Children Born of War

Past, Present and Future

Sabine Lee, Heide Glaesmer, Barbara Stelzl-Marx, Barbara Stelzl-Marx, Sabine Lee, Heide Glaesmer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780429576256
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This volume presents research from an international, interdisciplinary, and intersectoral research project in which 15 doctoral researchers explored a range of issues related to the life-course experiences of children born of war in 20th-century conflicts.

Children Born of War (CBOW), children fathered by foreign soldiers and born to local mothers during and after armed conflicts, have long been neglected in the research of the social consequences of war. Based on research projects completed under the auspices of the Horizon2020-funded international and interdisciplinary research and training network CHIBOW (www.chibow.org), this book examines the psychological and social impact of war on these children. It focusses on three separate but interrelated themes: firstly, it explores methodological and ethical issues related to research with war-affected populations in general and children born of war in particular. Secondly, it presents innovative historical research focussing specifically on geopolitical areas that have hitherto been unexplored; and thirdly, it addresses, from a psychological and psychiatric perspective, the challenges faced by children born of war in post-conflict communities, including stigmatisation, discrimination, within the significant context of identity formation when faced with contested memories of volatile post-war experiences.

The book offers an insight into the social consequences of war for those children associated with the 'enemy' by virtue of their direct biological link.

1 Children born of war: a critical appraisal of the terminology

Sabine Lee and Heide Glaesmer

Background

When in the summer of 2015 more than 700 women and children were rescued from Boko Haram by the Nigerian Army, at least 214 were visibly pregnant. Most, if not all, of these pregnancies were the result of sexual violence that had been committed against the women while they were in captivity (Ladisch & McClain Opiyo, 2015). Yet, the fate of the children, who had been conceived under such brutal circumstances, received hardly any attention. The interest of the media, politicians, policy-makers, and academics initially focused, on the direct victims of sexual violence, the raped women, and expectant mothers.

To this day, children born as a result of such exploitative and abusive relations, and more generally, children fathered by foreign or rebel soldiers and born to local mothers, go largely unnoticed. In this respect, the response to the release of the girls and women rescued from Boko Haram captivity was no exception, and is consistent with the lack of attention children born of war (CBOW) have historically received (Skjelsbæk, Tryggestad, & Mochmann, 2018). A recent review of the literature on the reintegration of children born of wartime rape, partly based on work done by the CHIBOW network, summarises that

Children born of wartime rape are at risk of violence, abuse, abandonment, discrimination, and marginalisation at the hands of both families and communities. They often have less access to community resources, family protection and education or livelihood activities, and are likely to grow up in poverty. The experiences of children born of wartime rape can result in a lifetime of detrimental consequences, and the stigmatisation they experience has continued long into the post-war period (Rohwerden, 2019).

At the same time, the report concludes that ‘specific efforts to support and reintegrate children born of wartime rape have been scarce.’

Although by no means all CBOW are conceived within coercive relationships, many are. The changing nature of warfare has affected how civilians are impacted by hostilities to the point that today, ‘it is perhaps more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in armed conflict’ (Cammeart, 2012). Conflicts increasingly tend to play out in less clearly regulated warfare, and no longer occur within the confines of the laws of war (Newman, 2004). Fighting more frequently takes place in civilian neighbourhoods, and the disappearance of clear battlefields and battle lines has led to women and children becoming increasingly vulnerable. Areas that were previously protected under international laws of war, traditional safe havens such as schools, hospitals, or churches, are no longer afforded such respect and protection and are now deliberately targeted (Hesterman, 2014). The unclear and disputed boundaries between combatants and non-combatants (Kidder, 2010), and the growing trend towards using sexualised violence as a means of warfare (Crawford, 2017; Wood, 2018) have all contributed to an increase in gender-based war crimes, specifically sexual violence against girls and women, leading to greater numbers of children being conceived of coercive relations in armed conflicts (Neenan, 2017). Thus, while rape in war is by no means a new phenomenon, ‘its escalation as a deliberate, strategic, and political tactic is now undeniable’ (The PLoS Medicine Editors, 2009). The complexity and scope of war-time rape had largely been overlooked until the genocide in Rwanda and attempts at ethnic cleansing by means of sexualised violence in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s generated widespread and open debates among academics, the public, and the media, and efforts to react to the problem among humanitarian agencies were intensified (e.g. Lindsey, 2002; Simic, 2019). In recent years, research both on the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and on CBOW, whether their existence be the result of abusive, exploitative, or consensual relations, has made significant progress. Wide-ranging case studies (Cohen, 2016; Doja, 2019; Pierre, 2018) have shed light on conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) in different historical and geopolitical settings, leading to a much more nuanced understanding of the experiences of the victims of such violence and some of the historically contextualised challenges children conceived as a result of CRSV face. While the insights gleaned from those case studies have resulted in a growing and increasingly solid empirical evidence base, the discourse about the life courses and experiences of children who are conceived by foreign soldiers and local mothers has laid open the need to codify the language used to discuss the phenomenon of ‘children born of war.’ Moreover, intense research and advocacy related to survivors of conflict-related sexual violence and their children have encouraged those with an interest in this field, whether they are academics or policymakers, to reflect on the terminology used to talk about this population. While the term ‘children born of war’ has been used in a very broad sense in the policy sphere, it is typically understood to refer to children conceived in (conflict-related) sexual violence (Neenan, 2017). Some, however, have chosen alternative terms such as ‘children born of rape,’ ‘born of war rape,’ ‘born of conflict-related sexual violence,’ or ‘children of sexual violence survivors.’ Given the intensive research activities that have centred around the subject of CBOW over the last years, a critical reflection about the usefulness of the exact label ‘children born of war’ as a term to describe a group of individuals who are fathered by foreign soldiers during or after conflict and born to local mothers is essential for clarifying how this term ought to be understood, whom it describes, whom it includes, and whom it does not. Beyond this, we must consider how suitable the term and its constituent parts are for capturing the essence of what those who are affected by this particular parentage understand being a ‘child born of war.’ Concerns often focus on the fact that individuals in this position are affected by their parentage well beyond childhood, and that research frequently deals with adult CBOWs, thereby rendering the term ‘child born of war’ unsuitable. Other criticism has zoomed in on the original definition of CBOW and the categorisation of who is and is not captured in the framework of that vocabulary. This chapter will investigate the merits and demerits of this term, exploring the challenges of using it both from the point of view of the population to whom this label is applied and from the perspective of researchers (Delić, Kuwert, & Glaesmer, 2017).

Children born of war – a terminological challenge

Since the early 21^st century, academic research has begun exploring topics relevant to the experiences of children born of war from historical, anthropological, psychological, political, and, more recently, also legal perspectives. Beginning with Carpenter’s work, which focuses primarily on children born of conflict-related sexual violence (Carpenter, 2007), since the turn of the century, a myriad of studies related to CBOW in different countries and conflicts, including some that focused on initial methodological considerations, have been published on the subject of CBOW (Denov, 2015; Kahn & Denov, 2019; Lee, 2017; Neenan, 2017; Seto, 2020). This has led to a clarification of the research subject further resulting in a generally accepted differentiation of CBOW into four broad categories¹: (1) children of enemy soldiers, (2) children of occupation soldiers, (3) children of child soldiers and, (4) children of United Nations (UN) peacekeepers. However, the terminology relating to children fathered by foreign soldiers has not been applied consistently in the literature, and the current categorisation of different groups of ‘children born of war’ is still a matter of debate. Following is a more detailed description of the four categories:

Children of enemy soldiers

These are children who have been fathered during or immediately after an armed conflict by foreign soldiers who are perceived as enemies by the local (mother’s) home community. Great variations exist in the nature, frequency, and intensity of such contact between local populations and enemy soldiers; and it is reasonable to assume that such relationships have occurred and do occur in almost all armed conflicts, historically and contemporaneously. Recently, due to the rising number of civil wars – as opposed to international conflicts – children born of such conflicts constitute a growing subset of CBOW whose fathers share the mothers’ nationality but are adversaries of their local communities, in other words, men considered enemies from within. In addition, the question has been raised whether children of prisoners of war (POWs), many of whom (though by no means all) are foreign soldiers who have been captured and detained by enemy forces during or after the end of war should be incorporated in this category.

Children of soldiers from occupation forces

Soldiers from occupation forces are often not enemy forces, but can be perceived as such, depending on the conflict and the view of the local population at the time. It is in the nature of occupations that local populations harbour some misgivings about ‘foreign boots on their home ground.’ The ways occupation troops are experienced and the level of reservation local people have vis-à-vis those forces have direct implications for military-civilian relations and the way liaisons between local women and those foreign soldiers are viewed. The clearest example of this is the occupation of Germany and Austria after the Second World War, when groups of soldiers representing different allied powers were regarded with varying degrees of suspicion across both Germany and Austria, and the children fathered by those occupation soldiers had very different experiences depending on which nationality their father represented (Stelzl-Marx & Satjukow, 2015).

Children of child soldiers

A group traditionally included among CBOW are children of female child soldiers. The second half of the 20^th century has seen an escalation in the number of children enlisted in conflict as well as a change in the role assigned to children in both combat and non-combat activities. Significant numbers of children have been recruited in the civil wars that have taken place in Uganda, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Liberia, Columbia, Nigeria, the Central African Republic, Sudan, South Sudan, Iraq, and Syria (Dunson, 2008). While the majority of abducted children are boys, forcibly recruited to fight in guerrilla bush wars, more and more girls have been and are being targeted both for combat roles, and – more commonly – to serve as sexual slaves for the rank’s rebel outfits (Sieff, 2016). Many of these girls are impregnated by rebel combatants while in captivity, and thousands of children have been born in captivity over the last decades as a result (Apio, 2007; Eichstaedt, 2009; Joshi, 2015).

Children of UN peacekeeping forces

Another recent phenomenon is that of children being fathered by members of United Nations peacekeeping forces and other uniformed UN personnel. Peacekeepers neither occupy the country in which they serve, nor are they at war with the local population. Nevertheless, the relationship between those populations and peacekeepers resembles that of an occupation force in some respects and that of an enemy army in others. Most significantly, although the soldiers’ main task is to protect, they are generally perceived of as being in a position of power and control (Johansson & Hultman, 2019; Westendorf, 2020). They serve in circumstances that are often tense with an imminent threat of violence, and this leaves the local population, especially women vulnerable (United Nations PSEA Taskforce, 2009). Inter...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Children born of war: a critical appraisal of the terminology
• 2 Oral history and requirements: translating theory into practice
• 3 Ethical challenges in conducting interviews with children born of war: reflections on navigating participants' expectations
• 4 Implementing research ethics in an interdisciplinary research and training network -- the CHIBOW project
• 5 Researching children born of war in Uganda: methodological reflections on the inclusion of minors in CBOW research
• 6 An intergenerational perspective on conflict-related sexual violence against women: female survivors and their children born of war rape
• 7 Addressing the needs of mothers and their children born of conflict-related sexual violence: a framework for support in psychosocial settings
• 8 Questions of identity in German occupation children born after World War II: approaching a complex phenomenon with mixed-method analyses
• 9 Alimony payments for children born of war: A case study of British occupation children in Austria and Germany after World War II
• 10 Transgenerational transmission of memories
• 11 Children as ‘collateral damage’ of nationalisation campaigns? The persecution of ‘nationally unreliable’ persons in Czechoslovakia after the Second World War
• 12 Representations of CBOW in the films of Soviet-Occupied Latvia and beyond
• 13 Children born of the Indochina War: national ‘reclassification,’ diversity, and multiple feelings of belonging
• 14 Wife, victim, murderer, mother: women imprisoned for killing an abusive husband in post-conflict Uganda
• Bibliography
• Abbreviations
• Appendix
• Index