The Effects War Imposes on Children Other Than Death
As Jonah and his brother Benjamin head home from getting water from a nearby lake, they joke around about how Jonah had almost dropped his water when he had stumbled over a rock. They continue their fast pace however because they know it is getting dark soon and their mother is going to get upset if they are out after dark. They know it is not safe, especially at night because of the nearby soldiers patrolling. As they approach the house they can sense something is wrong. Just then they hear an explosions followed by blood curdling screams. As they go over the hill they see their house and their neighbors’ houses lit up in flames. They hear gun shots, and see dead bodies scattered across the floor, one of which is their mothers.
Across the world in Prescott, Arizona, Stacy is coming home from work. It had been a long day and she is excited to relax. She gets out of her ford fusion and walks into a place she calls home; a place consisting of heat and air conditioning, cupboards full of food, running water, and a safe environment. She grabs her remote and turns on your flat screen TV to watch the news. As she props her feet up on the coffee table, she sees images flash before her eyes of stranger’s faces that, while she was at work, lost their lives fighting. She learns of the tragic accident in a small city on the other side of the world. Stacy continues to learn that aside from the ten soldiers who had died, many civilians were killed in the explosion too. She feels sad for the soldiers and their families. She also feels distress for the civilians, adults and children, who had lost their lives in the explosion. The war was killing so many people, and she hated it.
Stacy’s perception of the war is similar to the majority. The major affect most people think war has on people is death; the death of soldiers and civilians. So when one directly thinks about how children are being affected, the immediate thought that comes to their heads is they are dying too. Although one may consider the most prevalent effects war has on children is the causality rates, when one divulges deeper into the lives of various children who have been affected by war, one can see that the trauma a child faces affects them a great deal socially, and psychologically.
Common Perceptions
Death is a very common affiliation with war, and it is true that death is a major part of war. It is not wrong to assume soldiers, civilians, and children are dying because they are. In the Iraq war alone over 3,400 soldiers have died (Bash et al. 232). According to the United Nations Children Fund “more than 1.5 million children have died as a result of violence between the years 1990-2003 ” (Wexler et al qtd. by Bellamy paragraph 1). During Rwanda’s civil war over “300,000 children were brutally killed over a 90-day period” (Wexler et al. qtd. by Bellamy paragraph 1). These startling numbers are not uncommon. These are real statistics and hundreds of thousands of children are dying all over the world because of various wars and violence. Therefore people are not mistaken to assume a huge affect war has on children is associated with their death. However, the war affects children more than just by death. There are so many other factors that are not always considered, and some people do not fully understand. It is important to know the things children face because of war, aside from just dying.
On the television and radio you hear of soldiers who have given their lives to serve. You hear of bombs going off, and you hear of civilians dying. Many people think of suicide bombings, land mines, or other ploys some countries use to get ahead in the war. Shalhoub-Kevorkian Nadera has explained the media as one of the reasons that explains people’s common misconceptions.
“The tendency of Western media to offer more spectacular coverage that resorts to yet another story of the “child suicide bomber” or the perpetual images of children throwing stones or acting as vandals; in an occasional report, we might see a traumatized child. But these quotidian images rarely show children as continuing survivors of a historical legacy of occupation, displacement, and ostracization” (Nadera 1102).
The media’s portrayal of the role of children in war does cause people to frequently have their perception of children in war be skewed. It is obvious the children are affected by being killed. But it seems that when media broadcasts stories about children, they usually screen the stories of children who are suicide bombers or “vandals” as Nadera would put it. Although this does happen in some situations, this is not always the case for children. Children are victims. Their youth sets up their vulnerability to be used as they are taught, or forced, causing them to unjustly become part of a war. These children who experience a life in war are affected a great deal by trauma that distorts their life. This distortion is what sometimes leads children to be seen as either dead or a victimizer. However, if one logically looks at what these children are going through, they may understand how much the trauma of war has affected their lives other than just dying.
Social Effects
An obvious way children are affected socially by war is the loss of parents or caregivers. This among itself is a great harm for the child because of how influential a parental figure is. The loss of parents causes a great deal of problems, one of which is causing a child to have to leave their home. Between 1985-1995 “12 million children have been displaced from their homes”(Wexler et al. paragraph 2). Children are than either put into foster homes, orphanages, relatives homes, live on their own, or perhaps they join the war and become a soldier. This poses huge problems for children at various ages. They no longer have a parent who is there caring and providing essential needs which causes a chain reaction of events.
Children in war are more susceptible to malnutrition, lack of education, and also becoming active in crime due to the lack of good influences. When war arises, children’s resources become limited. Food can become scarcer, and if children lose their caregivers, food is not always easily provided. Children are still growing, and need a lot of nutritious food to help aid them. Malnutrition also causes children’s immune systems to be weaker, creating a larger chance for children to get an assortment of diseases.
Children’s lack of education is also affected by war. Shauhoub-Kevorkian Nadera, an individual who actually got to go see the effects first hand in Palestinian children explains “the political violence has restricted children’s access to schools, and continual delays at checkpoints often force them to take lengthy detours to reach their schools- when they are able to reach them. Such restrictions…cause deterioration in the quality of education and increase the drop-out rate” (Nadera 1102). Going out in public to go to school, is very dangerous. Since “September 2000, 2,610 pupils have been wounded on their way to school, 245 students and school children have been killed, and 166 students and 75 teachers have been arrested”(Nadera 1107). It is no wonder why these children do not put in as much time and energy into receiving an education as they use to, when at any moment they could be injured, killed, or imprisoned.
Children are also susceptible to becoming involved in crime because they lost a role model who provided a good influence. Wexler explains that “loss of parents and the absence of social inhibition together with physical insecurity and hunger many lead children and adolescents to prostitution, crime, and social violence” (Wexler paragraph 6). When children are young, experiences they have affect them for the rest of their lives. Children are still at a “vulnerable” age and their experiences affect their perspective of the world immensely. These children’s whole lives could be altered to a new course all because they may have lost someone who was a good influence, or because they are filled with anger and hatred. Not to mention the grief and loss these children will feel from losing loved ones. These negative effects change these children’s whole perspective of the world: making it very likely that these children will begin to make decisions that are illegal, violent, and self demeaning.
However even if both/one of the parents survive doesn’t mean the child will be safe, and not take part in crime. War causes people to act in all sorts of ways. Sometimes the war affects parents so negatively their parental responsibilities are no longer regarded. The need to survive takes over. In fact Wexler stated “natural instincts such as parent’s desire to protect their children diminish”(Wexler ie. paragraph 5). There have been reports that show parents selling their children as soldiers or suicide bombers. Therefore these children are still susceptible to entering into a lifestyle full of hate, crime, and violence. Just because the child still has a parent that has survived, doesn’t mean the parent will be a good influence, or will be trying to protect them from a sad life style war can create.
Psychological Effects
War affects children socially, but it also imposes a huge affect on children psychologically. Most often children become depressed, or suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. This is common in all people who have experienced trauma, but it is especially susceptible to children at young ages. Due to the realization that these children have seen horrific things; dead bodies, death of family members, etc. it is no surprise that these children are psychological affected.
Croatian Medical Journal conducted a study of children in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The experiment was conducted in March 2002. They used a sample of 186 elementary aged students who were living in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The children tested were mostly located in orphanages or a facility called SOS Children’s Village. The Croatian Medical Journal tested the children by using the Children’s Posttraumatic Stress Reaction Index and Children’s Depression Inventory. One way they tested these children was by having them fill out a survey. The survey consisted of questions that asked about their families, why they had to leave their home, if they were scared, whether or not they thought about killing themselves, etc. Each of these questions would then be used to help diagnosis the children.
With these tests done results were assessed, allowing the Croatian Medical Journal to see exactly how the sample of 186 students was affected. The study showed that PTSD is correlated with depression, meaning that when a child has PTSD it is very likely they could suffer from depression as well. It turns out that 42 children met the “criteria” for depression and 51.6% were said to have PTSD. Children in the SOS Children’s Village had the highest number of children who had PTSD. This is very interesting because the Children at the SOS Children’s Village was said to have children who had faced the most trauma, and they had all lost at least one parent from the war. This shows that trauma is directly related to psychological outcomes. Children who had lost only one of their parents in war had a higher number of children who had PTSD, than children who were in the orphanage. Children at such young ages rely a great deal on their parents. When they lose their parents, especially in a traumatic event, it can directly affect them, causing them to have depression or PTSD. The lowest number of children who were affected were those who had not lost either of their parents.
These facts not only correlate trauma with psychological affects, but also conclude how detrimental the loss of a parent can have on a child. Lots of other factors contribute to psychological problems, such as being forced to leave ones home, or seeing dead bodies everywhere. But one of the biggest factors that create such damaging psychological affects is losing a guardian. As stated earlier in the paper it is clear that losing parents affects children socially, but from these studies done, it is clear that it affects a child just as much, if not more, psychologically. This was proven in the study the Croatian Medical Journal did.
The realization of how much parental figures can influence children is what led to groups of trained individuals try and attempt to heal children psychologically. These groups of mental health practitioners have endeavored to help children and their caregivers cope with the psychological stress by teaching the children’s caregivers. Children and Mothers in War imposed an International Child Development Program, IDCP, on the Children in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Their main purpose was “to promote the development and well-being of young children both through parental involvement, support, and education and by focusing on the importance of mother-child interaction for the child’s development and healing.” (Dybdahl 1218). This goal and purpose is what led to IDCP’s work.
The ICDP would embark on this goal in a number of different ways. The main focus they had was to help teach the caregiver. This includes the children’s parents, but isn’t exclusive just to parents who are related by blood; any individual who is taking care of a child qualifies. The first step the ICDP would take was educating the caregivers about trauma and how to help with trauma. They would also help teach the caregivers coping strategies to help them in the time of war, but they would not give them “traditional” therapy.
The next step the ICDP would take would be to teach the caregivers good parenting tips. They would teach them how to create good quality time with child and create a warm sensitive relationship. These are very important aspects of a relationship because if a child knows they have someone who cares for them and is really looking out for them, they will be able to confide and trust in them. The ICDP did not want to just teach the parents to have “ready-made formulas,” but instead to have a real meaningful relationship. By helping the caregivers learn how to have good communication, and healthy interactions the caregiver could create a more meaningful relationship.
Children and Mothers in War’s ICDP and programs like it were very successful in helping children who had been psychologically affected from the war. They helped the children have the means to heal, in a very harmful environment. By realizing that the children are exposed to so much trauma and stress, the caregivers are really the people who can have a great deal of influence on the child. By teaching the caregivers good strategies to create a healthy relationship based off of good communication and interaction, the children were able to heal faster and more effectively than they would have if no training were done. Although this training helped a great deal, these children will never be exactly the same again. Some of the things the war has done to them were so detrimental it is impossible to completely erase all of the psychological and emotional damage.
Conclusion
War is horrific and causes very detrimental effects on individuals. Although many people die because of the war, there are many other influential concerns. Children are vulnerable and are very likely to be affected for the rest of their lives. It is important to be able to understand that children are affected in multiple other ways other than being killed. It affects them socially with the loss of their parents; and causes malnutrition, a decrease in education, and a lack of good role models. It also affects them psychologically, causing depression and PTSD. War’s effects on children are so complex, and do not always provide an easy solution. Most of the problems that are created are intertwined, causing the child to be damaged in multiple ways. Just because there have been some interventions hoping to help the children, some of the damage that was done can never completely be reversed that the child faced socially and psychologically. It is important to understand and be aware of these damaging affects, instead of remaining in an ignorant perception that war only affects children by killing them.
