ABSTRACT
Concepts of the child and the school as zones of peace serve as protective strategies to limit child recruitment or abduction by military groups. The school houses the protected child to instill knowledge and understanding that could shape or re-shape the future of the state. Frames of legitimacy, in the case studies of Nepal, the Philippines, and Afghanistan, look very different from the international, state, NGO, and local side (systems maintenance for peace) than from the insurgent or revolutionary groups side (systems change for justice, equity, identity). Throughout the chapter, frames and rationalizers of legitimacy interact with the child as moral signifier, the embodiment of present and future security, and the school as site of systems maintenance or systems change.
