For the June Meetup on Wednesday, June 11, 2008 we were joined by Chris Blattman, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Economics at Yale University and Post Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Global Development, who presented on "Children and Women at War: Why Our Hype Can Harm."
The past two years have seen a flurry of attention to children and women at war. The iconic image of the child soldier is the drug-crazed teenager, wielding an AK-47, assured of his magical immunity from enemy bullets. An equally common image is that of the troubled return to civilian life. The reintegration challenges faced by young women abducted and sold into armed groups is feared to be even worse; they are rejected by their families; their children, community pariahs.
How fortunate for all of us (and especially for the youth in question) that these images contradict the reality of most formerly recruited women and children. Indeed, an emerging body of research is dispelling many of these child soldering myths. The results suggest that youth are by-and-large psychologically resilient, peaceful, and enjoy significant support from their families. The largest and most persistent reintegration challenge is not psychosocial, it is economic and educational.
Unfortunately, the myths surrounding women and children returning from war dominate and distort policy aimed at preventing child recruitment and reintegrating children associated with armed groups. The most urgently needed solutions--access to schooling, a leg up in livelihoods--are ones we know how to provide, but that we are providing too seldom.
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