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According the UN Secretary-General’s (SG) annual report on children and armed conflict last year armed conflicts around the world led to at least 4,000 verified rights violations against children committed by government forces and over 11,500 by non-state armed groups. The violations include killing or maiming, recruitment or use of children in hostilities, sexual violence, using children as human bombs, abductions, the denial of humanitarian access, and attacks on schools and hospitals. About 50 per cent of the estimated 26 million people currently displaced by armed conflicts and violence are children. 

This course examines global approaches, challenges and problems associated with providing resources, implementing laws and guidelines, and ensuring education to children before, during and after armed conflicts. Students will be asked to interrogate current approaches and literature in light of critical theories of childhood, human rights and children’s rights more specifically.  The course utilizes case studies that show the failures of international human rights and NGOs to address the needs of children before, during, and after conflict, as well as the problems with not taking into account children’s perspectives and lived experience. The course seeks to the extent possible to incorporate children’s views on conflict through a review of children’s drawings, writing, and interviews.  It questions the common representations about children and armed conflict that mass media, international development literature, children’s literature, and film promote. The course will also explore the international norms for protecting children in emergencies which have also been strengthened considerably, by a number of UN Security Council resolutions, notably resolutions 1612 and 1820, aimed at ending the abuse of children and civilians in the context of war. What are the responsibilities of the International Community to protect and support children of war? What preventative measures can be taken to better ensure children do not fall victims to armed conflict?  Finally, the course takes a special look at education prior to, during conflict, and post-conflict, to understand how and whether the root causes of conflict-- discrimination, intolerance, economic inequality-- are addressed by educational systems.