives to introduce solar lights, solar cookers, clean stove
cookers, water purifiers, and donkeys to Rwanda. Samuel holds a Masters in International
Development Management from the University of Westminster (London, UK) and a
Bachelors degree in Social Worker and Social Administration from Bugema University.
Jacqueline Mutere is the founder and director of Grace Agenda based in Nairobi, Kenya.
She founded the organization in December 2010 to support survivors of rape of Kenya’s
2007 and 2008 post-election violence. Initially responding to the needs of children born from
the rapes, Mutere realized the mothers of these children had additional needs. Through Grace
Agenda she has mobilized other survivors to advocate for reparations, participate in police
vetting processes, and restore survivors’ dignity. Jacqueline has received several awards and
recognition for her work, courage, commitment, and resilience in advocating for sexual and
gender-based violence. Most recently, in 2019, Physicians for Human rights honored the
Survivors of Sexual Violence in Kenya Network with the Physicians for Human Rights
Award, which she accepted as the Network Co-head. In 2016, Mutere was a nominee for the
Women National Human Rights Defender award in Kenya and in 2014 the Kenya Women
and Children's Wellness Center/African Women’s Enterprise program gave her an award for
courage and determination in advocacy in extremely difficult circumstances. Currently, in
addition to her ongoing advocacy for reparations, healing, and self-agency, she is focused on
strengthening the establishment of a regional network of survivors of conflict-related sexual
violence who have children from the violations.
Grace Achan Ogwal currently works with Refugee Law Project at Makerere University,
Kampala Uganda. Previously she worked as a researcher with the Women's Advocacy
Network and Justice and Reconciliation Project in northern Uganda. She specializes in
gender and transitional justice with a specific focus on work with women survivors
Government of Uganad and Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) 20 year war. She also worked
with the research team of the University of British Colombia in the Conjugal Slavery in War
project. Grace has a Bachelors degree in Development Studies from Gulu University and a
post Graduate Diploma in project planning and management from Uganda Management
Institute.
Tatiana Sanchez Parra, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at the Institute of Social and
Cultural Studies Pensar at Javeriana University in Bogota, Colombia. She holds a Ph.D. in
Sociology from the University of Essex, where she also obtained a Masters in Human Rights.
Prior to her postgraduate education in the UK, she completed a Masters in Social
Anthropology at the University of Los Andes, Colombia, where she also earned an
undergraduate degree in Anthropology. Tatiana’s latest work develops at the intersection of
feminist socio-legal studies, medical anthropology, and critical studies on political
transitions, where her research addresses narratives about people born as a result war-time
sexual violence during the Colombian armed conflict.
Donna Seto, Ph.D., is Manager in Research Development at the University of British
Columbia. Seto’s research explores the complexity of intersectional violence during armed
conflict and the impact of wartime rape on subsequent generations. Her book No Place for a
War Baby: The Global Politics of Children Born of Wartime Sexual Violence (Routledge
2013) engages in the subfields of global politics while examining a range of international
conflicts, children’s rights literature, and gender theory. She has published in the areas of
humanitarian organizations, visual images of war-affected children, and refugee policy.
Donna holds a doctorate in Politics and International Relations from the Australian National
University. She is a research development manager and adjunct lecturer at the University of
British Columbia. She is currently working on her first novel on war-affected children.
Tatjana Takseva, Ph.D., is Professor, Faculty of Arts, at Saint Mary’s University. Takseva’s
current research is situated at the intersections of motherhood, feminism, nation-building, and
the politics of identity and is interdisciplinary in nature. It utilizes concepts and
methodologies drawn from discourse analysis and literary studies, philosophy, sociology,
psychology and psychoanalysis, political science, cultural studies, anthropology, and the
history of ideas. She has published on a wide range of topics within motherhood studies, such
as mothering in conflict zones; motherhood and consumerism; motherhood and teaching;
contemporary mothering practices; and the ethic of care, maternal ambivalence, and
empowered mothering. Her publications also include topics in the area of English
Renaissance literature, intercultural communication, globalization, and digital media.
Kimberly Theidon, Ph.D., is Henry J. Leir Professor of International Humanitarian Studies
at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. Theidon is medical
anthropologist focusing on Latin America. Her research interests include political violence,
transitional justice, humanitarian and post-conflict interventions, gender studies, and drug
policy. She is the author of many articles, commissioned reports, and two books. Entre
Prójimos: El conflicto armado interno y la política de la reconciliación en el Perú (Instituto
de Estudios Peruanos, 1st edition 2004; 2nd edition 2009) was awarded the Latin American
Studies Association 2006 Premio Iberoamericano Book Award Honorable Mention for
outstanding book in the social sciences published in Spanish or Portuguese. Her second book,
Intimate Enemies: Violence and Reconciliation in Peru (University of Pennsylvania Press
2012), was awarded the 2013 Honorable Mention from the Washington Office on Latin
America-Duke University Libraries Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America, and
the 2013 Honorable Mention for the Eileen Basker Prize from the Society for Medical
Anthropology for research on gender and health. She is currently completing two book
manuscripts. Pasts Imperfect: Working with Former Combatants in Colombia is based on
research with former combatants from the paramilitaries, the FARC, and the ELN. Sex at the
Security Council: A Greater Measure of Justice draws upon her research in Peru on sexual
violence, children born of wartime rape, and the politics of reparations.
Hoy Vathana is a mental health professional in Cambodia with over three years of
experience in project management and more than five years of experience as a trauma
clinician. At Transcultural Psychosocial Organization of Cambodia (TPO Cambodia), she has
been a mental health clinician since 2011 and served as manager for the “Promoting Gender
Equality and Improving Access to Justice for Female Survivors and Victims of Gender Based
Violence under Khmer Rouge Regime” project from 2016 to 2018. Vathana holds a B.A. in
Psychology from the Royal University of Phnom Penh and a B.A. in English TESOL from
Paññasatra University of Cambodia.
Anaïs Cadieux Van Vliet holds a Master of Social Work from McGill University, where she
works as a research assistant. Her academic work centers on the experiences of children born
of wartime rape and the complex realities of victim perpetrators. Her previous grassroots
organizing work, tackling sexual and gender-based violence, informs her current research
interests. She is, amongst others, the co-author of “Child Soldiers” in The Oxford Handbook
of Atrocity Crimes (Oxford Press forthcoming).
 1
Challenging Conceptions
Kimberly Theidon

There is a tremendous knowledge gap surrounding the issue of children born of conflict-related sexual violence, and
even less public policy to address the needs of these children.1

It was twenty-two years ago that the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution
1325, the first in a series of Resolutions focused on the important role women play in conflict
prevention, resolution, and peacebuilding efforts. Collectively known as the Women, Peace
and Security agenda, these resolutions (Security Council Resolutions 1325, 1820, 1888,
1889, 1960, 2106, 2122, 2242, and 2467) have also demanded the complete cessation of all
acts of sexual violence by all parties to armed conflicts, with each successive resolution
lamenting the slow progress made to date on this issue. While insisting on the need to protect
women and girls from rape and sexual violence in armed conflict and postconflict situations,
it would be thirteen years before Resolution 2122 noted “the need for access to the full range
of sexual and reproductive health services, including regarding pregnancies resulting from
rape, without discrimination” (2013). There was nothing said about the outcome of those
pregnancies, nor about their meaning for the mothers and their children. A few more years
would pass.
In 2019, to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda’s
foundational Resolution 1325, the UN Security Council proposed Resolution 2467. The
resolution recognizes that “women and girls who become pregnant as a result of sexual
violence in armed conflict, including those who choose to become mothers, may have
different and specific needs,” and advocates a “survivor-centered approach” that recognizes
the needs of survivors of sexual violence to receive nondiscriminatory access to a full range
of services. The original language included references to sexual and reproductive health,
triggering vocal opposition from the United States and the “right to life” block—a group I
prefer to call “forced birth extremists.” When the United States threatened to veto the
resolution, it was watered down and the “offending” words omitted.
Some have criticized the “hypervisibilization” of conflict-related sexual violence,
concerned that this focus might unintentionally reinforce patriarchal notions that the most
important thing to know about a girl or a woman is her sexual “purity.” Another concern,
which I also share, is that this focus may obscure a broader gender equity agenda that extends
far beyond ending sexual violence, however important (and elusive) that goal may be. Here I
wish to trouble other waters: How can there be so much attention to sexual violence while so
little is said about the potential, and obvious, outcomes of that violence? How can it be that
in over two decades of grappling with conflict-related sexual violence and its legacies, there
is but passing mention of various potential and obvious outcomes: pregnancy, abortion,
forced maternity—and children conceived through acts of sexual coercion or outright
violence?
To date the most sustained engagement with children born of wartime rape comes from
the political scientist and international relations scholar R. Charli Carpenter. Her 2007 edited
volume contains several empirically rich chapters that draw attention to the lack of research
and legal response to children born as a result of mass rape campaigns or sexual abuse in
conflict zones; these chapters in turn call for enhanced human rights protection for these
children. The edited volume is a touchstone for those of us working on these issues. Her
subsequent monograph, however, draws disturbing conclusions.
In Forgetting Children Born of War: Setting the Human Rights Agenda in Bosnia and
Beyond, Carpenter analyzes the war in the Balkans, a watershed conflict in terms of placing
conflict-related rape on the international agenda (2010). Focusing on Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Carpenter critiques the ways in which ethno-nationalists and the international media reified
ethnicity and how human rights organizations and certain feminist scholars bought into the
“ethnic hatred script” to achieve political ends, one of which was to establish that rape can
constitute genocide. In order for rape to constitute an act of genocide, previously fluid ethnic
categories were presented as timeless and immutable, and patrilineal descent was given
primacy in determining the child’s genetic makeup and thus ethnicity. As Carpenter argues,
human rights organizations and misguided feminists thus unwittingly reinforced the
patriarchal regime that made such reasoning possible in the first place. In constructing ethnic
identity as immutable and genetically encoded, children born of rape were either invisible as
victims in their own right, or at best taken as proof of the harm done to their mothers and, by
extension, to their ethnic group (2010).
Reified ethnicity is a useful foil in Carpenter’s analysis, and deconstructing it is easy. It is
here, to my mind, that her analysis veers onto problematic terrain. In situating her approach,
she writes, “The feminism here is thus less focused on women’s experiences per se than on
the broader project of overcoming gender hierarchies as they pertain to human security for all
people, particularly for children conceived as a result of gender-based violence. Rather than
emphasize survivor’s experiences per se, my goal is to explore the marginality of their
children born of wartime rape and consider what this marginality means for children’s human
rights and for international relations” (2010, 9). I am concerned by what her feminism means
for women.
Carpenter acknowledges she frequently heard that rape survivors who gave birth refused
to accept these children as their own, and subsequently rejected them. Indeed, at one point
she praises the “courageous women” who kept their children despite familial and communal
disapproval. Where does that leave the rest of the women? Did their rejection of these
children born of rape and their reluctance to raise them as their own indicate that women
bought into the dominant ethnonationalist discourse, reducing rejection or repugnance to
little more than being ideologically duped, stuck in a gestationally induced false
consciousness? Somehow, if one can demonstrate that ethnic difference was erroneously
portrayed as a rigid and timeless category, then the rest falls away. The other constructions
—“children of the enemy,” “occupied wombs,” maternal ambivalence or rejection—are
merely artifacts of the ethnic hatred script. It is not so simple. Her top-down analysis rightly
identified the missed opportunity to challenge the paternal trump card; however, looking only
at the macro and discursive levels obscures long-standing local biologies and culturally
informed theories of transmission from parent to child. Making ethnicity a strawman in her
argument allows her to deconstruct ethnicity and then argue that everything else is an artifact
of this misguided convergence of media, ethnonationalism, and feminist advocacy that
reflected patriarchal gender norms rather than challenged them. I share the desire to
challenge gendered hierarchies, but while we wait for the world historic defeat of patriarchy,
this line of critique leaves women holding up the entire sky.
I advocate a different kind of feminism. I suspect that one reason children—girls, boys,
and other genders—born of wartime rape were and have, to some extent, remained invisible
on the international agenda is because there is no reasonable way to discuss this issue from a
“survivor-centered” perspective without addressing women’s right to abortion—a woman’s
right to refuse to lend her body to nine months of reproductive labor, and to acknowledge that
some women may experience these pregnancies and babies as a harm done to them.2 The
Women Peace and Security Agenda, for all its good intentions and accomplishments, is a
framework that placates those for whom a more feminist agenda would be unpalatable.
“Mainstreaming gender” can be a double-entendre, as the feminist critique of policy is
mainstreamed into an agenda that does not threaten the status quo of powerful countries or
interest groups—a move that may obscure the fact that women and their children (especially
their fetuses) may be located within competing rights regimes. One cannot finesse away these
competing rights. This calls for an explicitly feminist peacebuilding and postconflict
reconstruction agenda, understood to include a full range of sexual and reproductive rights,
including access to safe and accessible abortions for those women who want them.
In addition to questioning a gendered-yet-not-feminist approach to conflict-related sexual
violence and children born as a result of that violence, there is another leitmotif in the
existing literature that warrants a critique. Although sparse, in the literature that does exist,
the concept of stigma is frequently applied to these children and given wide-ranging
explanatory power. From an anthropological perspective, however, stigma is a thin
explanation for a thick phenomenon, and forecloses a broader repertoire of potential
meanings and motivations for the acceptance or rejection of these children by their mothers,
families, and communities. Stigma seems to be a placeholder in the literature rather than an
analytically nuanced tool, almost commonsensical in its usage.
Challenging Conceptions questions such common sense and is a purposeful play on
words. With my colleague, Dyan Mazurana, in May 2018 we convened an authors’ workshop
at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. At this workshop we brought
together researchers and practitioners from around the globe, each of whom has spent
decades working with women who survived wartime rape, and with the children who were
the result of that violence. Together we aimed to rethink some of the assumptions that echo in
the literature and in popular culture about these children and those around them. We
acknowledged that their conception may stem from a woman’s most painful experience, and
that their birth may provoke deep maternal ambivalence. To conduct research on these issues
is to go far beyond a university’s human subjects review process and the “technical ethics”
required of us as researchers; it is to be plunged into deep moral conundrums. At each step,
the researchers in this book have struggled with how to conduct their research in such a way
as to do no harm to these children and their mothers, underscoring that each methodological
choice is an ethical decision as well. This book is the result of that workshop and lively
discussion.

Life Cycles: Names, Silences, Secrets

When speaking or writing about “children born of war,” exactly who are we referring to? It is
the most frequent term in the literature, abbreviated as CBOW. This is policy-speak, and the
language of policy documents may not be the language that allows us to think clearly in our
research. Research categories demand greater precision. An anthropologist wants details
about age, gender, race, religion, nationality, culture; in short, a researcher needs to
incorporate intersectionality into her questions, her categories, and her analysis.4
In this book, when authors refer to “children born of conflict-related sexual violence,” we
are not speaking about the age of the person per se but rather about the circumstances of their
conception and birth—and how those circumstances manifest across their lifetime. The needs
of that person will change as they age, but the status is one that will have legacies; these are
not always tragic, but they are always there. For example, the age of the person should not be
a key factor in whether or not they qualify for reparations and redress; it is the circumstances
of their conception and the concentration of disadvantages and forms of exclusion many of
them have faced throughout their life that requires remedy. That remedy will in turn depend
upon a changing set of needs as the person passes from childhood into their adult life—hence
the emphasis on life cycles. Similarly, Virginie Ladisch and Jacqueline Mutere insist on the
temporal dimensions of harm: what is considered the core injury may change across time,
and the challenge they identify is that of recognizing victimization without making it the core
of one’s identity.
Life cycles are a productive analytic for various themes that crosscut the powerful
chapters in this book. Let’s consider names and their impact on the individuals to whom they
are given. I conducted years of research in the central highlands of Peru, exploring the
legacies of lethal violence among “intimate enemies.”3 As with other civil wars, the internal
armed conflict in Peru involved high levels of intra and inter communal violence. This terror
left a legacy of distrust, rancor, and landscapes steeped in blood and memories—and people
painfully aware of the danger human beings can pose to one another. In addition to civilian
participation in the violence, the Peruvian state installed military bases throughout the
countryside; this counterinsurgency strategy led to the conflation of “terrorist-guerrilla” with
“brown-skinned peasant,” resulting in the destruction of hundreds of peasant communities.
Within the repertoires of violence deployed by various armed groups, forms of sexual
violence were one constant.4 This violence left its own legacies: unwanted pregnancies and,
at times, unwanted children. Some of these children were sent to live with extended family
members residing outside the community, while others were raised by their mothers amid the
gossip. I recall one communal authority who bitterly complained about los regalos de los
soldados (the soldiers’ gifts) who were born in his pueblo. That community alone had more
than fifty young people who carried only their mother’s last name—their father’s identity
was never determined.
Over the years I met several children who were the result of rape.5 Here I mention just one
boy whose mother had been passed around by the soldiers in the base that had overlooked
their community for almost fifteen years. I first noticed him because he was standoffish,
never joining the growing group of children who made my room a lively place. I tried to
speak with him a few times, but he had no interest in conversation. After months of living in
the community, I finally had an opportunity to ask someone about him. It was late afternoon
and I saw him heading down the steep hill toward home, his three goats and one llama kept
together with an occasional slap of a slender stick. The woman sitting at my side knew him
by name: Chiki. My face must have expressed my surprise because she whispered that his
mother was “one of those women.”
Chiki is a painful name for a young boy, who in turn was a painful child for his mother.
Chiki means “danger” in Quechua and in daily usage refers to a warning that something bad
is about to happen and should be averted. People recall the ways they learned to look for a
sign that the enemy might attack. One such chiki was a strong wind that blew through the
village, rattling the aluminum roofs and letting people know something evil was about to
occur.
This boy was a “future memory,” a perverse distortion of time. He could not be a warning;
it was too late to avert this particular danger. Rather, he was the product of an evil event his
mother had been unable to escape. His mere being extends his mother’s memory both to the
past and into the future. Her son is a living memory of the danger she survived, as well as a
reminder that nothing good could possibly come from this Chiki she had failed to avoid.6
I have carried Chiki’s story with me for many years now, unable to write him out of my
memory. In my research he is Child Zero, the one who set me thinking about these issues. He
haunts me, and his name is clearly not an isolated phenomenon. In any given community—
this is in no way limited to Peru—there is the audible impact of names, both individual and
collective, that are frequently of an injurious nature. Linguistic or cultural variation alone
does not explain this widespread practice in postconflict settings. Comparative ethnographic
data are important because this allows us to see patterns in what at first glance might seem to
be isolated cases. Time and again, across regions, names reveal the conjuncture of painful
kinship and “poisonous knowledge.”7 Some examples of these are:
RWANDA: collectively labeled “unwanted children,” “children of bad memories,” “children of
hate,” “genocidal children,” and the individual names include “little killer,” “child of
hate,” “I’m at a loss,” and “the intruder”8
KOSOVO: “children of shame”9
EAST TIMOR: “children of the enemy”10
VIETNAM: “dust of life”11 and “American infected babies”12
NICARAGUA: “monster babies”13
GUATEMALA: “soldadito” (little soldier)14
UGANDA: “Only God knows why this happened to me,” “I am unfortunate,” “Things have
gone bad”15
COLOMBIA: “paraquitos” (little paramilitaries)16

In Peru, among other names, children are referred to as “los regalos de los soldados,” (the
soldier’s gifts), “hijo de nadie” (nobody’s child), “fulano” (what’s his name), and “chatarra”
(stray cat).
This seems strikingly at odds with the secrecy and silence assumed to surround the issue
of rape and other forms of sexual violence. For instance, in their work with rape survivors in
Rwanda, Elisa Van Ee and Rolf Kleber found that “Out of shame, many women who have
been raped want to hide their trauma and the way their child was conceived.”17 Concealment
is a leitmotif in the literature and is generally understood as a way to avoid stigma for both
the mother and her child.
And yet amidst this complicated array of hidden practices, there are inevitably names that
mark these children and reveal their violent origins. As Gabriele Von Bruck and Barbara
Bodenhorn note, “Because others usually name us, the act of naming has the potential to
implicate infants in relations through which they become inserted into and ultimately, will act
upon, a social matrix. Individual lives thus become entangled—through the name—in the life
histories of others.”18 Naming is verbal, audible, and interpersonal; naming practices are one
way of expressing, perhaps projecting, the private into public space and laying claims upon
others. These “entanglements” are worth contemplating. Who and what is being named?
In this volume, Eunice Otuko Apio, Teddy Atim, Grace Achan Ogwal, Anne Bunting, and
Tatiana Sanchez Parra take up these questions and follow various “life cycles,” so to speak.
What is the intergenerational impact of sexual violence? How is kinship figured and
reconfigured across generations, when some of those generations include children born of
wartime rape? When do the children’s names memorialize a woman’s most brutal memories?
Do these names have a finite life span—can these children escape the taint and be, literally,
resignified? As the authors demonstrate, when these children are given injurious names and
excluded from kinship networks, this can translate into being excluded from land ownership
and inheritance lineages. Here, stigma must be unpacked to grasp the economic interests that
influence how these children and their mothers are or are not rejected by their communities
and their families. I suspect that rejection of male children will be heightened in settings in
which their status as a male gives them some claim upon familial property.
Importantly, as Apio notes, these names can be changed: seminal violence is not destiny.
This is a fascinating contrast with findings in her earlier research, underscoring the
importance of longitudinal studies. In an earlier chapter on children born to young women
who had been abducted and made “wives” by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda,
Apio briefly discussed naming practices. In a sample of 69 children, she found that 49 of
them had injurious names (the others had been named either by the father after one of his
relatives, or by medical staff who delivered the babies following their mother’s
reintegration). Thus it can be assumed the mothers named the other 49 children, and the
names depicted the plight of their mothers. “These names compile all the bad experiences of
a mother into a name and give it a life in the nature of her baby. In this way the baby is turned
into a living reminder of her suffering.”19 Of particular interest is the mother’s reaction to the
efforts of social workers to give these children new names such as “I am fortunate” or
“Things have turned good.” As Apio found in her interviews with World Vision staff, “The
mothers, however, are reluctant to pick up these changes. They prefer the old names.”20 What
has changed? It seems that local kinship systems can accommodate ambiguity, which in turn
may allow the mothers and their children to reclaim their place within familial and communal
networks. Names and fates can be remade. And once the researcher has explored familial and
communal logics, then a scalar analysis calls for investigating state-level policies that take
reproduction as a key site of governance. As one Chinese official stated, “To put it bluntly,
the birth of a baby is not only a matter of the family itself, but also a state affair.”21

Statecraft: Policies and Populations

Reproductive governance refers to the mechanisms through which different historical configurations of actors—such
as state, religious, and international financial institutions, NGOs, and social movements—use legislative controls,
economic inducements, moral injunctions, direct coercion, and ethical incitements to produce, monitor, and control
reproductive behaviours and population practices.
—Morgan and Roberts (2012, 341)

A key site in which statecraft is practiced is sexuality and reproduction. This is equally true
for countries at peace as well as those at war. Here, I concern myself with conflict and
postconflict settings. There are always policies—implicit or explicit—put in place to address
the issue of children born of wartime sexual violence, the women who may abort or give
birth to them, and the biological fathers. From state militaries to irregular forces, from
combat troops to international peacekeeping missions, the question of what will be done with
the children who (inevitably?) result from these encounters is a topic of discussion and
policymaking.22
In addition to reproductive governance as a rich analytical concept, I have also found
“jurisdiction” to be a useful tool. All women live within multiple reproductive jurisdictions,
in the sense of multiple and perhaps contradictory regimes of law, language, and practice.23
For example, in her research on the legacies of the Partition, Veena Das analyzes the Indian
state’s policies to “recuperate” and “recover” women who had been abducted and sexually
violated during the violence, tracing the national response to women impregnated by “other”
men and giving birth to the “wrong” children (1995). She found that in the sphere of the
nation, identity categories were rigidified in the service of national honor, while at the
familiar and communal levels kinship norms were bent in a myriad of ways to absorb these
women and their children into the structures of family and marriage. The multiplicity of
customary norms that existed with regard to the children of victimized women were
standardized into one single law by which illegitimacy was defined, frequently to the
detriment of both the mothers and their children. This is a useful reminder that law can be a
blunt instrument, working at odds with “practical kinship” and its useful ambiguities.24
Our authors explore how various states have been compelled to take action on these
issues, and with what consequences. As Donna Seto, Elena Lesley and Hoy Vathana,
Fionnuala D. Ní Aoláin, and Sabine Lee skillfully demonstrate, controlling marriage and
reproduction has been a cornerstone of statecraft and geopolitics across time and space. From
Vietnam to Cambodia, from Germany to Bosnia and beyond, population and adoption
policies are vast projects of social engineering harnessed to the cause of nationalism, cultural
revolutions, and ethnic conflicts. By providing rich comparative ethnographic data, these
authors add to our understanding of the logics that drive governments to develop policies that
may further complicate the precarious conditions in which many of these women and their
children live. At times those policies are clearly aimed at bolstering nation or state building
efforts, the women serving as ethnic markers and their children as useful symbolic tools to
pursue various political agendas.
Additionally, as Dipali Anumol and Samual Munderere demonstrate, governmental
requirements may be the site of forced disclosure. Their lengthy conversations about Rwanda
contribute to generating practical steps for overcoming discrimination and for not locating
the affective burden of caring for these girls and boys solely on the shoulders of their
mothers. At times the recommendations seem so obvious that the reader will wonder why
action was not taken much earlier. For example, in order to attend school, children must
provide documentation that forces them to identify the conditions of their conception. For
children born of rape, that documentation is a painful reminder—or first-time news—of how
they came into the world. The Rwandan government could abolish such requirements,
making school at site for learning and growth rather than one of humiliation or painful
disclosures for those children who learn—only then—that they are the product of rape.
Disclosure, handled with care, can be beneficial. Across contexts children born of
conflict-related sexual violence express a desire to know who their fathers are. I join our
authors in insisting that we must balance the mother’s right to secrecy with the child’s rights
to know the facts surrounding their conception; here, the issue of sequencing is vital. Mothers
may need therapy for their own trauma before they can even begin to speak with their
children about the sexual violence to which they were subjected and from which their
children were conceived. Speaking of fathers leads us to making kin.

Making Kin: Beyond Patriarchal Biologies

 My purpose is to make “kin” mean something other/more than entities tied by ancestry or genealogy.
—Donna Haraway25

The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire
a nationality and. as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.
—Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 7

Another rich area of inquiry centers on “local biologies” and theories of transmission.
Margaret Lock’s concept of local biologies provides a way of analyzing the coproduction of
biology and culture (as opposed to one universal biology upon which cultures elaborate), and
to capture how this coproduction contributes to embodied experiences and discourses about
the body (1995). This allows us to explore biology as a system of signification, as a way of
producing meaning. Although DNA and genetic codes animate scientific discussions of
inherited traits, local biologies are more apt to involve bodily fluids, toxic memories, and
wounds of the soul. Looking comparatively, researchers can explore some of the
characteristics thought to pass from parent to child via blood, semen, breast milk, or in utero.
In Peru I was told that children conceived via rape were “naturally aggressive,” a trait
traced back to the violence perpetrated by their biological fathers. Other mothers assured me
that these children were prone to seeking revenge, reflecting the idea they were the “enemy
within” and that the desire for vengeance was passed from father to son. From the scant
literature available, it appears that the male children born of rape are more likely to provoke
fear than are the girls, indicating the primacy of the father’s semen and blood in the
transmission of traits associated with violent masculinities.26 In this case, nature trumps
nurture and biology veers into destiny.
In her comparative work on children born of rape in Bosnia and Rwanda, Patricia
Weitsman considers these children as a prism for identity politics. She situates the different
uses of rape within the politics of identity, especially with regard to whether ethnicity is or is
not determined by the father’s bloodline.27 During the Serbian rape campaigns, “the
paramount assumption underpinning these policies is that identity is biologically and
paternally given.”28 In this case, women were mere vessels for transmitting paternal identity,
and these were occupied wombs. Different constructs of identity will culminate in different
logics behind the use (or not) of sexual violence, yet Weitsman is surely correct when she
states that, “Once born, the identity of war babies is inextricably linked to their rapist
fathers.”29 Challenging the centrality of the father’s identity in determining the fate of these
children—whether through behavioral predispositions, ethnic identity, physical appearance,
or some other characteristic—is one component of questioning patriarchal reasoning rather
than reinforcing it. For now, given the centrality of the father’s identity in determining the
fate of these children—whether one agrees with such essentialism or not—underscores the
need for further research on and with men.
In this book, Phoebe Donnelly and Myriam Denov and Anais Cadieux Van Vliet take up
that challenge to fascinating ends. Donnelly explores the pro-natalist policies of Al-Shabaab
and how those policies—and babies—were central to accruing male prestige and promoting a
specific form of masculinity. Providing men with a route to traditional markers of manhood
was an effective recruitment strategy, and the children, in turn, are valued and considered
future fighters. This is strikingly at odds with the policies of other insurgent groups, such as
the Shining Path in Peru and the Revolutionary Armed Forces in Colombia, laying the
groundwork for further research on the reproductive governance policies within nonstate
armed groups and between nonstate armed groups and the civilians they seek to control.
Denov and Cadiuex Van Vliet provide another fascinating chapter that challenges many
preconceived notions about “rapist fathers.” They conducted research with fathers and the
children they produced in the LRA in Northern Uganda. They worked with the children who
resulted from those acts and, of vital importance, explored how the children themselves view
their perpetrator-fathers. Within the LRA, commanders provided for their children and their
status conferred certain benefits to their offspring. The children remember their fathers not as
perpetrators, but as good providers and yearn for them. Readers may be surprised by their
results, which provide yet another example of the importance of ethnographic nuance and
detail.
Finally, I ask readers to look at the language from the Convention on the Rights of the
Child, Article 7: the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents. There is no caveat
that those parents must be related by blood, by biology. For feminist researchers,
reconfiguring kin is a key means of challenging patriarchal reasoning, property rights,
inheritance norms, and even human exceptionalism and its toxic effects on our planet.
Haraway urges us to “make kin, not babies,” by which she invites her readers to imagine
other ways of reckoning family, belonging, kindness, and care (2016).

Transformations
What can assist these children of all genders, their mothers, and their wider communities in
light of the abundant challenges we lay out in this book? Where are the spaces that may
provide respite and care, and who are the actors who may ease some of the burdens? Within
the explicitly feminist peacebuilding and postconflict reconstruction approach that frames
this introduction, how can we help? These questions animate the last part of this book.
At times, absence can be evidence. When these children are not discriminated against,
what has allowed that to happen? Mazurana explores religion and spirituality, arguing that
these are crucial tools for remaking life in the aftermath of war’s devastation. In
Mozambique, she found no evidence that girls and boys born of wartime rape were rejected;
indeed, healers were surprised by the question. The process of naming that I discussed earlier
played a crucial role in helping to protect children taken by the armed forces and other armed
groups, and helped smooth their acceptance back into their communities. She identifies key
factors that have made the country an exception to the rule of rejection of girls and boys born
of war, and argues that religious leaders and spirituality are key to understanding how both
the children and the country have fared.
Tatjana Takševa provides another example that challenges overly pessimistic narratives
regarding the fate of these children. Drawing upon her long-term research with young women
and men born of wartime rape in Bosnia and Herzegovina, she argues that the children’s
ethnically hybrid identities can contribute to peacebuilding efforts, particularly in contexts in
which peace accords, such as the 1995 Dayton Agreement, served to reify and even
exacerbate ethnic cleavages. The resilience of these young people, and their embodiment of
intersectional identities, allows them to critique ethnonationalism and its corrosive legacies.
She underscores their agency and refusal to construct victimization as the core of their (now)
young adult subjectivities.
For Ladisch and Mutere, it is crucial to combine the efforts of local activists with
international policies and programs to ensure they work together rather than at odds with one
another. Taking the example of postelection violence in Kenya as their point of departure,
they look at policies that break the cycle of harm. By identifying those factors that speak to
both local specificities as well as global patterns, they lay out a series of recommendations
that can contribute to transformational justice for these children and their mothers.
Finally, the politics of visibility and representation form key themes in Bridget Conley’s
contemplation of photos of genocide survivors and their children in Rwanda. She asks
viewers to look again at these survivors, not away, and grasp the responsibility one must
assume as a result of knowledge about them. The photos she analyzes were taken by
photographers at different points in time, and they reveal the challenges of maternal–child
relationships and responsibilities across time. For concerned audiences, Conley raises
question of how to move beyond the distant gaze and into effective and compassionate
action.

Final Reflections
At one point early on in my doctoral studies and research, it became clear that I needed to
know much more about the anthropology of children and childhood. I headed to the (then)
Kroeber anthropology library at the University of California: in the stacks, I found there were
no children there. With a few notable exceptions, somehow anthropology’s interest in
children stopped with Margaret Mead, a perverse disciplinary twist on “arrested
development.” I invite the skeptic to randomly select one hundred ethnographies. Read them
and try to learn something about the lives of children in the societies studied. I do not mean
what adults say about children but what the children themselves say and do. I agree with
Nancy Scheper-Hughes, who notes that “As a whole, childhood is under-represented and
under-theorized and anthropologists need to alter their conventional ways and methods of
studying children.”30
The chapters in this book contain empirical and theoretical innovations; they also offer
methodological innovations. In each chapter the authors discuss how they ethically
conducted their research and the precautions they took to do no harm. I have long advocated
for shifting the narrative burden for sexual violence off the shoulders of the victim-survivors
and framing it as our collective responsibility to speak out when those around us are being
harmed. Feminist legal theorist Ní Aoláin has written about “communities of harm.” She
insists we consider the concept of connected harms, which is grounded in the idea that
individual violations create communities of harm which include not only the victim herself
but also those people who are closely tied to her emotionally, or who are in a relationship of
codependency with her.31 When turning to the topic of conflict-related sexual violence and
the girls, boys, and other genders born as a result of those violations, we simply cannot
reduce our analyses to the mother-child dyad—the undifferentiated women and children that
Cynthia Enloe insightfully critiques throughout her prolific work. Not only might the women
and children have competing rights regimes, but they are all and always embedded in
complex networks of intimate relations, families, communities, nation-states: in short, dyadic
myopia will not lead to new responses to the legacies of armed conflict.
Taken together, the chapters in this edited volume do challenge conceptions, and serve as
an invitation to think further about these questions. Evaluating the ways in which children
born of wartime sexual violence are constructed, named, represented, marked, and perhaps
loved could generate new insights into the intersection of gender, ethnicity, sexuality,
violence, and identity. I am convinced that it is detailed ethnographic research that can
provide some answers and a greater measure of justice for these women and their children.
Perhaps we can then move beyond precarity and discrimination—move beyond communities
of harm—to construct environments of compassion and care.

Notes
1. Bouvier (2016).
2. For further discussion of this issue see Theidon (2022).
3. See Theidon (2004; 2012).
4. See Wood (2006) for a discussion of repertoires of violence.
5. Here I draw upon Theidon (2015).
6. For further discussion of children born of wartime rape in Peru see Theidon (2015).
7. Das (2000).
8. Nowrojee (1996, 39l); Weitsman (2008, 577); Wax (2004, A1).
9. Smith (2000).
10. Powell (2001).
11. Mckelvey (1999).
12. Personal communication, University of Oregon, May 9, 2013.
13. Weitsman (2003, 11).
14. I thank Victoria Sanford for this information.
15. Apio (2007, 101).
16. Author’s fieldwork, Colombia, June–July, 2007.
17. Van Ee and Kleber (2012, 643).
18. Von Bruck and Bodenhorn (2006, 3).
19. Apio (2007, 101).
20. Apio (2007, 101), emphasis added.
21. Editorial, the People’s Daily, quoted in the New York Times, August 12, 2018.
22. Grieg (2001).
23. Richland (2013).
24. Das (1995, 65).
25. Haraway (2016, 103).
26. Carpenter (2007).
27. Weitsman (2008, 563).
28. Ibid., 565.
29. Ibid., 566.
30. Scheper-Hughes and Sargent (1998, 13).
31. Ní Aoláin (2009, 220).
 PART I
LIFE CYCLES
Children Born of Wartime Rape Across Time and Space
 2
“They’re Called Bui Doi”
(Re)framing the Politics of Amerasians and Children Born of War
Donna Seto

Introduction
“When I heard him cry . . . I asked the doctor to bring him to me. I wanted to strangle him”
(Anthony 2015a). These words were spoken by the mother of Alen Muhic, a Bosnian Muslim
woman who was raped by Serbian soldiers during the 1990s conflict in the former
Yugoslavia. From 1992 to 1995, the Serbian Army carried out a campaign of terror that was
responsible for subjecting an estimated 200,000 women to sexual violence, forced
impregnation, and forced maternity (Seifert 1996; Stiglmayer 1994; Niarchos 1995; Bos
2006; Hansen 2001). Although it is widely recognized that both Serbian and Bosnian women
were subject to systematic forms of sexual violence, the initial motive was to intimidate,
terrorize, and expel Bosnian-Muslims and Croats from the region. Systematic rape and
impregnation were used as a strategy to achieve this goal and as a way to ensure that one
ethnic group suffered the long-term detriments of humiliation and shame that is often
associated with rape (Stiglmayer 1994; Hansen 2001; Allen 1996; Daniel-Wrabetz 2007).
Alen Muhic was born in a Gorazde hospital in 1993, but was adopted by Muharem, the
hospital caretaker, after his biological mother abandoned him. Up until the age of ten, Muhic
was not aware of the details of his conception; instead he believed he was the son of
Muharem and his wife, Advija. In 2003, Muhic was in a playground fight and his opponent
told him that he was adopted and that he is a “Chetnik bastard” (Anthony 2015a). Muhic’s
story sheds light on the plight of children born of militarized sexual violence and introduces
the complex question of how the international community reconciles with subjects that have
been silenced in peacebuilding and postconflict reconciliation processes. More importantly, it
further questions why this specific group of children has rarely been mentioned in the
broader literature on conflict and peacebuilding, sexual violence, militarized prostitution, and
children’s rights. Children born of wartime sexual violence represent a distinct group of war-
affected children whose well-being has been compromised due to their complex beginnings
(Carpenter 2007; Carpenter et al. 2005; Watson 2007; Seto 2013). Consequently, their
complex beginnings further subject them to a number of abuses such as infanticide,
abandonment, social discrimination, statelessness, and malnutrition.
The lack of research and attention concerning the plight of these children is curious. In
recent years, discussions on sexual violence in war and militarized prostitution have
considered the experiences of children born of war; however, this process continues to
connect the discourse with their mothers. Rarely has the literature focused on the agency
children possess and how children born of war have navigated the complexity of
discriminatory restrictions such as the lack of citizenship, access to education, and
knowledge of their identity. This chapter positions these children born of war at the center of
the wider literature in order to question if the current discourse can adequately represent
these children. It further sheds light on how children born of war are political agents that can
shape the politics surrounding motherhood, national reconciliation, and international
adoption procedures. In doing so, I pose three pertinent questions: 1) How has this unique
group of children navigated their identities, especially in a landscape that has protected the
mothers over the children? 2) How do these children understand and negotiate a sense of
belonging, especially in cases where they do not have recognized citizenship, which is
normally required to ensure the basic protections are guaranteed? and 3) What do these
children reveal about the responsibilities of their biological parents, their birth communities,
and their adoptive communities?
This chapter will primarily focus on the experiences of Amerasian children who were
offspring of American military personnel and civilian Vietnamese women. The Amerasian
case in Vietnam is noteworthy as it highlights the complexity of sexual violence and
relationships in militarized situations. As some of these children resulted from consensual
relationships or from the burgeoning prostitution industry in the region, their experiences
demonstrate similarities with other groups of children born of war. Despite the differences in
origin, Amerasians in Vietnam, Korea, Japan, and the Philippines faced abandonment,
discrimination, and social ostracization because of their presumed affiliation with the identity
of their fathers. In Vietnam, the Communist regime and the ideological vacuum that resulted
with the departure of American forces left Amerasians in a particularly difficult situation.
Seen as collaborators with their foreign fathers, Amerasians were deemed incompatible with
the national identity of Communist Vietnam and, more poignantly, the children were physical
evidence that their mothers had betrayed their own country (Varzally 2017; Bass 1996;
DeBonis 1995; Yarborough 2005; Lipman 2011). However, in the early 1980s, the Reagan
administration saw the opportunity to use Amerasian children as a tool to reinvigorate
American morale by casting these children as their “own”; this ploy further provided the
impetus to denounce Vietnam and its failure to protect children (Varzally 2017; Lipman
2011). As will be discussed, recognition of Amerasians by the US government changed the
fate of many of these children, who were young adults or adults at the time, while further
altering their position in their communities. Their communities and distant relatives utilized
the “newfound status” of Amerasians as a possible route to migrate to the United States.
Consequently, this period witnessed a number of illegitimate relationships or familial claims
involving Amerasians, where the spouse or extended family member would later abandon the
Amerasian counterpart once they gained the right to stay in the United States. In considering
this, this chapter questions how these children form a sense of political agency in such
uncertain and discriminatory sociopolitical circumstances. The Amerasian situation provides
a notable case as their identities shifted from a marginalized one to one of temporary
privilege. Children born of militarized relations or of wartime rape represent a complex and
multifaceted issue that complicates the study of war, postconflict efforts of recovery, and the
development of international norms intended to protect children worldwide.
This chapter blurs the definitions between children born of wartime rape and children
born of militarized sexual relations (such as in Vietnam) as there are similarities in the
treatment of the children. The chapter will conceptually use both terms to describe this group
of children, as well as use the term children born of war. The shift toward a broader term that
encompasses different origins helps to shift the focus from the suffering of their mothers to
the experience of the children. Children born of war occupy an invisible nonspace in regards
to their ability to rightfully access the liberties set out by the international child protection
regime. Their precarious and complicated identities as children outside of the existing norms
reveals that existing practices enshrined in international norms such as the Geneva
Convention on the Rights of the Child (1924), Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959),
Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(1948), and the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) relies on a particular
form of childhood that may not best represent the experiences of war babies. Childhood, as
defined by the children’s rights regime, requires one’s membership to a particular state,
community, or family, which can protect and ensure the rights of the child are secured
(Arendt 1967; Donnelly and Howard 1988). Consequently, many children born of war lack
citizenship in their birth country, are raised in orphanages, or ostracized by their birth
community; thus they lack the basis to ensure their bests interests are represented, let alone
their basic needs. In considering this, their identities as outsiders can help formulate a
different way of thinking about childhood and war.

Defining Children Born of War

Helen Brocklehurst’s poignant study of childhood in Who’s Afraid of Children (2006)
unpacks the meaning of childhood as a constructed phase that has not been immune from
politico-economic milieu. In her study of the Boer War and World War I, Brocklehurst notes
that scientific scrutiny traced the poor health of soldiers to inadequate care and nutrition in
childhood. This recognition of children’s health and the strength of the nation fostered efforts
to develop child-specific medical practices, such as nurturing activities and specialized care
for children (Brocklehurst 2006). Contemporary warfare has further demonstrated that
children are not innocent bystanders; rather, war has exposed children to various experiences
such as armed combat, sexual violence, forced labor, displacement, and captivity (Huynh,
D’Costa, and Lee-Koo 2015; Watson 2008, 2006; McEvoy-Levy 2006; Seto 2013). In many
respects, children effect and are affected by conflict and peace processes in competing ways
that warrant youth an important presence in current discussion of political agency. Unlike
other groups of war-affected children, the identities of children born of war are constructed
based on violent modes of personalized warfare such as forced impregnation, sexual
violence, and militarized sexual exploitation (Carpenter 2007; 2000) or, in cases of
militarized relationships, were rendered as the enemy due to their physical difference. These
practices employ the psychological and emotional aspect of conflict while also involving
complicated issues related to identity, gendered norms, national recovery, and trauma.
Moreover, the precarious beginnings associated with these children further expose them to a
number of complex situations such as exploitation, displacement, statelessness, and
(re)militarization (Seto 2013).
 Children born of war has been broadly defined as “a child that has one parent that was
part of the army or peacekeeping force and the other parent a local citizen where the weight
is on the stigma these children can be subject to as a result of their background” (Carpenter et
al. 2005). In Born of War: Protecting Children of Sexual Violence Survivors in Conflict
Zones, R. Charli Carpenter writes that these children can refer to “persons of any age
conceived as a result of violent, coercive, or exploitative sexual relation in conflict zones”
(Carpenter 2007, 3). Recent studies on children born of war rape in the 1990s conflict in
Bosnia-Herzegovina reveal that the sociopolitical detriments continue to extend into
adolescence and adulthood (Erjavec and Volcic 2010; Anthony 2015b; Jasmila Zbanic 2006).
Thus, the definition includes cases of children who are born as a result of militarized rape
and sexual enslavement, as well as sexual exploitation committed by occupation forces,
peacekeepers, humanitarian workers, and private militaries. Furthermore, the situation of
Amerasians adds further complexity to the definition. As will be discussed, situations of
sexual violence did occur, but the militarized climate of war significantly altered the
socioeconomic climate of southern Vietnam while fostering a culture of militarized
prostitution and opportunity to “purchase” women. Engineers and other personnel were also
present in the region for long periods of time, which further disrupted the culture and
gendered norms by providing women with job as clerks and translators (Yarborough 2005;
DeBonis 1995; Bass 1996; Moon 1997). Michael Goodhart observes that children born of
war “exist in numerous contexts. The social, cultural, and political milieu in which the
conflicts, the rapes, and the births take place affects how rights questions play out, as do the
actions of states and international actors, including the media and aid agencies” (Goodhart
2007, 308). Although the definition of war babies is broad, it does help to shed light on the
complexity of gender in war, and how cases involving peacekeepers can often blur the lines
between militarized violence in conflict and postconflict periods (Enloe 2004; 2000).
The application of the existing definition of children born wartime sexual violence does
not suggest that their experiences are entirely uniform. The suffering experienced by these
children is largely dependent on how they have been treated or perceived prior to their birth,
either as a military strategy or enemy child; by the mother who is a survivor of war rape; and
by the birth community which may embody the taboo associated with accepting an unwanted
child who is viewed as belonging to the opposition. Although many of these children are
consistently the subject of neglect, abuse, discrimination, stigmatization, and even infanticide
(Niarchos 1995; Stiglmayer 1994; Grieg 2001; Carpenter 2000), some children escape such
marginalization either through “luck, adoption, or silence about their origins” (Goodhart
2007, 309). For instance, after the 1971 Bangladesh-Pakistan conflict, the Bengali
government actively supported abortions for rape survivors in order to ensure “children of
the enemy” were not born (Sharlach 2000; D’Costa 2009). In another context, after the 1995
genocide in Rwanda, an individual account from a rape survivor suggests that the creation of
a child brought her hope in an otherwise harrowing experience (Mukangendo 2007).
At the center of the marginalization of children are their complex yet contradictory
identities as “secondary (rape) victims” (Daniel-Wrabetz 2007) as well as physical reminders
to their mothers of the rape and their birth communities of their defeat in war. The
precariousness of their experiences, however, is deeply rooted in the construction of their
identities as offspring of the enemy. In saying this, if the construction of their identities,
either as enemy children or secondary rape victims, alters their experiences, could it be
possible to “fix” the marginalization of these children by deconstructing the identities of
these children and how their treatment relies on how they are perceived? For instance,
Amerasian children who were ostracized in Vietnam were expected to navigate their new
identities as American citizens once the United States promised to take responsibility for
their children. The shift in this identity provided Amerasians with an opportunity to start
again, but also altered their relationship with their community and how they were perceived
by the American public (Varzally 2017; Cheng 2014; Lipman 2011; Yarborough 2005;
DeBonis 1995). In considering this, it is critical to unpack the discourse in which the
identities of these children are initially constructed and reconstructed in a changing political
landscape.
First, in cases where forced impregnation or rape were used as systematic methods to
instill violence and humiliation onto a community, the identities of children born of wartime
sexual violence are politically charged. Through a campaign of militarized violence, children
conceived through purposeful gendered violence, the birth of children thus become a
deliberate strategy to ensure the affected community suffers from the long-term consequence
of raising an “enemy child” (Niarchos 1995). The strategic use of rape camps and forced
impregnation during the 1990s conflict in the former Yugoslavia is a key example of how the
birth of children was inherently interlinked with the militarized strategy of war. Although
both the Serbian and Bosnians experienced systematic forms of sexual violence, rape was a
strategic method used by the Serbian forces in order to humiliate and destroy the identity of
the affected community. In the aftermath of the conflict, forced impregnation and rape in war
were recognized as an integral campaign in modern war as well as a crime against humanity
and a tool of genocide (Niarchos 1995). Similarly, anecdotal evidence has surfaced
concerning the conflict in Darfur (Amnesty International 2004; Bashir and Lewis 2008;
Human Rights Watch 2005, 2008; Matheson 2004) and plight of the Rohingya refugees
(Nichols 2018; Wheeler 2019). Sexual violence committed by militarized forces has been
employed as a method to force the population to flee from the region. In the situation of
Darfur, the Janjaweed has used rape as a method to create “mixed raced” children who will
grow up alienated from their birth community (Wax 2004; Polgreen 2005; Bashir and Lewis
2008).
Second, the identities of these children—as belonging to the enemy—are politically
constructed to suit the strategy of war. Both Cynthia Enloe (1990) and Joshua Goldstein
(2001) have noted that gendered stereotypes are heightened during war, where the
subordination of women during peacetime is further heightened as a military tactic during
conflict. For instance, both the perpetrators of militarized sexual violence and the affected
community understand the repercussions of rape. Historically, women’s bodies were assumed
to belong to men, while the damage ensued on women through rape was perceived not as
abuse against women, but as a detriment to men’s ability to protect women (Seifert 1996;
Stiglmayer 1994; Brownmiller 1975). Consequently, it is through this common awareness of
the damage rape carries for the affected community that sustains the effectiveness of its
application. Similarly, the birth of children from war rape obeys the same rationale where
both the birth community and the perpetrators expect that these children will assume the
familial and social identity of the father. Such values can be seen in nonconflict periods when
children are expected to assume the name of the father and belong to the father’s clan or
group (McEvoy-Levy 2007). For children of war rape, such gendered values can be
detrimental to their ability to survive the birth community, which is often where the mother is
from.
Seen as illegitimate and ostracized, the Vietnamese Amerasians were considered outcasts
within their society. In the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam War, fear of any association
with the United States forced mothers and family members of Amerasian children to “rid
themselves of “evidence” that they collaborated with the American enemy” (Thomas 2019,
57). The birth certificates of these children were destroyed, along with pictures, and
paperwork proving that the Amerasian child or his or her American father existed. However,
as the tide of war turned in the early 1980s, the Reagan administration’s debate over
immigration pitted Amerasian children as the responsibility of the United States. The 1965
Immigration and Nationality Act identifies that foreign children of US citizens are qualified
as “immediate relatives” and therefore were admitted into the United States (Lipman 2011,
38). The discourse constructed Amerasian children, who were young adults by this time, as
“American” and their reception through the Orderly Departure Program (ODP) and
Homecoming Act as a “welcome home.” Situated amidst the debate on immigration, the
initial approach of the Reagan administration concluded that “Amerasians would have been
heralded as exceptional immigrants who would be welcomed with open arms, while other
immigrants would presumably be held back at the border” (Lipman 2011, 42).
In the Yugoslavia context, both Bosnians and Serbians understood the social custom that
children assumed the identity of the paternal family. Based on this, the creation of children
from forced impregnation in Bosnia-Herzegovina was a political strategy to infiltrate the
beliefs and the community of the opposition (Carpenter 2007; Daniel-Wrabetz 2007;
Weitsman 2007). In a militarized context where mass rape and sexual violence are used
against the victimized nation, the identity of the father is often unknown. In many cases, rape
is committed on a mass scale and involving more than one perpetrator, thus complicating the
ability to determine the identity of the father (Seifert 1996). As a result, in a society that
associates children with the identity of their birth father is further complicated by the
anonymity of the child’s paternal connection. Whereas the paternal community fails to claim
the child, the maternal community in which the child is born into often sustains the existing
paternal connection as a justification to ostracize the child. Children born of war, thus, suffer
from the conflicted identity of neither truly belonging to the mother’s community nor to their
father’s.
Lastly, the identity of children born of war is directly dependent on the actions of the
mother and, to a broader extent, the birth community. As women are often faced with the
brunt of childrearing, caring for children born of war is no different. As the well-being of the
child is reliant on the mother, the later holds immense agency in terms of how the child is
treated. Unfortunately, birth communities of rape survivors may continue to abide by
restrictive gender stereotypes that detriment both the woman and child, without considering
the sociopolitical reasons that place them in the situation. Due to this, women who have been
exposed to sexual violence often face feelings of shame, ostracization, and humiliation. As a
result, survivors of sexual violence may not openly speak about the incident(s). If a child is
conceived, it provides tangible evidence that rape (or a relationship) occurred which can
further bring forth questions concerning the behavior of the mother.
Children born of war present a delicate thorn in the debate between the representation of
women’s rights and children’s rights. Recognition of sexual violence in war as a crime
against humanity, for instance, relied on proof that it was a heinous abuse to women
(Carpenter 2000). As part of the process, forced impregnation and the birth of unwanted
children became integral in proving the experiences of women were beyond her own volition.
However, the international recognition of war rape hardly made mention of children
conceived or born as a result of rape. At best, they appeared within the footnotes of feminist
texts on war rape, or were alluded to in literature on child soldiers and refugees. Children of
war, however, expose the tensions in the debate that currently sits at a standstill of
recognizing the rights of the mother over the rights of the child born as a result. The situation
with the Amerasians was unique as initial legislation recognized the responsibility for the
child rather than the mother; where the belief that these children have “ ‘undisputed ties to
the United States’ justified more favorable terms of immigration” (Varzally 2017, 92). More
so, the uniqueness of this situation was also framed in the Reagan administration’s attempt to
reframe American fatherhood as one that cares for all children, including those that were left
behind in Vietnam (Cheng 2014; Gage 2007). The complexity of this situation was further
evident when the idea of “family unity” meant that Amerasians were to migrate with their
immediate family, which in some cases included spouses or extended family members
(Varzally 2017).
Moreover, in situations where children have been aborted or killed by their mothers,
should the mother, who is a survivor of rape, be legally accountable for the death of the
child? Does recognizing the suffering experienced by the mother somehow have precedence
over the livelihood of the child? In many instances, the death of children conceived in war
rape, either as a state-legislated policy or an individual act committed by the mother, has
been framed as necessary in concealing the shame associated with rape. Herein lies the
inherent contradiction in the rights discourse, where a hierarchy of grief perpetuates a
narrative where some lives are considered more grievable than others (Butler 2004; Seto
2015). The complex identities and origins of children born of war present a pivotal lens in
unpacking the international children’s rights regime. Although some children born of war
may grow up in relatively “normal” circumstances without being exposed to the harmful
detriments described here, many war babies are subjected to circumstances that significantly
limit any chance of access to basic rights. The next section will explore the experiences of
Amerasians from Vietnam and, in doing so, question how they have demonstrated political
agency in navigating their marginal existence in Vietnam and how their identities were
reshaped into American citizens.

The Question of Political Agency: Sociopolitical Circumstances of

Amerasians
American involvement in Southeast Asia left a legacy of children born between local
Vietnamese women and American personnel. The United States was not alone in fathering
half-Vietnamese children. French colonial rule of Vietnam also resulted in the birth of mixed-
race children however, after the 1954 battle of Dien Bien Phu that culminated with the end of
French colonial rule in Southeast Asia, the French evacuated 25,000 Franco-Asian children
and their mothers (Yarborough 2005; DeBonis 1995; Lipman 2011; Varzally 2017). These
half-French children and their Vietnamese mothers were guaranteed French citizenship and a
chance to live with their fathers. Unlike their predecessors, the United States did not
recognize their responsibility for their children until the mid-1980s, which was nearly a
decade after their evacuation. As a result, this subjected a majority of Amerasian children to
social discrimination and abandonment.
American military presence in the region involved approximately 6 million troops; 58,000
lost their lives and more than 300,000 were wounded (Varzally 2017, 5). US military
practices were marked by search-and-destroy missions, carpet-bombing raids, chemical
defoliation, damage to infrastructure, and the death of an estimated three million Vietnamese.
Incidents such as the 1969 My Lai Massacre, where US forces “burned a South Vietnamese
village and killed as many as 400 men, women and children, highlighted the indiscipline of
US troops, the uncertain boundaries of conflict, and the suffering of South Vietnamese”
(Varzally 2017, 5). American military presence significantly altered the socioeconomic
environment—changing the local economy to suit the US consumerist interests, while also
providing new employment opportunities for Vietnamese men and women (Enloe 2000;
Moon 1997). American military bases and surrounding areas provided substantial
employment opportunities, where men and women from rural areas migrated to city centers
to fill the employment vacuum (Yarborough 2005). For instance, women from rural villages
took on jobs as maids, laundresses, and waitresses in or near American military bases (Enloe
1990; Yarborough 2005; Moon 1997). Some Vietnamese women, such as Nguyen Thi Lang,
worked as housekeepers because it provided an alternative to laboring on a farm in the “hot
sun” (DeBonis 1995, 245). Women often relocated to-and-from their homes and work.
Educated and literate Vietnamese also benefited from the influx of foreign work, where
women took on work as secretaries, clerks, and translators for the US military. New forms of
employment allowed women to venture beyond their traditional gendered roles that often
confined them to the private sphere (Yarborough 2005; DeBonis 1995; Varzally 2017;
Lipman 2011).
The presence of US troops also contributed to the rise of the entertainment and
prostitution industry. Bars, dance clubs, and brothels emerged in cities in the south of
Vietnam to serve the growing number of foreign troops. In Saigon, it was not uncommon to
see pimps escorting American soldiers to-and-from brothels in the prostitution district of Tu
Do Street. Women working at the local brothel earned approximately three to five dollars a
day (Yarborough 2005, 17–18). For instance, Dung was an uneducated migrant to Saigon
who turned to the prostitution industry because she felt it was her only choice. She confessed
that she “never went to school [and] never learned to read and write” (DeBonis 1995, 251),
which combined with the expectation to provide for her mother, meant that her job prospects
were limited. Alternatively, Americans could also “rent a girl” by paying a woman a flat-rate
to live with them for a designated length of time. Trin Yarborough’s study in Surviving
Twice: Amerasian Children and the Vietnam War (2005) notes that the lucrative business of
“renting” women provided those who can speak English with a substantial income. Women,
Yarborough notes, could earn as much as $11 US per day, or $50 US for five days, which was
substantially more than what a woman could earn for factory work or as a maid (Yarborough
2005, 17–18). In addition, US construction workers and engineers were also present in the
region and earned five times more than their military counterparts. Often, these men entered
into long-term relationships with local women.
The militarized region was not immune to incidents of sexual violence where children
were born as a result. The 1968 My Lai incident demonstrated US ill-treatment of
Vietnamese women and children, where the mission to “search and destroy” Communist
fighters ended with the massacre of more than 400 civilians. Women between the ages of
eighteen and thirty-five were also forced to strip with the intention of being gang-raped
(British Broadcasting Corporation 1998). Additional cases of sexual violence were also
evident on or near American military bases. A woman named Anh testified that a black
American soldier offered to give her a ride home after work, but rather than driving her
home, he “turned into an isolated area, and raped [her] in the car” (DeBonis 1995, 258–259).
After the incident, Anh refused to have any contact with the soldier, but she later found out
she was pregnant (DeBonis 1995).
Amerasian children were born of varying relationships between local women and foreign
military personnel. As noted earlier, some women willingly entered into consensual
relationships with American men either through marriage or shared living accommodations.
Regardless of the circumstances, the ideological uncertainties of the war punished women
who gave birth to mixed-raced children for their association with the United States. The
advancement of Communist forces in the southern Vietnam forced the United States to
evacuate from the region. In March 1975, President Gerald Ford announced “Operation
Babylift” to evacuate 7,000 orphans, some of whom were American. On April 5, 1975, the
first plane carrying 243 children and 62 adults reported decompression problems and
crashed, resulting in the death of 78 children (Yarborough 2005, 34). By mid-1975 the
remaining Americans were airlifted out of Vietnam, leaving behind their wives and children.
The evacuation of US troops also meant that anyone associated with the United States was
seen as a threat to the Communist forces. Rumors surfaced that anyone who had been
associated with the Americans would be killed or sent to re-education camps. Such rumors
meant that the survival of wives and girlfriends of American soldiers, some of whom were
mothers of Amerasian children, were under threat. Photographs and letters documenting
relationships between Vietnamese women and American men were burned or destroyed.
Identification cards that were used to enter military bases were also disposed of. Dung, a sex
worker in Saigon, noted that “before ‘75, I had everything; my own house, papers [for
residing in Saigon], ID card, my babies’ papers and ID cards. When the VC [Vietcong] came
to Saigon, they took everything” (DeBonis 1995, 252). Without proper documentation,
offspring of American soldiers were subject to systematic discrimination that prevented them
from receiving an education, accessing medical care, and finding formal employment.
Vietnamese women who decided to keep their mixed-raced children needed to find ways
to prevent the Vietcong from knowing that these children existed. Since the physical
appearance of Amerasian children was the main identifying factor, women found ways to
disguise their children’s appearance by cutting off their hair or rubbing dirt on their faces so
they appeared darker (Bass 1996). Subsequently, women who were not able to support their
children often abandoned them with distant relatives, at orphanages, or on the streets
(Yarborough 2005; Bass 1996; DeBonis 1995). For example, My, a white Amerasian male
from Da Nang, testified that he was “abandoned at the Da Nang market when [he] was a
newborn and picked up there by a lady who had a stall selling fabric” (DeBonis 1995, 9).
Amerasian children faced systematic forms of discrimination. Discrimination ranged from
taunts by anti-American peers to being sent to prison or re-education camps for having been
associated with the United States. Amerasian children represented the bottom of Vietnamese
society; they were labeled “bui doi,” “con lai,” or “my lai,” which exemplified their identities
as the “dust of life” (Grieg 2001; Yarborough 2005; Varzally 2017; Bass 1996). Amerasian
children experienced social discrimination that barred them from a proper education.
Children who tried to enroll in school were often turned back because they did not have the
proper documents. Those who were able to attend school were forced to leave because
preference was given to “Vietnamese” children.
Amerasian children who were born to African American soldiers received the brunt of
discrimination. For instance, during the Vietnam war, bars and brothels that served US troops
were segregated between “black” Americans and “white” Americans (Moon 1997;
Yarborough 2005; DeBonis 1995; Bass 1996; Lee 2015). Racist attitudes toward African
American soldiers were present among Vietnamese civilians, and women who worked in
“black” bars or brothels were stigmatized or ostracized. These women also faced
discrimination from their peers who worked in brothels that catered to “white” Americans
(Moon 1997; Yarborough 2005). Mixed-raced children who exhibited “black” characteristics
were ridiculed for their darker skin, broad noses, and curly hair. As will be discussed, the
Reagan administration’s framing of care for the Amerasian children primarily focused on
“white” Amerasian children. In a photo essay published in the New York Times in 1980, TV
journalist Bill Kurtis described how he saw “America” on the streets of Saigon: “The
children on the street were wrestling an orange, their shrill voices chattering wildly when a
young face peered from the middle of the group. It was haunting in its clarity, and quite
distinct from the faces of the Vietnamese youngsters around it. There is no mistaking it; there
was an American face” (in Lipman 2011, 33). The photo essay, however, only featured
“white” Amerasian children, who were thought to exemplify the identity of the United States.
The initial abandonment of Amerasian children by their American fathers demonstrates a
condition of bare life (Agamben 1998; Butler 2004). Similar to the precarious conditions
described by Giorgio Agamben and Judith Butler, these children may not be registered under
a proper family name nor are they given an opportunity to understand the nature of their
identity, thus limiting their ability to access other resources (Arendt 1967). The United
Nations Convention to the Rights of the Child and its predecessor, the Declaration on the
Rights of the Child, states that a child should not be deprived of a family environment and, if
so, the state should place children within an institution that best suits the needs of these
children. Although the administered transfer of Amerasians to the United States during the
1980s provided a temporary solution to alleviate the suffering of these children; it
undermines the initial phase of abandonment by the state and their fathers. Subsequently, the
absence of their fathers undermines the child’s ability to understand who they are and where
they came from. For instance, in The Unwanted: A Memoir (2001), Kien Nguyen, an
Amerasian, laments growing up without a paternal figure. He recalls that other Vietnamese
children had fathers in their lives, while he was taunted as being “different” for not having a
father, and for the fact that his facial features were different from the other children. The
absence of his father was also detrimental to the identity of her mother, who was
continuously mistaken to have been a prostitute.
In addition to being left behind by their fathers, some children were also abandoned by
their mothers. Women abandoned their Amerasian children for a variety of reasons:
ideological conflicts the child presented to the Communist regime, the inability to financially
support their children, or because the child reminded them of the violence they endured
during the war (Yarborough 2005; Bass 1996; DeBonis 1995). Communist authorities had
labeled anyone who had associated with the Americans as having committed treason against
the state. Thus, women who were seen to have children with American traits were easily
identified as having been associated with Americans. Women who had associated with the
Americans and their children were often relocated to New Economic Zones where they
worked in difficult conditions and were often taunted by the Vietnamese for having betrayed
Vietnam. As a result, many Vietnamese women who had Amerasian children abandoned
these children or placed them alternative sources of care. For instance, Nguyen Thi Hong
Hanh, an Amerasian, admits that when she was four years old, her mother left her. Hong
Hanh was taken to a babysitter daily so that her mother could work to support her. But then
one day, her mother had left her at the babysitter and never picked her up at the end of the
day (DeBonis 1995, 53). The babysitter was also unaware of where her mother had gone. In a
similar case of abandonment, Tuan Den notes that “when I was a child, I did not live beside
my mother. She was a bar girl, and when she went to work, she left me with a babysitter, an
old, poor lady who made some money by watching people’s kids. One day my mother just
dropped me off there and never came back, so it was the old lady who raised me” (DeBonis
1995, 53).
Abandonment can be detrimental to the development of the child. Children who were
abandoned by their mothers were forced into alternative modes of care, such as orphanages
that were willing to accept Amerasian children. However, as narratives provided by
orphanage administrators suggest, housing Amerasian children was detrimental to the
survival of the institution. Miss Dao, an orphanage administrator, noted that the turbulent
nature of postwar Vietnam meant that the country depended on children for labor. She notes
that Communist officials would “adopt” children for the purposes of sending them to work
on the farms: “The government took the healthiest, strongest, good-looking orphans, most
aged seven or eight, including two or three Amerasians, to work in the fields. Only
Communists could take Amerasians because others were afraid to take them” (Yarborough
2005, 43). Children who were not accepted into orphanages were forced to live on the streets,
while some were left with distant relatives. Hong Hanh, for instance, notes that “my
stepparents treated me badly. When I was about six years old, they sent me out to work to
make money for them. I took any job, like maid or baby-sitter” (Yarborough 2005, 43). She
further laments that “my stepparents were teachers, but they never sent me to school or
taught me at home. They just made me work. They didn’t love me, I grew up without love”
(Yarborough 2005, 43).
In 1987, the United States passed the Homecoming Act, recognizing its responsibility for
these children who were, by then, young adults. Although the initial 1982 Orderly Departure
Program had successfully transferred several thousand Americans from Vietnam to the
United States, the heavy price of administration hampered the success of the program. Its
successor was passed by Democratic Congressman Robert Mzareck who was motivated by a
letter from students at Huntington High School who were dismayed by a photograph of Le
Van Minh, a crippled Amerasian child who begged on the streets. Mzarek would personally
fly to Vietnam to rescue Le Van Minh and “deposited him in a foster home in Long Island”
(Bass 1996, 45). Upon passing the Homecoming Act, Amerasians who were once shunned
and discriminated against became “gold children.” An Amerasian named Charlie notes that:
It was like being sprinkled with a wonderful magic powder. Yesterday you were living in hardship. Today you are a
little prince or princess! The Amerasians were more coddled than the real children of these people. Then in 1986, when
the ODP program was stopped, many people who had used Amerasians for this purpose were dazed. Suddenly, the little
princes and princesses were turned out of their houses to return to their wandering lives. (Varzally 2017, 93)

Family members or fake families latched themselves onto Amerasians to gain access to
the United States, but abandon them upon arrival. Varzally notes that the passing of the
Homecoming Act raised questions surrounding a legitimate family, as it was “quick to
criticize the strategic, opportunistic relationships that Amerasians and Vietnamese sometimes
pretended for mutual benefit” (2017, 93). Tuan Den, a black Amerasian who was abandoned
at birth, was later approached by a Vietnamese woman holding a picture. “Now that she met
me, she said she wanted me to come home and live with her, but I said you didn’t take care of
me as a child, so I don’t go with you now” (Varzally 2017, 93). Similarly, Vu, an Amerasian
who was residing in Saigon, also rejected a Vietnamese woman who promised rewards, “I
knew she needed me, but when she would be finished with her dream, she wouldn’t care . . .
she would throw me out” (Varzally 2017, 93).
On the one hand, the American support for transferring the Vietnamese Amerasian
children to the United States provided some hope that the lives of these individuals would
change for the better. On the other hand, upon their arrival, these children and their
accompanying relatives were not provided with the support that ensured they would settle
into American society. Amerasian children, as well as other Vietnamese refugees registered
on the Orderly Departure Program, were housed in the Philippine Refugee Processing Center
for about six months. Their time spent at this center was supposed to provide these children
the chance to learn English and “American” values. However, in practice, useful support
networks were not provided in this processing site, where many Amerasian children who
have been subject to violence and abuse in Vietnam resorted to deviant acts that were harmful
to other residents of the center. Upon their arrival in the United States, Amerasian children
would spend about three months in another refugee processing site before being resettled in
other mid-sized cities (Bass 1996; DeBonis 1995; Yarborough 2005).
 Settlement in the United States didn’t mean that Amerasian children were assisted in their
search for their American fathers. Veteran’s groups often opposed to relocating these children
to the United States. Many veterans felt that the life they had led in Vietnam should remain
there—in the past—since many of them now had families and lives of their own. When Le
Ha, an Amerasian, was asked if she wanted to meet her father, she replied “no.” She notes
that “he has another family in America. What’s he going to do with two families? I’m used to
living without a father. Sometimes I forget babies have both mothers and fathers” (Bass
1996, 180). The discouragement many Amerasian children have in finding their fathers is
coupled by the resistance many veterans have toward their children locating them. The
inability to locate their fathers is a violation of a child’s right to an identity.
Within a climate where international law restricts the sovereignty of states in how it treats
its citizens and those within its jurisdiction, states that are seen to abuse children may be
condemned by other nations. The existence of Amerasians provides evidence that the state
can choose when to protect and exclude particular groups. For instance, rather than
attempting to recognize that they “belong” to the state, the United States waited a decade
before recognizing their responsibility for these children. Similarly, the Vietcong viewed
these children as a detriment to the survival of their regime, and refused to accept them and
their mothers. However, the ill-treatment of these children exemplify a political weakness in
the state, as their existence challenges how politics are performed in the postconflict period.
As Jana Lipman notes, the 1980s witnessed “reinscribed hierarchies of race and sexuality
grounded in the history of Asian exclusion” (Lipman 2011, 35), which strategically framed
Amerasians as vehicles to reinforce “whiteness” in the discussion of immigration. For
instance, adoption discourse used photographs to construct Amerasians as belonging to
America as well as of a paternal America with a quest to save the children and families they
had left behind in Vietnam (Gage 2007; Varzally 2017; Lipman 2011). Varzally notes that the
reception of Amerasian children, and namely “white” Amerasian children, helped to
reconstruct a disillusioned America who had lost so much in Vietnam. Amerasians were used
as boost to the “morality of American fathers” (Varzally 2017, 88); where the idea of their
children “coming home” helped to reaffirm “masculine authority through the acceptance of
fatherhood” (Varzally 2017, 88). Furthermore, the Pearl S. Buck Foundation, which was
foundational in representing Amerasian children, primarily focused on white Amerasian
children while undermining the existing of black Amerasians (Cheng 2014; Thomas 2019).
Despite the fact that Amerasians were young adults during the 1980s, the narrative
continued to frame them as “children” who needed to be saved. This containment of children
illustrates the state’s failure to recognize the political agency these children had. Although
these children might not be “agents” or demonstrate the ability to engage as political actors in
the traditional sense, they do possess the ability to do so through their identities as
“outsiders” within the borders of a particular territory. Both Helen Brocklehurst and Alison
Watson have written widely about how groups “contain” the political agency that children
possess because it does not neatly fit into traditional definitions of what childhood is.
Childhood is thought to be a state of innocence and development, which has been rendered to
the private sphere, and away from the public political sphere. However, instead of
recognizing the agency children hold, it is assumed that these children are “risky children”
(Brocklehurst 2006; Watson 2006) who are unable to fit within the role that children are
supposed to represent, that of innocent, protected, nonadults. This idealistic definition of
childhood, however, underestimates the varying ways that children challenge the traditional
assumption of what childhood is. Accepting that these children are children, however,
undermines the legitimacy of states and their ability to properly govern. The containment of
these children is thus an inevitable byproduct of the state’s attempt to reinstate itself as a
legitimate sovereign power.
In Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (2003), Agamben notes that the state is
dependent on the inclusive-exclusion of homo sacer (Agamben 1998; 2003; Butler 2004),
which can be counterintuitive to efforts of achieving reconciliation and peace (Seto 2015).
Consequently, as Agamben notes, the state’s reliance on the sovereign ban and its creation of
bare life have become a central part of governance. Amerasians, as well as the broader group
of children born of war, exemplify the state of exception—a perceived nonpolitical zone
where the norms governing society appear to be exempt. Within this state, individuals are
seen or treated as nonhumans, or exempt from any traits associated with humanity. As
Agamben describes homo sacer, which can be extended to describe the experiences of
children born of war, is a figure that is set outside of the human jurisdiction, which has
historically been protected by the rule of law. To be human, as Judith Butler further argues, is
to subscribe to the basic rules outlined to protect one’s identity as human. Thus, homo sacer’s
life, which is rarely considered to be a life at all, rests in the hands of the sovereign who may
punish or kill homo sacer without being accountable. Similarly, the lives of children born of
war are considered nonlives, where their punishment is seen as nonpunishment, or their
abandonment is un-abandonment. Unlike those classified as being human, the violence
inflicted upon homo sacer is neither violence nor is it wrong, as their existence is considered
to have never existed in the first place. Butler, in her discussion of the treatment of detainees
on Guantanamo Bay, highlights this exclusivity succinctly. She explains that “certain lives
are not considered lives at all, they cannot be humanized, that they fit no dominant frame for
the human, and that their dehumanization occurs [to] deliver . . . the message of
dehumanization that is already at work in the culture” (Butler 2004, 34).
The lack of membership is detrimental to the child’s ability to claim rights that naturally
belong to those who are considered to belong. When these children advance into adulthood,
their identities prevent them from gaining an education, owning property, or acquiring a job
in the formal sector. Moreover, it would be difficult for this group to move freely out of their
country of origin because they are not able to obtain proper documentation to receive a
passport to relocate to other states. The exclusion of children born of war from the protection
of international law suggests that the sovereign structure of law, its peculiar and original
“force,” has the form of a state of exception in which fact and law are indistinguishable. Life,
which is thus obliged, can in the last instance be implicated in the sphere of law only through
the presupposition of its inclusive exclusion, only in an exception. The contradiction rests in
the fact that the sovereign relies on the exclusion of a particular group—this reinforces its
position in deciding the fate such as whether they can be included or excluded, and reinforces
their position as one holding power. This limit figure of life, a threshold in which life is both
inside and outside the juridical order, is the threshold that reinforces the power of the
sovereign. The children serve the postconflict society’s agenda of deciding who is considered
to be “inside” and “outside” of the existing national identity. As demonstrated by the
Amerasians, their original position as “outside” of Vietnamese community changed when the
United States recognized that they belong “inside” America. However, in doing so, the
United States also reinforced the need for a state of exception, in excluding Amerasians, they
were able to neglect their responsibility, but second, they were able to use this neglect to
reinforce its sense of family and responsibility. Thus children born of war become a
“spectacle,” a way for the state to define what fits in and what does not fit within the
population. The child becomes the scapegoat that the nation can easily bring up to remind the
population that they are in a perpetual state of war.
Amerasians did not experience the violence of the war nor were they direct recipients of
the repercussions their mothers endured. If brought into the world without the stigma of
being the child of the “other,” it can be said that these children can live normal lives as
contributing and viable citizens. However, the identity of the child has been imposed and
reinforced by those who are supposed to assist in their emancipation. Although these children
may be ambivalent to the violence of the political situation in which they were born, they
come to illustrate and represent the violence that was experienced by the nation. The
exclusion and ostracization of the mother may be the initial step the state or community takes
in order to demonstrate power or regain control over its territory.

Conclusion
In the 1989 musical Miss Saigon by Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil, the song
Bui-Doi recognized the plight of Amerasian offspring who were abandoned by American
soldiers at the end of the Vietnam War. The song depicts the guilt of the American soldier
who is haunted by the living reminder of the strife he left in Vietnam:
They are the faces of children the ones we left behind,
They’re called Bui-doi,
The dust of life, conceived in hell and born in strife.

Children born of war are often confined to a lawless space where their identities render
them precarious subjects of punishment without consequences. Within such conditions of
bare life, children born of war are excluded from the norms guaranteed to those recognized as
humans; while excluded others who face the risk to be killed but not sacrificed. These
children, despite the extensive list of rights in the Convention to the Rights of the Child
(1989) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), are not sufficiently protected
by them. Often abandoned by the state and their families, these children lack access to a legal
identity, such as citizenship and nationality, which grants them the right to obtain such rights.
The fact that human rights conventions rely on the action of the state to protect the rights of
children worldwide is a contradiction in itself. Since the community does not recognize the
child as part of their own nor does the father’s community want to take responsibility in
registering the child, a child born of war is left in a no man’s land between states and without
rights.
 The exclusion of Amerasians remains a political act that aims to redeem the sovereignty
of the state through the exclusion of the children. Their experience helps the state to
demonstrate that it still holds the ability to define who is included within its borders and who
rightful citizens of the nation are. The state exercises sovereignty through the exclusion of
those it deems as exclusionary. Agamben writes that “the exception is what cannot be
included in the whole of which it is a member and cannot be a member of the whole in which
it is already included” (Agamben 1998, 27). These children, who are now adults, represent a
spectacle that exists only to discipline and manage the postconflict population. Amerasians
represent an example of the “radical crisis of every possibility of clearly distinguishing
between membership and inclusion, between what is outside and what is inside, between
exception and rule” (Agamben 1998, 25).
Rather than incorporating Amerasians into the framework for reconciliation and
peacebuilding, these children remain excluded, invisible, and banned from the political
sphere. Their futures are compromised without ever engaging in a conversation with those
who ban them from the protection of the state. The international community, through its urge
to protect children worldwide, has not achieved this goal. These children embody the failures
of state-centric politics not only on the domestic-local level, but the international level.
 3
Reconstructing the Small Family After Democratic
Kampuchea
Forced Marriage, Ritual Renewal, and Parent–Child Entanglement in Cambodia
Elena Lesley and Hoy Vathana*

Introduction: Ritual Tampering Under Democratic Kampuchea

The communist Khmer Rouge regime, which controlled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979,
attempted to radically transform Cambodian society. In a brutal process that resulted in the
deaths of some two million Cambodians, the Khmer Rouge evacuated city dwellers to the
countryside, conscripted the population to serve as laborers under hellish conditions,
exterminated perceived enemies, and strove to eradicate the foundations of prerevolutionary
society. The family unit was targeted as a major threat to the regime’s dominance. Families
were typically divided into different work units; for example, children were separated from
parents to work in a “children’s unit” (krom komar) and adults might be placed in “mobile
units” (krom chalaat), transported to work assignments through different parts of the country.
Under these conditions, it comes as little surprise that the Khmer Rouge took control of
marriage. Traditionally marriages in Cambodian society had been arranged by parents (with
the consultation of children) and were important mechanisms for solidifying social networks
and responsibilities. They were highly festive events that would last several days, with
prescribed music, ceremonies, meals and clothing. Before the state of Democratic
Kampuchea—and even today—parents would often begin saving for a child’s marriage at
birth, the occasion bearing incredible significance for both the individual and family.
The Khmer Rouge banned all prerevolutionary wedding traditions and the state
organization (Angkar) took over the spouse matching process. Although there was variation
through different parts of the country (LeVine 2010), for the most part citizens were informed
by authority figures that Angkar had decided they would be married.1 They were then
matched with another comrade (often a complete stranger) in a mass ceremony. The couples
swore oaths of loyalty (pdaknya) to Angkar, pledging to love the “big family” more than their
“small family”—meaning they would prioritize revolutionary society over the narrow
interests of traditional kinship. Khmer Rouge cadre then forced couples to sleep in special
“honeymoon” huts together (De Langis et al. 2014). Spies (chhlob) monitored the activity in
these huts and couples often felt compelled to consummate the marriages. Sometimes
husbands raped their new wives or couples agreed to sleep together out of mutual fear
(Natale 2011). After several days together husband and wife were sent to their respective
work units, brought back together periodically for conjugal visits.
The Khmer Rouge’s marriage policy was an attempt to solidify the regime’s authority
over the sexual activity, reproduction and minds of its citizens. Building off of Van Gennep’s
classic work on rites of passage (1909), numerous scholars have explored the importance of
such transitional rituals in crafting social identities, maintaining group solidarity and binding
members of a community to a higher authority figure (Hertz 1960; Kertzer 1988; Rusu
2017). Certain life events mark a change in an individual’s status and can prove potentially
threatening to the cohesiveness and stability of human groups. Birth, marriage, and death are
prime examples of such transitions. The idea that rites of passage help graft a new social
identity onto individuals (Van Gennep 1909) ties into Durkheim’s conception of man as
having a dual nature. Humans lead a “double existence,” he contends, one purely individual
“and rooted in our organisms, the other social and nothing but an extension of society”
(Durkheim 1912, 162).
Before the Khmer Rouge, marriage was a vital way that a bride and groom would assume
new social identities, tying together larger familial and communal networks under the
auspices of perceived ancestors and tradition. This life event was of such importance that a
number of Cambodian American autobiographies have extensively investigated and analyzed
this rite. Khmer Rouge survivor Rattana Pok begins his memoir When Slaves Become
Masters by describing the arranged marriage of his parents in Kampot province. He explains
how a fortuneteller used their birthdays to determine an auspicious day and then sets the
general context for Cambodian weddings: “In Cambodian culture, most people practice
arranged marriages, and the most important decision rests with either one of the parents,
usually the father. Eloping rarely happened. The eloping couple would lose their parents’
share of land and financial support” (Pok 2007, 9). Family networks played important roles
in determining matches and this process was necessary in order for a couple to be accepted
into the social order (receiving land and financial support). Marriages also had to be
sanctioned by the spirit world. Monks oversaw all the wedding rituals and at the beginning of
festivities, couples made offerings to call ancestors to witness and bless the ceremony (sien
doan taa). The elimination of traditional and religious ritual by the Khmer Rouge (Harris
2013) was so disruptive to the Cambodian population that LeVine has described the practice
as “ritualcide,” arguing that it left people spiritually unprotected (2010).
Despite the unorthodox marriage practices during the Khmer Rouge, a significant
percentage of these couples stayed together after the regime’s collapse (Heuveline and Poch
2006). In a study by the Transcultural Psychosocial Organization (TPO), researchers found
those in forced marriages cited a number of justifications for their unions’ continuation: they
already had children with their spouse; the marriage was part of their karmic fate; and in
some cases, joint traumatic experiences strongly bonded the couples together (De Langis et
al. 2014). In addition, divorce is still stigmatized in Cambodian society and many of those in
forced marriages (women in particular) worried they would not be able to find another
spouse. Yet as our 2017–2019 research among Khmer Rouge survivors receiving mental
health treatment shows, even those who stayed in forced marriages retained conflicted
attitudes toward their unions. Although the marriages were overseen by the state, granting
them some legitimacy, their lack of traditional ritual and sanctification by parents and
ancestors continued to trouble survivors. Their ritual transition was somehow incomplete—
they were not able to fully assume their new social roles. For some, this reality continued to
manifest itself in their uncertain positions in their communities. They reported they were
discriminated against or not able to take part in certain wedding festivities since they had not
had traditional weddings themselves.
Little research to date has examined how these socially and spiritually problematic unions
affected the children born as a result of the forced arrangements. Previous research by TPO
has shown that survivors of forced marriage report current mental distress stemming from
their experience during the Khmer Rouge, and a high rate of spousal abuse in marriages that
did not break apart after the regime ended (De Langis et al. 2014). For example, over half of
forced marriage survivors remaining with their spouse reported domestic violence continuing
to the present day. In contrast, according to the 2005 Cambodian Demographic and Health
Survey, roughly one-fifth of ever-married women in Cambodia reported having been abused.
Although more extensive studies are needed, according to these rough figures the rate of
domestic violence might be twice as high in unions formed through forced marriage.
Researchers are only beginning to probe how these complex household dynamics have
affected subsequent generations.
Although their research did not focus specifically on those in forced marriages, in 2013
Field et al. found that the anxiety symptoms of daughters whose mothers had survived the
Khmer Rouge regime were tied to the severity of their mother’s PTSD symptoms. They also
found significant evidence that children of Khmer Rouge survivors had been affected by role-
reversal parenting (2013), in which children took on parentified roles due to their parents
perceived emotional vulnerability.
For sixteen months in 2017–2019, the authors of this chapter conducted ethnographic
research with Khmer Rouge survivors receiving psychological treatment from TPO, many of
whom were survivors of forced marriage. This was part of a broader anthropological project
to assess the potentially therapeutic effects of narrative construction through the process of
“testimonial therapy.” In addition to tracking the therapeutic experiences of survivors over
time, the first author conducted participant-observation and numerous interviews with family
and community members of those undergoing therapy.2 The results provide insight into the
multifaceted effects of forced marriage on children—as individuals, within families, and
within broader communities. Like the study by Nigel et al., our research showed strong
evidence for role reversal parenting, with children feeling compelled to “manage” the
emotional states of their parents. In TPO’s 2014 study, an overwhelming majority of those in
forced marriages (95 percent) reported “warm and close relationships” with the children of
those marriages (De Langis et al. 2014). Further ethnographic exploration in our study
showed that this closeness might involve significant emotional support of parents by
children, or a desire for children to “make up” for what parents missed during the Khmer
Rouge and surrounding years of conflict.
Wedding rituals played a prominent role in these broader dynamics. While some forced
marriage survivors reported ongoing stigma related to their Khmer Rouge-era wedding—a
stigma that could extend to children—the vast majority reported that their children had
already been married, and that they had held fully traditional weddings. For the most part
these were joyous occasions for the parents, as they felt their children’s traditional weddings
helped rectify some of the social and karmic ramifications of their own improper weddings.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 Newport was reached, after an all-night journey, at about two
o’clock in the morning. The canoeists went straight to the freight-
house to inspect the canoes. They were all there, resting on the
heads of a long row of barrels, and were apparently all right. The
varnish of the Dawn and the Sunshine was scratched in a few
places, and the canvas canoe had a very small hole punched
through her deck, as if she had been too intimate with a nail in the
course of her journey. The boys were, however, well satisfied with
the appearance of the boats, and so walked up to the hotel to get
dinner and a supply of sandwiches, bread, and eggs for their supper.
Dinner was all ready, for, under the name of breakfast, it was
waiting for the passengers of the train, which made a stop of half an
hour at Newport. A band was playing on the deck of a steamer which
was just about to start down the lake, and the boys displayed
appetites, as they sat near the open window looking out on the
beautiful landscape, which rather astonished the waiter.
A good, quiet place for launching the canoes was found, which
was both shady and out of sight of the hotel. It was easy enough to
carry the three empty canoes down to the shore; but the Sunshine,
with her heavy cargo, proved too great a load, and about half-way
between the freight-house and the shore she had to be laid on the
ground and partly emptied. Here Joe, who tried to carry the spars
and paddles of four canoes on his shoulder, found that there is
nothing more exasperating than a load of sticks of different sizes. No
matter how firmly he tried to hold them together, they would spread
apart at every imaginable angle. Before he had gone three rods he
looked like some new kind of porcupine with gigantic quills sticking
out all over him. Then he began to drop things, and, stooping to pick
them up, managed to trip himself and fall with a tremendous clatter.
He picked himself up and made sixteen journeys between the spot
where he fell and the shore of the lake, carrying only one spar at a
time, and grasping that with both hands. His companions sat down
on the grass and laughed to see the deliberate way in which he
made his successive journeys, but Joe, with a perfectly serious face,
said that he was going to get the better of those spars, no matter
how much trouble it might cost him, and that he was not going to
allow them to get together and play tricks on him again.

“SHE’S HALF FULL OF WATER.”

It was tiresome stooping over, packing the canoes, but finally they
were all in order, and the Commodore gave the order to launch
them. The lake was perfectly calm, and the little fleet started under
paddle for a long, sandy point that jutted out into the lake some three
miles from Newport. The Sunshine and the Dawn paddled side by
side, and the two other canoes followed close behind them.
“Boys, isn’t this perfectly elegant?” exclaimed Harry, laying down
his paddle when the fleet was about a mile from the shore and
bathing his hot head with water from the lake. “Did you ever see
anything so lovely as this blue water?”
“Yes,” said Charley; “the water’s all right outside of the canoes, but
I’d rather have a little less inside of mine.”
“What do you mean,” asked Harry. “Is she leaking?”
“She’s half full of water, that’s all,” replied Charley, beginning to
bail vigorously with his hat.
“Halloo!” cried Joe, suddenly. “Here’s the water up to the top of my
cushions.”
“We’d better paddle on and get ashore as soon as possible,” said
Harry. “My boat is leaking a little too.”
 Charley bailed steadily for ten minutes, and somewhat reduced
the amount of water in his canoe. The moment he began paddling,
however, the leak increased. He paddled with his utmost strength,
knowing that if he did not soon reach land he would be swamped;
but the water-logged canoe was very heavy, and he could not drive
her rapidly through the water. His companions kept near him, and
advised him to drop his paddle and to bail, but he knew that the
water was coming in faster than he could bail it out, and so he
wasted no time in the effort. It soon became evident that his canoe
would never keep afloat to reach the sand-spit for which he had
been steering, so he turned aside and paddled for a little clump of
rushes, where he knew the water must be shallow. Suddenly he
stopped paddling, and almost at the same moment his canoe sunk
under him, and he sprung up to swim clear of her.
 Chapter III.
LUCKILY the water was only four feet deep, as Charley found when
he tried to touch bottom; so he stopped swimming, and, with the
water nearly up to his shoulders, stood still and began to think what
to do next.
The canoes—including the sunken Midnight—were a good mile
from the shore, and although the sandy shoal on which Charley was
standing was firm and hard it was of small extent, and the water all
around it was too deep to be waded.
“You’ll have to get into one of our canoes,” said Harry.
“How am I going to do it without capsizing her?” replied Charley.
“I don’t believe it can be done,” said Harry, as he looked first at the
Sunshine and then at the Twilight; “but then you’ve got to do it
somehow. You can’t swim a whole mile, can you?”
“Of course I can’t, but then it wouldn’t do me any good to spill one
of you fellows by trying to climb out of the water into a canoe that’s
as full now as she ought to be. Besides, I’m not going to desert the
Midnight.”
“I thought the Midnight had deserted you,” said Joe. “If my canoe
should go to the bottom of the lake without giving me any warning, I
shouldn’t think it a bit rude to leave her there.”
“Don’t talk nonsense!” exclaimed Charley; “but come here and
help me get my canoe afloat again. We can do it, I think, if we go to
work the right way.”
 Charley found no difficulty in getting hold of the painter of his
canoe with the help of his paddle. Giving the end of the painter to
Joe, he took the Dawn’s painter, and by ducking down under the
water succeeded after two or three attempts in reeving it through the
stern-post of the sunken canoe, and giving one end to Harry and the
other to Tom. Then, taking the bow painter from Joe, he grasped it
firmly with both hands, and at a given signal all the boys, except Joe,
made a desperate effort to bring the wreck to the surface.
They could not do it. They managed to raise her off the bottom,
but Harry and Tom in their canoes could not lift to any advantage,
and so were forced to let her settle down again.
“I’ve got to unload her,” said Charley, gloomily. “I think we can get
her up if there is nothing in her except water. Anyhow we’ve got to
try.”
It was tiresome work to get the water-soaked stores and canned
provisions out of the canoe, and Charley had to duck his head under
the water at least a dozen times before the heaviest part of the
Midnight’s cargo could be brought up and passed into the other
canoes. His comrades wanted to jump overboard and help him, but
he convinced them that they would have great difficulty in climbing
back into their canoes, and that in all probability they would capsize
themselves in so doing. “He’s right!” cried Joe. “Commodore, please
make an order that hereafter only one canoe shall be wrecked at a
time. We must keep some dry stores in the fleet.”
When the Midnight was partly unloaded a new and successful
effort was made to raise her. As soon as she reached the surface
Charley rolled her over, bottom upward, and in this position the small
amount of air imprisoned under her kept her afloat.
The cause of the leak was quickly discovered. There was a hole
through her canvas bottom nearly an inch in diameter, made by
some blow she had received while on the way to the lake. The
wonder was, not that she sunk when she did, but that she had
floated long enough to be paddled a mile. It is probable that the
ballast-bag, which was close by the hole, had partly stopped the leak
at first, but had afterward been slightly moved, thus permitting the
water to rush freely in.
The surface of painted canvas dries very quickly in the hot sun,
and it was not long before the bottom of the Midnight was dry
enough to be temporarily patched. Harry lighted his spirit-lamp and
melted a little of the lump of rosin and tallow which had been
provided for mending leaks. This was spread over a patch of new
canvas: the patch was then placed over the hole, and more of the
melted rosin and tallow smeared over it. In about fifteen minutes the
patch was dry enough to be serviceable, and Charley righted the
canoe, hailed her out, and by throwing himself across the cockpit,
and then carefully turning himself so as to get his legs into it, found
himself once more afloat and ready to paddle.
The canoe still leaked, but the leak could be kept under without
difficulty by occasional bailing, and in the course of half an hour the
sand-spit for which the fleet had started was reached. It was part of a
large island with steep, rocky shores and a beautiful little sandy
beach. It was just the place for a camp; and though the boys had
expected to camp some miles farther north, the sinking of Charley’s
canoe had so delayed them that it was already nearly six o’clock,
and they therefore decided to paddle no farther that day.

A STAMPEDE IN CAMP.
 The canoes were hauled out on the beach, and unloaded and
shored up with their rudders, backboards, and a few pieces of drift-
wood so as to stand on an even keel. Then came the work of rigging
shelters over them for the night. Harry’s canoe-tent was supported
by four small upright sticks resting on the deck and fitting into cross-
pieces sewed into the roof of the tent. The sides and ends buttoned
down to the gunwale and deck of the canoe, and two curtains, one
on each side, which could be rolled up like carriage-curtains in fair
weather and buttoned down in rainy weather, served both as the
doors and windows of the tent. The shelters rigged by the other boys
were much less complete. The two masts of each canoe were
stepped, the paddle was lashed between them, and a rubber blanket
was hung over the paddle, with its edges reaching nearly to the
ground. The blankets and the bags which served as pillows were
then arranged, and the canoes were ready for the night.
It was a warm and clear night, and a breeze which came up from
the south at sunset blew the mosquitoes away. Harry found his tent,
with the curtains rolled up, cool and pleasant; but his fellow-
canoeists found themselves fairly suffocating under their rubber
blankets, and were compelled to throw them aside.
Toward morning, when the day was just beginning to dawn, the
canoeists were suddenly awakened by a rush of many heavy,
trampling feet which shook the ground. It was enough to startle any
one, and the boys sprung up in such a hurry that Harry struck his
head against the roof of his tent, knocked it down, upset the canoe,
and could not at first decide whether he was taking part in a railway
collision or whether an earthquake of the very best quality had
happened. The cause of the disturbance was a herd of horses
trotting down to the water’s edge to drink. There were at least twenty
of them, and had the canoes happened to be in their path they might
have stumbled over them in the faint morning light; in which case the
boys would have had the experience of being shipwrecked on dry
land.
A gentle southerly breeze wrinkled the water while breakfast was
cooking, and the Commodore ordered that the masts and sails
should be got ready for use. It was impossible to make an early start,
for Charley’s blankets had to be dried in the sun, and the hole in his
canoe had to be repaired with a new patch in a thorough and
workmanlike way. It was, therefore, ten o’clock before the canoes
were ready to be launched; and in the mean time the wind had
increased so much that the boys decided to use only their main-
sails.
The moment the sails drew the canoes shot off at a pace which
filled the young canoeists with delight. The canoes were in good trim
for sailing, as they were not overloaded; and while they were skirting
the west shore of the island the water was quite smooth. Each canoe
carried a bag partly filled with sand for ballast, and every one except
Joe had lashed his ballast-bag to the keelson. This was a precaution
which Joe had forgotten to take, and before long he had good
reason to regret his error.
As soon as the northern end of the island was passed the canoes
came to a part of the lake where there was quite a heavy sea. The
Dawn and the Twilight were steered by the paddle, which passed
through a row-lock provided for the purpose; and Joe and Tom found
little difficulty in keeping their canoes directly before the wind. The
two other canoes were steered with rudders, and occasionally, when
their bows dipped, their rudders were thrown nearly out of the water,
in consequence of which they steered wildly. All the canoes showed
a tendency to roll a good deal, and now and then a little water would
wash over the deck. It was fine sport running down the lake with
such a breeze, and the boys enjoyed it immensely.
The wind continued to rise, and the lake became covered with
white-caps. “Commodore,” said Charley Smith, “I don’t mean to
show any disrespect to my commanding officer, but it seems to me
this is getting a little risky.”
“How is it risky?” asked Harry. “You’re a sailor and know twice as
much about boats as I do, if I am Commodore.”
“It’s risky in two or three ways. For instance, if the wind blows like
this much longer a following sea will swamp some one of us.”
 “Oh! we’re going fast enough to keep out of the way of the sea,”
cried Joe.
“Just notice how your canoe comes almost to a dead stop every
time she sinks between two seas, and you won’t feel quite so sure
that you’re running faster than the sea is.”
The boys saw that Charley was right. The canoes were so light
that they lost their headway between the seas, and it was evident
that they were in danger of being overtaken by a following sea.
“Tell us two or three more dangers, just to cheer us up, won’t
you?” asked Joe, who was in high spirits with the excitement of the
sail.
“There’s the danger of rolling our booms under, and there is a
great deal of danger that Harry’s canoe and mine will broach-to
when our rudders are out of water.”
“What will happen if they do broach-to?”
“They’ll capsize, that’s all,” replied Charley.
“What had we better do?” asked Harry. “There’s no use in
capsizing ourselves in the middle of the lake.”
“My advice is that we haul on the port tack, and run over to the
west shore. The moment we get this wind and sea on the quarter we
shall be all right—though, to be sure, we’ve got more sail up than we
ought to have.”
The canoes were quite near together, with the exception of the
Twilight, which was outsailing the others; but even she was still near
enough to be hailed. Harry hailed her, and ordered the fleet to steer
for a cove on the west shore. As soon as the wind was brought on
the port quarter the canoes increased their speed; and although the
Twilight made more leeway than the others, she drew ahead of them
very fast. The wind was now precisely what the canoes wanted to
bring out their sailing qualities. The Sunshine soon showed that she
was the most weatherly, as the Twilight was the least weatherly, of
the fleet. The Midnight kept up very fairly with the Sunshine; and the
Dawn, with her small lateen-sail, skimmed over the water so fast that
it was evident that if she could have carried the big balance-lug of
the Sunshine she would easily have beaten her.
The canoes were no longer in danger of being swamped; but the
wind continuing to rise, the boys found that they were carrying more
sail than was safe. They did not want to take in their sails and
paddle, and though all of the sails except the Dawn’s lateen could be
reefed, nobody wanted to be the first to propose to reef; and Harry,
in his excitement, forgot all about reefing. The wind, which had been
blowing very steadily, now began to blow in gusts, and the boys had
to lean far out to windward to keep their canoes right side up.
“We can’t keep on this way much longer without coming to grief,”
Charley cried at the top of his lungs, so that Harry, who was some
distance to windward, could hear him.
“What do you say?” replied Harry.
“We’ve got too much sail on,” yelled Charley.
“Of course we’ll sail on. This is perfectly gorgeous!” was Harry’s
answer.
“He don’t hear,” said Charley. “I say, Joe, you’d better take in your
main-sail, and set the dandy in its place. You’ll spill yourself
presently.”
“The dandy’s stowed down below, where I can’t get at it. I guess I
can hold her up till we get across.”
Tom was by this time far out of hailing distance, and was
apparently getting on very well. Charley did not doubt that he could
manage his own canoe well enough, but he was very uneasy about
Harry and Joe, who did not seem to realize that they were carrying
sail altogether too recklessly. The fleet was nearly two miles from the
shore, and a capsize in the heavy sea that was running would have
been no joke.
Charley turned part way around in his canoe to see if his life-belt
was in handy reach. As he did so he saw that the water a quarter of
a mile to windward was black with a fierce squall that was
approaching. He instantly brought his canoe up to the wind, so that
the squall would strike him on the port bow, and called out to Harry
and Joe to follow his example. Harry did not hear him, and Joe,
instead of promptly following Charley’s advice, stopped to wonder
what he was trying to do. The squall explained the matter almost
immediately. It struck the Sunshine and the Dawn, and instantly
capsized them, and then rushed on to overtake Tom, and to
convince him that Lake Memphremagog is not a good place for
inexperienced canoeists who want to carry sail recklessly in squally
weather.
 Chapter IV.
FROM the books they had read Harry and Joe had learned exactly
what to do in case of capsizing under sail, and had often discussed
the matter. “When I capsize,” Harry would say, “I shall pull the masts
out of her, and she’ll then right of her own accord. Then I shall
unship the rudder, put my hands on the stern-post, and raise myself
up so that I can straddle the deck, and gradually work my way along
until I can get into the cockpit. After that I shall bail her out, step the
masts, and sail on again.” Nothing could be easier than to describe
this plan while sitting in a comfortable room on shore, but to carry it
out in a rough sea was a different affair.
Harry was not at all frightened when he found himself in the water,
and he instantly swum clear of the canoe, to avoid becoming
entangled in her rigging. He then proceeded to unship the masts and
the rudder, and when this was done tried to climb in over the stern.
He found that it was quite impossible. No sooner would he get
astride of the stern than the canoe would roll and throw him into the
water again. After half a dozen attempts he gave it up, and
swimming to the side of the canoe managed to throw himself across
the cockpit. This was the way in which Charley Smith had climbed
into his canoe the day before, and to Harry’s great surprise—for no
such method of climbing into a canoe had been mentioned in any of
the books he had read—it proved successful.
Of course the deck of the canoe was now level with the water,
which washed in and out of her with every sea that struck her. Harry
seized the empty tin can which he used as a bailer, and which was
made fast to one of the timbers of the canoe with a line, to prevent it
from floating away, but he could not make any headway in bailing
her out. The water washed into her just as fast as he could throw it
out again, and he began to think that he should have to paddle the
canoe ashore full of water. This would have been hard work, for with
so much water in her she was tremendously heavy and unwieldy;
but, after getting her head up to the wind with his paddle, he found
that less water washed into her, and after long and steady work he
succeeded in bailing most of it out.
Meanwhile Charley, whose help Harry had declined, because he
felt so sure that he could get out of his difficulty by following the plan
that he had learned from books on canoeing, was trying to help Joe.
At first Joe thought it was a good joke to be capsized. His Lord Ross
lateen-sail, with its boom and yard, had floated clear of the canoe of
its own accord, and, as the only spar left standing was a mast about
two feet high, she ought to have righted. But Joe had forgotten to
lash his sand-bag to the keelson, and the result was that whenever
he touched the canoe she would roll completely over and come up
on the other side. Joe could neither climb in over the stern nor throw
himself across the deck, and every attempt he made resulted in
securing for him a fresh ducking. Charley tried to help him by holding
on to the capsized canoe, but he could not keep it right side up; and
as Joe soon began to show signs of becoming exhausted Charley
was about to insist that he should hang on to the stern of the
Midnight, and allow himself to be towed ashore, when Tom in the
Twilight arrived on the scene.
 NOT SO EASY AS IT LOOKS.

Tom had seen the Dawn and the Sunshine capsize, and was far
enough to leeward to have time to take in his sail before the squall
reached him. It therefore did him no harm, and he paddled up
against the wind to help his friends. It took him some time to reach
the Dawn, for it blew so hard that when one blade of the paddle was
in the water he could hardly force the other blade against the wind.
Before the cruise was over he learned that by turning one blade at
right angles to the other—for the two blades of a paddle are joined
together by a ferrule in the middle—he could paddle against a head-
wind with much less labor.
The Twilight, being an undecked “Rice Lake” canoe, could easily
carry two persons, and, with the help of Charley and Tom, Joe
climbed into her. Charley then picked up the floating sail of the
Dawn, made her painter fast to his own stern, and started under
paddle for the shore. It was not a light task to tow the water-logged
canoe, but both the sea and the wind helped him, and he landed by
the time that the other boys had got the camp-fire started and the
coffee nearly ready.
“Well,” said Harry, “I’ve learned how to get into a canoe to-day. If
I’d stuck to the rule and tried to get in over the stern I should be out
in the lake yet.”
 “I’m going to write to the London Field and get it to print my new
rule about capsizing,” said Joe.
“What’s that?” asked Charley. “To turn somersaults in the water?
That was what you were doing all the time until Tom came up.”
“That was for exercise, and had nothing to do with my rule, which
is, ‘Always have a fellow in a “Rice Lake” canoe to pick you up.’”
“All your trouble came from forgetting to lash your ballast-bag,”
remarked Harry. “I hope it will teach you a lesson.”
“That’s a proper remark for a Commodore who wants to enforce
discipline,” cried Charley; “but I insist that the trouble came from
carrying too much sail.”
“The sail would have been all right if it hadn’t been for the wind,”
replied Harry.
“And the wind wouldn’t have done us any harm if we hadn’t been
on the lake,” added Joe.
“Boys, attention!” cried Harry. “Captain Charles Smith is hereby
appointed sailing-master of this fleet, and will be obeyed and
respected accordingly, or, at any rate, as much as he can make us
obey and respect him. Anyhow, it will be his duty to tell us how much
sail to carry, and how to manage the canoes under sail.”
“This is the second day of the cruise,” remarked Joe an hour later,
as he crept into his blankets, “and I have been wet but once. There
is something wrong about it, for on our other cruises I was always
wet through once every day. However, I’ll hope for the best.”
In the middle of the night Joe had reason to feel more satisfied. It
began to rain. As his rubber blanket was wet, and in that state
seemed hotter than ever, Joe could not sleep under the shelter of it,
and, as on the previous night, went to sleep with nothing over him
but his woollen blanket. His head was underneath the deck, and as
the rain began to fall very gently, it did not awaken him until his
blanket was thoroughly wet.
He roused himself and sat up. He was startled to see a figure
wrapped in a rubber blanket sitting on his deck. “Who’s there?” he
asked, suddenly. “Sing out, or I’ll shoot!”
“You can’t shoot with a jack-knife or a tin bailer, so I’m not much
afraid of you,” was the reply.
“Oh, it’s you, Tom, is it?” said Joe, much relieved. “What in the
world are you doing there?”
“My canoe’s half full of water, so I came out into the rain to get
dry.”
“Couldn’t you keep the rain out of the canoe with the rubber
blanket?”
“The canoe is fourteen feet long, and hasn’t any deck, and the
blanket is six feet long. I had the blanket hung over the paddle, but of
course the rain came in at the ends of the canoe.”
“Well, I’m pretty wet, for I didn’t cover my canoe at all. What’ll we
do?”
“Sit here till it lets up, I suppose,” replied Tom. “It must stop raining
some time.”
“I’ve got a better plan than that. Is your rubber blanket dry inside?
Mine isn’t.”
“Yes, it’s dry enough.”
“Let’s put it on the ground to lie on, and use my rubber blanket for
a tent. We can put it over a ridge-pole about two feet from the
ground, and stake the edges down.”
“What will we do for blankets? It’s too cold to sleep without them.”
“We can each borrow one from Harry and Charley. They’ve got
two apiece, and can spare one of them.”
Joe’s plan was evidently the only one to be adopted; and so the
two boys pitched their little rubber tent, borrowed two blankets, and
crept under shelter. They were decidedly wet, but they lay close
together and managed to keep warm. In the morning they woke up
rested and comfortable, to find a bright sun shining and their clothes
dried by the heat of their bodies. Neither had taken the slightest cold,
although they had run what was undoubtedly a serious risk, in spite
of the fact that one does not easily take cold when camping out.
As they were enjoying their breakfast the canoeists naturally
talked over the events of the previous day and night. Harry had been
kept perfectly dry by his canoe-tent—one side of which he had left
open, so as to have plenty of fresh air; and Charley had also been
well protected from the rain by his rubber blanket, hung in the usual
way over the paddle, although he had been far too warm to be
comfortable.
“I’m tired of suffocating under that rubber blanket of mine, and I’ve
invented a new way of covering the canoe at night, which will leave
me a little air to breathe. I’ll explain it to you when we camp to-night,
Joe.”
“I’m glad to hear it, for I’ve made up my mind that I’d rather be
rained on than take a Turkish bath all night long under that
suffocating blanket.”
“Will your new plan work on my canoe?” asked Tom.
“No; nothing will keep that ‘Rice Lake’ bathtub of yours dry in a
rain, unless you deck her over.”
“That’s what I’m going to do when we get to Magog. I’ll buy some
canvas and deck over the ends of my canoe. Sleeping in her in the
rain as she is now is like sleeping in a cistern with the water running
into it.”
“Now that we’ve had a chance to try our sails, which rig do you like
best, Sailing-master?” asked Harry.
“That lateen-rig that Joe has,” replied Charley. “He can set his sail
and take it in while the rest of us are trying to find our halyards. Did
you see how the whole concern—spars and sail—floated free of the
canoe of their own accord the moment she capsized?”
“That’s so; but then my big balance-lug holds more wind than
Joe’s sail.”
“It held too much yesterday. It’s a first-rate rig for racing, but it isn’t
anything like as handy as the lateen for cruising; neither is my
standing-lug. I tried to get it down in a hurry yesterday, and the
halyards jammed, and I couldn’t get it down for two or three
minutes.”
“I can get my leg-of mutton in easy enough,” remarked Tom, “but I
can’t get the mast out of the step unless the water’s perfectly
smooth, and I don’t believe I could then without going ashore.”
“Now, Commodore,” said Charley, “if you’ll give the order to start,
I’ll give the order to carry all sail. The breeze is light and the water is
smooth, and we ought to run down to the end of the lake by noon.”
The little fleet made a beautiful appearance as it cruised down the
lake under full sail. The breeze was westerly, which fact enabled the
canoes to carry their after-sails—technically known as “dandies”—to
much advantage. When running directly before the wind the “dandy”
is sometimes a dangerous sail, as it is apt to make the canoe
broach-to; but with a wind from any other direction than dead aft it is
a very useful sail.
The canoes sailed faster than they had sailed the day before,
because there was no rough sea to check their headway. They
reached Magog at noon, went to the hotel for a good dinner, bought
some canvas with which to deck Tom’s canoe, and then looked at
the dam which crosses the Magog River a few rods from the lake,
and wondered how they were ever to get through the rapids below it.
There was a place where the canoes could be lowered one by one
over the breast of the dam and launched in a little eddy immediately
below. The rapids, which extended from below the dam for nearly a
quarter of a mile, were, however, very uninviting to a timid canoeist.
The water did not seem to be more than three or four feet deep, but
it was very swift, and full of rocks. “You boys can’t never run them
rapids in them boats,” said a man who came to look at the canoes.
“You’ll have to get a cart and haul round ’em.”
The boys did not like to be daunted by their first rapid, and, as
there did not seem to be much risk of drowning, they decided to take
the chances of getting the canoes through it safely. Harry gave the
order to lash everything fast in the canoes that could be washed
overboard, and he prepared to lead the way in the Sunshine.
It was magnificent sport shooting down the rapid like an arrow.
The canoes drove through two or three waves which washed the
decks, though the canoe-aprons of the Dawn, Sunshine, and
Midnight kept the water from getting into the cockpits. Harry’s and
Charley’s canoes each struck once on the same rock while in the
rapid, but in each case only the keel struck the rock, and the current
dragged the canoes safely over it. When the fleet was reunited in the
smooth water below the rapid the boys expressed their enthusiasm
by all talking at once at the top of their lungs. Every one was
delighted with the way his canoe had acted, and with the skill with
which he had avoided this or that rock, or had discovered the best
channel just at the right moment. In their excitement they let the
canoes float gently down the stream, until they suddenly discovered
another rapid at the beginning of a sharp bend in the river just ahead
of them.
It was nothing like as fierce in appearance as the first rapid, and
as Harry led the way the others followed close after him, one behind
the other, fancying that they could run the rapid without the least
trouble. Half-way down Harry’s canoe struck on a rock, swung
broadside to the current, and hung there. Tom was so close behind
him that he could not alter his course, and so ran straight into the
Sunshine with a terrible crash. The Dawn and the Twilight instantly
followed, and as the four canoes thus piled together keeled over and
spilled their occupants into the river, it began to look as if the rapid
had determined to make the irreverent young canoeists respect it.
 Chapter V.
WHEN the boys were compelled to jump overboard they could see
that the water was only about two feet deep; but they did not know
whether they could stand up against the fierce current. They found
that they could, although they had to move slowly to avoid being
swept off their feet. Harry’s canoe was easily pushed off the rock on
which it had run, and the moment it was out of the way the other
canoes were free. Each canoeist seized the stern of his own canoe,
and let it drag him down the rest of the rapid, which fortunately was a
short one. While performing this feat the knees of the canoeists were
scraped over the rocks, and they received several unpleasant
bruises; but they thought it was impossible to get into their canoes in
swift water, and so had no choice except to float down hanging on to
the sterns of the canoes.
Reaching the smooth water, they swum and pushed the canoes
before them toward the shore. Here they found a great bank of
sawdust that had floated down the river from the mill at Magog, and
it was so soft and elastic that they determined to sleep on it that
night, instead of sleeping in their canoes, since the sky was perfectly
clear and there was no danger of rain.
The canoes were hauled out on the bank, so that the stores could
be readily taken out of them. The canvas canoe did not seem to be
in the least injured either by the rock on which she had struck or by
the collision with the other canoes. Harry’s canoe had sustained a
little damage where one of the planks had been ground against the
rock on which she had hung so long, but it was not enough to cause