Children and Global Conflict

Joel E. Oestreich

doi:10.1002/polq.12557

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Children and Global Conflict

Joel E. Oestreich

Political Science Quarterly, v 131(4), pp 883-885

01 Dec 2016

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/polq.12557

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Abstract

Government & Law

Political Science

Social Sciences

Children and Global Conflict by Kim Huynh, Bina D’Costa, and Katrina Lee-Koo. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2015. 54 pp. Paper, $36.99. This book is an impressive effort by three authors to examine the various ways in which children are affected by war and other forms of armed conflict. The chapters—each written by one of the three credited authors—cover a wide range of topics, including child soldiers, children’s role in in peace building, children in postconflict justice efforts, and child advocacy. The overall theme of the book is to move children away from being seen as the “hapless victims” (p. 32) of violence and instead to understand their capacity for agency in both the violence they encounter and the process of recovering from that. In this sense, the book takes aim at actors such as UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) and UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), which, the authors argue, see children as objects of care but as something less than fully functioning people with the broadest range of rights.