5 Conclusion

This unit has concentrated on three main environments for violence and the roles that children play within these environments: victim, perpetrator, witness, colluder and peacemaker. It has looked at individual and social experiences of violence, examining what is normal and abnormal child behaviour and whether violence is innate or learned. It has also broadened out these discussions to look at the ways child violence is differently understood in a range of cultural contexts. What is clear from this examination is that children at both a local and a global level experience multiple and complex forms of violence which shape their experiences of childhood, and which constitute, for many, an extreme form of adversity.
This unit and the previous two have looked at three different forms of adversity as they affect children. Clearly there is an overlap between them: children suffer health consequences as a result of war and they may become impoverished if they are forced to flee their homes as a result of armed conflict. Similarly, poverty can lead to civil unrest and uprising which in turn place children at risk from armed conflict.

4 Violence within armed conflicts

4.5 Strategies for reintegrating child soldiers

Activity 6 Rehabilitating child soldiers

0 hours 10 minutes

Child soldiers in several African countries have been guilty of committing atrocities against civilians. To what extent do you feel that child soldiers ought to be held accountable for their crimes?

Discussion

For many, the rehabilitation of child soldiers is very problematic. The term ‘rehabilitation’ is itself contested, as it implies that responsibility is removed from the society that generated the violence in the first place and that it is the individual children who are at fault and need to be resocialized. Others have argued that, whatever they have done, they are still children and cannot be held responsible for actions that they did not necessarily understand. However, many of those who have suffered because of the violence of child soldiers believe that they should be tried and punished. There is a great reluctance to see them as anything other than the perpetrators of particularly gruesome acts. As one child soldier told a researcher:

I am eleven years old now. Five years of my life was characterized by cutting limbs, killing, raping and drug abuse. Here I am. I cannot trace my relatives. I beg for food in the streets of Freetown. Even if I find my relatives, who will want to take a child like me? … My innocence was exploited, my development was violently suppressed, my identity contaminated almost irreparably; my parents and anything that gave me a sense of safety was annihilated.
(International Bureau for Children's Rights, 2000)

The issue of rehabilitating child soldiers is a very fraught one. Successful rehabilitation depends strongly on the circumstances of the war and the actions of the children.

Communities that have been caught up in war view children's involvement in violence in ways that are contingent on the nature, length and ferocity of the conflict; the choice or lack of choice the young had in participating; the actions they carried out; and the consequences for members of the family. Clearly attitudes to the young who fight against oppression and for liberation differ profoundly from attitudes to the young who kill and maim as members of warring groups.
(Reynolds, 2001)

4 Violence within armed conflicts

4.4 Why shouldn't children fight?

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Reading

There are many reasons why, ideally, children should not be allowed to join armies, but there are also reasons why children might want to fight and to protect themselves and their families. In Reading C (above), John Ryle puts forward a controversial argument about letting children fight and the reasons why, in some instances, they should. His argument is countered by Amnesty International's Martin Macpherson. Which viewpoint do you most agree with? Why?

4 Violence within armed conflicts

4.3.2 Children in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge

Figure 15 Drawing by a Cambodian child depicting events under Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, a period that lasted from 1975 to 1979.

 

In 1975, Pol Pot's army, the Khmer Rouge, took over Cambodia and attempted to enforce an extreme Maoist communist regime, replacing all that went before. They restarted the calendar, renaming 1975 Year Zero. Their regime was murderous and, over the next four years, over 1 million Cambodians were killed and up to another 2 million died from starvation or exhaustion. The Khmer Rouge emptied the cities of people, forcing everyone to live off the land. Professionals, those who knew a foreign language and, at one time, even those who wore glasses were murdered. Much of this was accomplished by indoctrinating children and forcing them to denounce and kill suspect adults. Family life was discouraged and repressed. Everyone was forced to live in communal work camps, but at the age of eight most children were sent away to live with other children under two or three senior Khmer Rouge officials. Traditional norms of respect for elders were suppressed and the ‘Comrade Child’ was praised as being ‘pure and unsullied by the corrupt past of the adults’ (Ponchaud, 1977, p. 143). Special spy units, Kang Chhlop, were composed mainly of children and were used to spy on adults. One Cambodian woman recalled the power given to children under the Khmer Rouge:

4 Violence within armed conflicts

4.3.1 Child soldiers in Sierra Leone, Burma and Uganda

Figure 14 Child soldier with a gun in Sierra Leone.

 

Concern about child soldiers grew in the 1990s, with the conflict in Sierra Leone in particular providing many iconic images of a child soldier. The image of a child soldier is a difficult one. To see a young child with a machine gun or a rocket launcher is to look at a deeply incongruous and ambiguous image of childhood. Is this child a victim or a perpetrator of violence? Usually the story told of these children is that they were taken unwillingly by an army or quasi-military group and subjected to indoctrination and intimidation, sometimes given drink and drugs and sent out to kill. Two children from Burma and Uganda recount how they became soldiers.

4 Violence within armed conflicts

4.3 Children and the armed forces

The dual role of children as both perpetrators and victims of violence becomes very clear when looking at child soldiers. Despite international treaties, thousands of children worldwide fight in armies and paramilitary forces. Article 38 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) states that no child under the age of fifteen should fight; supplementary international treaties, such as the 1999 Maputo Declaration on Child Soldiers and the 2000 Optional Protocol to the UNCRC on children in armed conflict, state that children under eighteen should not be involved as combatants in armed conflict. However, in 1999 Amnesty International claimed that there were at least 300,000 children under eighteen actively involved in armed conflict in countries as diverse as Sierra Leone, Liberia, Congo, Sudan, Uganda, Sri Lanka and Burma (Amnesty International, 1999). The increase in smaller, lighter weapons has made it easier for children to go into combat and fight alongside adults. Many others are not actual combatants but are used to plant or clear mines, as reconnaissance, as bearers and suppliers to the front line or as general ancillary workers, cooking, cleaning, keeping guard or delivering food.

4 Violence within armed conflicts

4.2 Violence within communities

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Reading

The long-standing conflict in Northern Ireland had many repercussions for children. The effects of the terrorist and counter-terrorist activities have been extensively studied by Ed Cairns, who, in Reading B (above), looks at how violence affected children during the 1970s and 1980s. This reading was published in 1987, and consequently provides an account of Northern Ireland at a particular time in history. Although the situation is different today, the reading gives a good sense of how children experience the everyday effects of living in a civil conflict. It also emphasizes that, even in a modern, wealthy society such as the UK, war affects children's lives. As you read through it, note the various forms of violence that children suffer, both physical and emotional.

 

The Good Friday Agreement of 1999 was supposed to bring a formal end to much of the terrorist violence in Northern Ireland. However, several people have been killed since and sectarianism remains entrenched. Other social problems have also become more visible in Northern Ireland since 1999. Crime has risen, drugs have become more widely available and young people have continued to be caught up in violence. Older youths are subject to arbitrary justice from paramilitary squads who threaten and carry out beatings or knee-cappings as punishment for a range of antisocial offences such as joyriding and taking or supplying drugs. Many of the victims of these are young men under eighteen. In 1999–2000, 47 youths under eighteen were punished by Republican and Loyalist paramilitary groups, compared with 25 in 1997–98 (BBC Online, 2001). These groups claim to keep law and order in their respective communities, believing that these young people deserve their punishment and that, through such acts, order is kept. In other instances, being from the wrong part of the community in the wrong place is enough to be beaten up. Neville, aged seventeen, expresses this feeling of insecurity well.

4 Violence within armed conflicts

4.1 The effects of armed conflict on children

The final area of violence examined in this unit involves children caught up in armed conflict, as victims, perpetrators or witnesses in violence affecting whole communities. It is important to emphasize that the three sites of conflict discussed in this unit – family, schools and the community – are in no way exclusive. It is also important to stress that, in some parts of the world, criminal violence and repressive law enforcement measures (including harsh prison regimes) affect children's daily experiences of violence. Furthermore, gun violence against children is not limited to armed conflict. In some cities in the USA, children are as likely to be affected by violent death from guns as children living in a war zone. Psychologist James Garbarino refers to these as ‘war-zone neighbourhoods’, where

almost every fourteen-year-old has been to the funeral of a playmate who was killed, where two-thirds of the kids have witnessed a shooting, and where young children play a game they call ‘funeral’ with the toy blocks in their preschool classroom.
(Garbarino, 1999, pp. 17–18)

3 Violence between peers

One response to witnessing bullying is to stand by and watch it happen. Alternatively, and more positively, children themselves can often act as mediators or peacemakers. Some of the most successful anti-bullying schemes have been those set up or run by children and have involved confronting the bully about the impact of his or her behaviour on others. Other schemes have involved setting up school bullying courts where children are ‘tried’ by a jury of their peers, while in others children counsel victims of bullying. In the following example, pupils at a school in Scotland talk about the anti-bullying programme that they have taken part in, emphasizing their role as peer mediators and counsellors.

Figure 9 Children comforting a friend.

3 Violence between peers

3.2 Children as perpetrators

There has been a great deal of research on the personalities of bullies (for an overview, see Smith et al., 1999) and explanations given for their behaviour in terms of family background or attachment to parents. Some of the findings of this research are summarized in Reading A. In another article, Olweus (1993) suggests that bullies are more likely to hold favourable views of violence, have a marked tendency towards aggression towards both adults and other children, have a strong need to dominate and feel more powerful than other children and feel little empathy for those they are bullying. But, as stated earlier, it is important to bear in mind that children can be both bullies and bullied in different contexts. There is also some evidence that children who are bullied may resort to violence themselves as a form of self-defence. Here, a boy in Australia recounts becoming a bully:

3 Violence between peers

3.1 Bullying – children as victims

In countries of the North, much of children's daily life is divided between home and school. It is therefore in schools that many children experience violence between their peers, from either being bullied or themselves bullying.

Figure 7 Isolated child in a playground.

 

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2 Violence in the home

2.2 Children's violence

There has been a great deal of work done by psychologists on violence and aggression in children, looking at whether this is part of a normal and natural developmental process or whether it is pathological. Cole and Cole define aggression as ‘an act in which someone intentionally hurts another’ (1996, p. 406). They then split this definition to look at instrumental aggression which is committed in order to obtain a specific goal, and hostile aggression which is aimed at hurting another person or showing dominance. They emphasize that intention is important and that discussions of children and violence should distinguish aggression from rough play. One of the earliest studies on this issue was carried out by Nicholas Blurton Jones (1972). He looked at the characteristics of aggression and rough-and-tumble play in an attempt to draw a distinction between violent and non-violent behaviour in children. Based on detailed studies of facial and bodily movements, he claimed that aggression is composed of ‘frown, fixate, hit, push, and take-tug-grab; whereas rough-and-tumble is characterized by laugh-playface, run, jump, hit-at and wrestle’ (quoted in Schaffer, 1996, p. 278).
He also claimed that these behaviours occurred in different contexts. For example, aggression is much more likely to occur when children are competing to play with the same toy, while play-fighting involves cooperating in a shared game. Children taking part in rough-and-tumble tend to play with smiles on their faces and to come back for more, whereas when children perceive aggression they are more likely to stay away from the other child. Blurton Jones also found that children who indulge in rough-and-tumble are no more likely to be violent in other contexts than those who do not.
In situations where children are in conflict, they express aggression in different ways according to their age and gender. Girls are less likely to use physical violence than boys and rely on emotional or psychological violence. Also, children's expressions of aggression become increasingly verbal as they get older. While two year olds will use what physical force they can, by the age of ten children are more likely to tease or humiliate other children. As Durkin suggests, children may have more scope to become aggressive as they get older.

2 Violence in the home

2.1 Violence towards children

For many children, the place where they experience most violence is in the home. Since the American paediatrician Henry Kempe first publicized the ‘battered child syndrome’ in 1962, the extent and nature of child abuse in the home has increasingly been recognized, and become the subject of research, legislation and social care practice. Following on from Kempe's claims that some children were routinely beaten and ill treated within their own families, other issues such as sexual abuse and emotional abuse have also come to the fore. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) released a statement in 2002 which said:

Home Office figures show that the rate of child homicide in England and Wales has not dropped over the last 25 years. In each generation of children, more than a thousand will be killed before reaching adulthood. Most will die at the hands of violent or neglectful parents and carers.
(NSPCC, 2002)

The home is still the environment where children are most at risk, despite the widespread fears over ‘stranger danger’. In the UK, in 2001, 65 children under seven were killed by their parents or carers (NSPCC, 2002). Even if children themselves are not the direct victims of violence at home, they can witness domestic violence carried out by one parent on another.

1 Overview

1.1 Children and violence

Children are subject to many forms of adversity, for example, poverty or ill health. This unit examines another form of adversity that many children face, namely violence. This is a huge topic which can be tackled in a number of ways, for example by looking at the effects of war on children in Africa and Asia, physical or sexual abuse of children in the North, structural violence against children in the form of government policies, or symbolic forms of violence, looking at how images and representations of violence in the media affect children. It is difficult to cover all these topics in one unit and the focus is necessarily limited. The unit concentrates on three different environments where children experience violence: at home, among peers at school and in the wider society (in the context of armed conflicts). There is obviously an overlap between these environments and they are not meant to be mutually exclusive. It is an unfortunate fact that children may experience violence in their families and among their peers, and may also become involved in armed conflict.
This unit focuses on children's experiences locally and globally, and emphasizes that violence against children should not be exoticized; it is not something that occurs only in other countries or in other families. Many children experience violence, whether they live in a Sierra Leonean war zone or experience bullying at school or domestic violence in the UK. Although the forms of violence that children experience may be different, the important point is that many children, throughout the world, have daily experiences of violence which can have negative impacts on their physical or emotional health. This unit therefore moves from ideas about children and violence in very localized contexts – within families and with peers at school – through to the broader community and on to the international perspective. It also analyses the different roles that children take on in relation to violence, such as victim, perpetrator, witness, colluder and peacemaker.
In Western thought, children and violence exist in an ambivalent, and much debated, relationship with each other which centres around whether children are naturally good, gentle, kind and loving or naturally wicked and cruel (see Woodhead and Montgomery, 2003, Chapter 2). While the image of the gentle, meek child is integral to the Christian New Testament, many other Christian teachings, especially those in the Old Testament book of Proverbs and in the practices of some seventeenth-century Puritan sects, point to the inherent badness of children that must be controlled by punishment. Others have seen in children a particular form of violence, typified by cruelty to animals and to smaller children, which is linked to the innate savagery of children and their existence in a pre-civilized state. Nineteenth-century naturalists and archaeologists pointed to children as the closest available ‘savages’ who, like the ‘exotic primitives’ of Australia and North America, existed in a wilful, amoral and cruel state. C. Staniland Wake, an anthropologist writing in 1878, drew close parallels between children and ‘native peoples’, claiming that both were characterized by an innate viciousness towards others that glorified in violence for violence's sake. He wrote of a ‘cruelty so noticeable among children, so much so indeed, that it may be described as one of the most distinguishing traits of boyhood’ (Wake, 1878, p. 5). While the racism inherent in such statements may sound shocking nowadays, especially when written in such an objective, scientific tone, the casual assumption that violence and children are connected continues. The view that children, and especially boys, are cruel to animals, pulling the legs off spiders or tormenting cats, is commonplace.
However, the idea that children are cruel and violent is countered by the view that children are in fact naturally good and that any cruelty is a result of adult corruption. Ideas of children's innocence, gentleness and kindness can be traced back to the Romantic period in European history, characterized by philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and poets such as William Wordsworth. For the Romantics, children had a visionary quality and represented humanity in its uncorrupted state. They were born good and lacking in all violence and it was civilization that imposed violence on them.

Children and violence: an introductory, international and interdisciplinary approach

Introduction

Children are subject to many forms of adversity, for example, poverty or ill health. However, a significant form of adversity experienced by children in many different regions of the world is violence. The form of violence against children varies widely and is hugely disparate. In this unit, the focus is on three different environments where children experience violence: at home, among peers at school and in the wider society (in the context of armed conflicts). The text considers the experiences of children both locally and globally. For this reason, violence against children should not be considered a phenomenon that is remote. Sadly, children may experience violence in their families and among their peers, and may also become involved in armed conflict. The unit considers in detail the daily experiences of violence which can have negative impacts on the physical or emotional health of children and moves from ideas about children and violence in very localized contexts – within families and with peers at school – through to the broader community and on to the international perspective. It also analyses the different roles that children take on in relation to violence, such as victim, perpetrator, witness, colluder and peacemaker.