Children and War

• The Crisis
• Laws & Protection
• Children’s Legal Rights in Armed Conflict:
• Reports from the Field
• Educator's Toolbox
• Liberia

Children and War

The fate of children caught up in the turmoil of conflict is one of the saddest and most unbearable aspects of modern-day war.

While war also affects adults, all too often children are helpless, first-hand witnesses of atrocities committed against their family and community members. They are killed, mutilated, raped, exploited as soldiers, imprisoned or otherwise separated from their families. Even those who do escape don't know what the future holds for them or their families.

The gruesome reports are shocking enough, but just as chilling is the absence of humanitarian values, and the view that the effects of war on children are "regrettable but inevitable".

• The Crisis
• Laws & Protection
• Reports from the Field
• Colombia
• The Forty Year War
• Carlos' Dilemma
• Sierra Leone
• Living in the Shadow of War
• A Terrible Choice
• Educator's Toolbox
• Case Studies and Discussion Questions
• Red Cross Projects in Sierra Leone
• Children's Legal Rights in Armed Conflict
  

To learn more about children and war, click on the link: ICRC: Children and War

Updated August 21, 2008