Introduction: Broadening the Conversation

Abstract

Violence, conflict, and war challenge received, normative understandings about the ‘nature’ of children and boundaries of childhood. In the disruption and destruction of the lives of children, their families and communities, childhood itself transforms and takes shape. Children, like others, are both subject to the consequences of war and actively involved in many aspects of conflict. They are and have been fighters, victims, refugees, peace-builders and reasons both to enter into and to end wars. Children comprehend armed conflict in their own ways yet, world-historically speaking, there are relatively few like Anne Frank or Ishmael Beah who leave traces of their experiences for the rest of us to witness.