Photograph by NBC News
War ought to be fought exclusively between combatants of the warring parties – this is the premise of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which establish binding rules on warfare. Reality, however, paints a meagre picture, in which civilians are not granted the protections from war that the Geneva Conventions promise them. Article 50 of Geneva Convention IV, for instance, demands the proper functioning of institutions devoted to the care and education of children and Article 24 requires that children “who are orphaned or are separated from their families as a result of the war, are not left to their own resources, and that their […] education shall, as far as possible, be entrusted to persons of a similar cultural tradition.” However, any person tuning into the daily news will soon realize that children routinely not enjoy these guaranteed rights. Protecting children, who are “too young to vouch for their own identity”, is the sine qua non of the humanitarian obligations posed by the Geneva Conventions. The vulnerability of children and their need for education and care no doubt has an intuitive appeal. This article, however, digs deeper and asks why exactly it is so important that children affected by war not only receive education, but also receive one which is in accordance with their “cultural tradition”. This article argues that the Geneva Conventions correctly (although for slightly misguided reasons) affirm the vital role of culturally-appropriate education, and discusses how education provides children affected by war with the stability needed to mobilize incredible coping skills.
Before discussing the value of education, this article deems it relevant to discuss the effects of war on children and uncover myths about trauma. Dated literature on the effects of war on children more or less aligns itself with the premise criticized above: That children are vulnerable and suffer trauma from war. A prominent model called the “dose effect” proposes that a child necessarily becomes more traumatized, as more adverse events occur. In line with this, several articles report extremely high rates of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among children in war zones; one study, for instance, claims to have found 80% of children in Iraq suffering from PTSD. However, these studies tend to overestimate the prevalence of serious mental health concerns, either by extrapolating from small sample sizes or by suffering from confirmation bias (in which researchers actively seek out cases that confirm the dose effect model). A study by Werner closely examines the long-term effects of various conflicts on those who were children at the time and finds that while the “dose effect” model certainly has an empirical basis, the overall toll on children, just as for any individual, is determined by the distribution of stressors and protective factors. By protective factors, Werner refers to the both the personality and skills of the child (for instance, patience) as well as their current environment (for instance, the presence of a caregiver and the mental health of that caregiver). Two cases are particularly suitable to exemplify the distribution of stressors and protective factors: Boys of the Dinka and girls in World-War-II.
After war erupted in Sudan, refugees flooded into Ethiopia; in 1986, a group of around 15, 000 boys of Dinka ethnicity, ages 5 to 15, embarked on the journey through the desert, accompanied by only a few hundred adults. In Dinka culture, children are socialized in a way that enables them to survive the hardships of their nomadic lifestyle. During their flight to Ethiopia, the children were exposed to severe dehydration, near starvation, attacks by wild animals and militias, and witnessed the death of their loved ones. Years later, the boys still described their companions being eaten by lions and the death of direct family as “terrible” and seriously disruptive events. However, the same boys were able to mobilize cultural coping skills regarding the starvation and lack of water that came with the migration through the desert. Researchers found that most Dinka boys developed just fine despite the hardships and grew into young men capable of love, hope and productivity. The socialization of the Dinka boys was an important protective factor in ensuring that they would be able to process, at least partially, the hardships they faced due to war. In another pertinent case study, Werner demonstrates that children in World-War II Germany were generally able to process the general distress of war they experienced. However, women who had been raped as children in the Second World War still reported post-traumatic symptoms fifty years later.
Both cases invite questioning of conventional models of vulnerability – that children are vulnerable by definition. From the above examples and further experience on the matter, the author of this article infers that how traumatic a child experiences an event (and whether an event will have lasting consequences) seems to be determined primarily by how disruptive it is of the normalcy that the child is used to. For both the Dinka boys as well as the children in World-War II, violence and hardships were constant companions, and therefore part of their socialization. However, brief instances of extreme violence such as attacks by wild animals or rape, necessarily deviated from any ‘normal’ state and the children were therefore not equipped to deal with these events. From the above elaboration it becomes clear that children can mobilize incredible resilience, but only for those events that their socialization has equipped them to cope with and if their environment supports this mobilization.
When children are exposed to extreme distress that goes beyond what they encounter in their normal lives, they require additional protective factors. It is in this context that schools play a vital role: Educational facilities can serve as spaces in which children experiment and learn “human tasks and virtues without excessive burdens and responsibilities” (p.95). Elbedour, ten Bensel and Bastiel explain that schools play a vital role in mitigating the impact of possibly traumatic events. They argue that when children experience war, the timely provision of well-functioning educational facilities is crucial because schools create a routine, which in turn provides a certain degree of predictability. Werner adds that schools can serve as a locus for psychosocial support, where children can find various kinds of support to process the trauma from bombings, displacement and losses that they faced. The obligation put forward in the Geneva Convention IV, Article 24, that education should be “entrusted to persons of a similar cultural tradition”, therefore not only relates to children being able to form attachments, but is also vital to ensure that coping skills sourced from culture are reinforced and strengthened. The above-mentioned Dinka boys were able to develop into healthy adults because they lived in their community; it is rather difficult to tell whether they would have been able to mobilize their coping skills had they all been isolated from each other.
The above paragraph establishes why education serves a crucial purpose during humanitarian emergencies. However, the Geneva Conventions arguably included education as imperative for different reasons. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in its 1958 Commentary briefly expands that children are “the innocent victims of events which afflicted them all the more cruelly because they were young and weak […].” The Commentary continues that educational facilities “become of increased importance in wartime when innumerable children are without their natural protectors […].” This explanation with its emphasis on children needing a “protector” does not fully reflect the crucial role schools play. Rather, the ICRC’s explanation perpetuates the notion that children are vulnerable and in need of an external protector. According to Peltonen and Punamäki, such perspectives “ignore[e] children’s capacity to endure and reconstitute their lives with a positive meaning. Victimizing […] children distracts the focus from their sense of empowerment, resilience and natural potential for recovery.” (p.96) As demonstrated above, schools are a suitable space for children to claim agency over their lives and learn coping skills. It is crucial to remember that children and adolescents have to process the reality of war during a critical developmental phase in which they have yet to form a stable identity. Identifying children solely as victims can therefore risk the internalization of victimhood and cause more harm than good.
Overall, the obligation in International Humanitarian Law to enable children in war zones to benefit from educational facilities is not just morally appealing, but has a solid psycho-social foundation as well. The ICRC’s explanation that education is important to protect vulnerable children, however, does not fully reflect just how crucial education is. Without educational facilities, children exposed to the consequences of war may not develop into adults capable of shouldering the burden of rebuilding their country.
Alena Kahle is an MSc Sociology of Law student at Lund University. She holds a BA degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences: Global Challenges with a major in International Justice from Leiden University. She researches the interactions between international law and society in India, particularly regarding health law.