No Place for a War Baby

The Global Politics of Children born of Wartime Sexual Violence

Donna Seto

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317087090
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Military Science & Technology
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Donna Seto investigates why children born of wartime sexual violence are rarely included in post-conflict processes of reconciliation and recovery. The focus on children born of wartime sexual violence questions the framework of understanding war and recognizes that certain individuals are often forgotten or neglected. This book considers how children are neglected sites for the reproduction of global norms. It approaches this topic through an interdisciplinary perspective that questions how silence surrounding the issue of wartime sexual violence has prevented justice for children born of war from being achieved. In considering this, Seto examines how the theories and practices of mainstream International Relations (IR) can silence the experiences of war rape survivors and children born of wartime sexual violence and explores the theoretical frameworks within IR and the institutional structures that uphold protection regimes for children and women.

Chapter 1 Locating Children Born of Wartime Sexual Violence

DOI: 10.4324/9781315598413-2

The lack of research and attention to issues involving children born of wartime sexual violence is problematic. Children born of war represent a distinct group of war-affected children. Their complex beginnings and identities subject them to a wealth of discriminatory practices that are injurious to their well-being. As this chapter will illustrate, many of these children are subject to abandonment, stigma, and infanticide. Older children and adults are trapped as they realize that they are stateless, are unable to secure a stable sense of a civic or social identity, and are exposed to systematic forms of discrimination (Carpenter et al. 2005, Grieg 2001, Yarborough 2005, Nguyen 2001, Baldi and MacKenzie 2007). This chapter provides an initial step to addressing this issue by seeking to define the category of children born of war. In doing so, this chapter aims to define who the children are along with outlining some of the major detriments experienced by the children. Defining who these children are can help to build strategies that identify their needs, the structural causes of their marginalization, and develop a space in which they can be recognized as subjects of academic enquiry.

This chapter provides a guide that identifies for the reader some of the key issues concerning children born of wartime sexual violence. Seeing as the subject of children born of war is rarely mentioned, it is necessary to provide an introductory chapter that describes their experiences and some of the major cases. A discussion and comparison of the different cases will help to illustrate that while specific in its attributes, the group comprising war-affected children spans global history and geography. Available research shows that the “rejection of these children by their community is not uniform” (Carpenter 2007a: 2), but many of these children share similar stories of ostracism and societal rejection. Thus, this chapter should be treated as a reference for some of the key case studies of war babies rather than a source of theoretical enquiry. In outlining the major cases of war babies born in the twentieth century, this chapter will show that the incidence of these children is not isolated to contemporary conflicts. The argument of this chapter will be presented in two sections.

This chapter will first explore some of the detriments experienced by children born of wartime sexual violence. It will highlight how their identities are constructed, some of the political vulnerabilities they face, and why these children are analytically distinct from other war-affected children. In exploring the complex identities of this particular group of children, this chapter reflects a deeper question of what it means to belong to the broader category of war-affected children. This section will also draw comparisons between different forms of sexual violence and sexual exploitation that occur in war.

Secondly, this chapter will briefly outline different cases of children born of wartime sexual violence. These cases will help to illustrate the complexity of sexual violence by comparing the repercussions of militarized rape, militarized prostitution, and militarized consensual love matches between foreign troops and local civilian women. Comparing the different cases will bring to light some of the gendered myths and stereotypes that are sustained in war. This section will briefly explore cases from the two World Wars, the Cold War, and contemporary conflicts and campaigns of ethnic cleansing. Cases involving Nazi Germany, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, and Darfur will help to illustrate how the identities of these children challenge the existing field of IR. Seeing as the issue of war babies is relatively unknown, the list of cases in this chapter helps to locate where the children are and, in doing so, provide the impetus for asking why have children born of war rape have not been considered by the study of IR.

Defining Children Born of Wartime Sexual Violence

Children born of wartime sexual violence represent a unique category of war-affected children. As recent research concerning war has illustrated, children as a group have been exposed to conflict in different ways (Watson 2004, Brocklehurst 2006, Wells 2009, Kaldor 2007). The changing development of conflict has meant that children are no longer innocent bystanders of politics. Some children are seen to participate as soldiers, porters, or laborers (Singer 2006, Boothby et al. 2006, Tolley 1973, London 2007, Inglis 1989, McEvoy-Levy 2006, Stargardt 2005). Other children are internally displaced or become refugees as they flee conflict zones on their own or are accompanied by adults (Watters 2008). Female as well as male children are trafficked, subject to sexual slavery, and held captive as military “wives” (Machel 1996, UNICEF 2009a, Wessells 1998a, 1998b, Brocklehurst 2006, Wells 2009, Singer 2006, Harris-Rimmer 2007a, Apio 2007). In many respects, children effect and are affected by war in multiple and conflicting ways. In contrast to children who are directly or indirectly affected by conflict, the detriments experienced by children born of wartime sexual violence cannot be clearly defined. Unlike other groups of war-affected children, the suffering of children born of war often occurs after conflict has formally ended. The identities of children conceived of wartime sexual violence are constructed based on violent modes of “personalized warfare” ¹ such as forced impregnation, sexual violence, and militarized sexual exploitation. These practices employ the psychological and emotional aspects of conflict while also involving complicated issues relating to identity, gendered expectations, and memory (Edkins 2003, Agamben 1999, Ross 2003, Salzman 1998). As a consequence, the suffering experienced by these children is an intrinsic consequence of the climate of conflict and, often, their own identities.

1 The term “personalized warfare” can describe how so-called “private” forms of violence (such as sexual violence) have become political. This term can be associated with second-wave feminist attempts to politicize the personal.

The War and Children Identity Project claims that tens of thousands of infants have been born of wartime rape or sexual exploitation in the last decade of the twentieth century (Grieg 2001: 7, Carpenter et al. 2005: 3–4). Published in 2001, the WCIP report outlines historical and current cases of children born of wartime sexual violence. Additionally, in 2005, University of Pittsburgh’s Ford Institute for Human Security published a report that echoed WCIP’s findings. University of Pittsburgh’s report suggests that if other categories of militarized sexual violence are included, the number of children born of war grows exponentially. This includes sexual relations with peacekeepers, humanitarian workers, and members of private militaries. Both the WCIP report and the report issued by the University of Pittsburgh estimates the number of all living children born of war to be 500,000 (Grieg 2001: 7, Carpenter et al. 2005: 4). It is, however, important to note that this issue makes it difficult to produce accurate data and numbers of how many children actually exist today.

The table below provides an estimate of the number of war babies born from conflicts that occurred during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The figures provided below are adopted from the numbers presented by the WCIP reports on war children. It outlines the relative dates of conflict and involves cases from the First and Second World Wars as well as conflicts during and after the Cold War. The cases listed below illustrate how this issue is not geographically isolated. Similarly, it spans a diverse range of conflicts. The figures provided in this table also help to illustrate the difficulty in acquiring accurate numbers of children born of war.

Table 1.1 Estimates of children born of war, 1914–present

Conflicts	Country Father/Mother	Year of Military Presence	Numbers
WWI	Germany/France and Britain	1914–18	15,000
WWII	Japan/Korea	1940–45	100+
	Britain/US	1941–48	23,000
	Britain/Canada	1940–47	22,000–30,000
	West Germany/US	1945–46	96,000
	Britain/Soviet Union	1941–45	14+
	Germany/Norway	1940–45	7,000–12,000
	Germany/France	1941–45	80,000
	Germany/Holland	1941–45	10,000–50,000
	US/Austria	1945–55	2,000+
Cold War	UN (US)/Korea	1950–53	2,000+
	US/Philippines	1965–82	52,000
	US/Vietnam	1965–75	40,000
Post–Cold War	Indonesia/East Timor	1975–99	5,000
	Rwanda (Tutsi/Hutu)	1994	2,000–5,000
	Serbia/Bosnia and Croatia	1992–95	4,000
Peacekeeping	UNTAC/Cambodia	1992–97	25,000
Source: Reduced version of War Child Identity Project, 2001 (Carpenter 2007b, Carpenter et al. 2005, Grieg 2001, Kartveit 2002)

The complex identities of these children are central to their marginalization. The construction of their identities is based on three factors. First, in cases where forced impregnation or rape was used as a systematic method to instill violence, horror, humiliation and shame into a community the identities of these children are politically charged. Through this campaign of violence, children born of sexual violence have become intrinsically written into the agenda of war. The identity of these children is, therefore, the product of a deliberate method of conflict. It is designed to ensure that the affected community suffers from the consequences (Allen 1996). An example of children produced as a direct strategy of war was witnessed during the 1990s conflict in the former Yugoslavia. From 1992 to 1995, the Serbian Army carried out a campaign of terror (Salzman 1998, Copelon 1994, Allen 1996). The motive was to intimidate, terrorize, and expel Bosnian-Muslims and Croats from the region. Forced impregnation was used as a method of conflict and a way to ensure that one ethnic group suffered long after the conflict ended (Allen 1996, Copelon 1994). Similarly, anecdotal evidence has surfaced concerning the conflict in Darfur. Rape has been used systematically to force people in Darfur to flee the region. Anecdotal evidence has suggested that the Janjaweed used rape as a method to create “mixed-race” children (Wax 2004a, Polgreen 2005, Human Rights Watch 2008, Bashir and Lewis 2008).

Secondly, the identities of children born of war are constructed. For instance, commonplace patriarchal ideas sustain the subordination of women as well as the identity of a child as belonging to the father. During conflict, the gendered stereotypes and power relations between men and women appear more rigid and are enforced as such (Enloe 1990). The perpetrators of violence as well as the community into which these children are born reinforce these gendered stereotypes. In most cases, both the birth community and the perpetrators expect that these children will assume the familial and social identity of the father. Such values can be seen in non-conflict periods when children are expected to take on the name of the father and be part of the father’s clan or group. Within the case of children born of war, such values can be unfavorable for the child. The father of the child is often considered to be part of the enemy nation that invaded, raped, and pillaged the mother’s community (McEvoy-Levy 2007). This assumed adoption of the father’s identity was witnessed in the Yugoslavian case illustrated above. Both the Bosnians and Ser...