ABSTRACT
After an almost-exclusive focus on the individual either in terms of trauma or personal traits, researchers and practitioners have begun to broaden the analytic lens to youth in society, thereby shifting from primarily medical-biological approaches to socio-cultural analyses of the impact of armed conflict on young people and their environments. This chapter reviews the major approaches and offers a rationale for broadening inquiry to political-historical analyses of conflicts that ensnare young people. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, armed conflict continues to define the
lives of millions of youth worldwide. During this transitional decade, 2 million children have been killed, 6 million seriously injured, and approximately 10 million affected by displacement, loss of family, and other consequences of armed conflict (www.crin.org). Adolescents and young adults are involved directly, albeit mostly not of their own choice, having been kidnapped, given sustenance after losing their families, or recruited with promises of glory. War-related activities by children and youth include acting as soldiers, engaging in acts of violence to prove their toughness, and performing practical roles in the field, such as courier, cook, medic, and sex slave. Young people have also witnessed violence, been used as weapons (such as adolescent girls’ being raped for purposes of intimidation or ethnic cleansing) and have been involved indirectly by experiencing the myriad consequences of armed conflict. Young lives develop in playgrounds and sports fields littered with land mines, neck braces, and other remnants of war, in communities lacking political-economic infrastructures for education, in families suffering from psychological or physical disabilities, yet youth engage with these and the more positive aspects of their environments, such as social support and cultural heritage, in normative ways. These material and symbolic conditions last for many years after the official end of
armed conflict, on average seven years in the physical environment and political institutions (Collier 2003), up to 17 years in psycho-social effects (Amone-P’Olak et al. 2006), and across generations who transmit war experiences via social relations manifested in dreams, world views, and personalities (Caruth 1996; Danieli 2007). Sensitivity to such
distal effects has led to increased focus on the socio-cultural nature of youth in armed conflict.
