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An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including various book reviews on topics such as children born of war, Gurkha mercenaries and transitional justice.

The article examines the difficulties encountered by refugee children and the orphans of soldiers during the U.S. Civil War in St. Louis, Missouri. It examines the favorable treatment of orphans of Union soldiers by government entities, particularly as opposed to orphans of children from the Confederacy.

The article addresses the severe impact of war on children, highlighting how they suffer disproportionately and are often manipulated in political narratives. Topics discussed include the use of child casualties to advance political agendas, differences in how child deaths are reported by conflicting sides, and the universal tragedy of losing any child in conflict.

This article explores the development of modern refugee camps in Austria-Hungary during the First World War by looking at the organization and implementation of child assistance in the camps. The article argues that a state-driven mobilization of relief and rehabilitation was organized to alleviate the plight of refugee children. It points particularly to children’s health care and the organization of education as instances that marked a shift in the scope of refugee camps in wartime AustriaHungary. At first, camps represented a temporary measure to immobilize and control displaced populations. As the war progressed, they became a permanent feature of refugee policy and a microcosm of agendas of state consolidation. Ultimately, the case of child assistance shows that the organization of refugee camps in wartime Austria-Hungary was a fluid and gradual process that meshed technologies of population containment with humanitarian and welfare practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The seventeenth-century British Civil Wars had a scale and impact to rival modern conflicts and its effects extended to children as well as adults. What might be today termed "child soldiers" were found in the armies in combat and supporting roles. Many more were witnesses to the conflict or had their lives changed by its consequences. This article is an historical case study of socio-cultural constructions of children, childhood and warfare. It aims to highlight the diverse nature of both historic and modern child experiences of warfare, and the plethora of ways that these experiences were and are understood and represented by adults. It argues that the evidence from the Civil Wars supports the scholarship of child psychologists such as Derek Summerfield that children in conflict should not always be regarded as victims but could display agency, whilst also acknowledging social, cultural, economic and political pressures. Although children in the Civil Wars may have experienced trauma, the evidence is insufficient to prove this and evidence for a contemporary concept of the psychologically damaged child as a result of conflict is ambiguous. However, what the evidence does uncover is the ways in which adults used representations of children to express their own anxieties about the Civil Wars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights the severe impact of the ongoing conflict in Sudan on children, who are suffering from displacement, malnutrition, and disrupted education due to the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces. Topics discussed include the collapse of healthcare systems, increased poverty and malnutrition, and the destruction of educational infrastructure.

Experiences of war and displacement can have profound effects on children's affective development and mental health, although the mechanism(s) underlying these effects remain unknown. This study investigated the link between early adversity and attention to affective stimuli using a free‐viewing eye‐tracking paradigm with Syrian refugee (n = 31, Mage = 9.55, 12 female) and Jordanian non‐refugee (n = 55, Mage = 9.98, 30 female) children living in Jordan (March 2020). Questionnaires assessed PTSD, anxiety/depression, insecurity, distress, and trauma. Refugee children showed greater initial avoidance of angry and happy faces compared to non‐refugee children, and higher trauma exposure was linked to increased sustained attention to angry stimuli. These findings suggest that war‐related trauma may have differential effects on the early and later stages of affective processing in refugee children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview with Olha Kulinich, professor at Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Revide Ziiatdinova, communication and public relations manager at Agency of Public Communications Perfect PR, is presented. Kulinich tells about working with children about coping through artmaking during wartime and the attitudes of families about sharing their children's drawings. Kulinich and Ziiatdinova share the stories behind the drawings including children's trauma and depression.

The article presents drawings and reflections by Ukrainian children that represent their daily lives and experiences during the war. A 10 year old imagines the Angel of Odesa coming to Ukraine and liberating it from invaders. A 12-year old expresses her worries for her relatives, friends, acquaintances and teachers and her desire for the war to and to live in peace. A seven-year old dreams of going to school and to give joy and happiness with her violin playing.

Research on the history of childhood faces fundamental challenges in tracing children's voices. Not yet skilled in forms of written self-documentation, children leave few documents behind. Other forms of expression (i.e. drawings) must thus be recognised as valuable historical sources and appropriate methods must be applied. These research challenges are aggravated in regard to persecuted children under the National Socialist regime. Few artefacts produced by children have been preserved, and in many cases nobody is left to tell the stories attached to them. The rare preserved artefacts thus paradoxically refer to the absence of children's voices in history. Referring to the epistemological concept of the trace and a material culture perspective, I address some of these remarkable exceptions to discuss their potential and limitations as historical sources to research children's lives. Two drawings by an 11-year-old girl from her lessons at the Private Jewish Elementary School in Düsseldorf serve as the starting point of a case study. Beginning with the materiality this study raises further questions about conditions of origin and preservation. Furthermore I discuss the researcher's role in identifying artefacts as sources and creating meaning. In this way, I contribute to the methodological discussion of how research on children's history can draw on artefacts like drawings produced by children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the memories of Japanese teachers who worked in Korea during the colonial period. By focusing on the autobiographical narratives of three Japanese primary school teachers who worked in rural Korea between 1931 and 1945, this study aims to unpack the relatively under-studied aspects of colonialism. Their narratives carried personal histories regarding their choice to study and work in Korea, the nature of their relationship with Korean children, and the memories of the political and cultural atmosphere at schools in pre-war Korea. These memoirs were accounts of Japanese colonialism through the "Japanese eyes". As they intimately interacted with the local community and students, their memories were multifaceted and complicated; these were not simply apologetic or nostalgic but involved particular social relations that they had experienced in Korea. In this paper, I attempted to shed light on the reconstruction of the grander narrative of pre- and post-war educational history in the region by looking at the complexity of their "reflected" memories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on two different versions of the childhood and life history of a female "child of a Russian" who grew up in the Soviet occupation zone and the later German Democratic Republic (GDR). Besides a biographical-narrative interview, there is also a published text on the author's childhood memories. The article concentrates on the childhood of the author/interviewee, since the published version does not provide any information on her later life, and picks out two so-called "key scenes" that appear in both the published version and the interview, comparing the different versions with each other and examining them for ruptures, inconsistencies and changes. For the purpose of better understanding the analysis of these scenes, a third scene is added, which, however, only comes up in the interview. The analysis pursues the question of whether different presentations of a scene have something to do with the methodological particularities of an oral autobiographical narration as opposed to a written one, and what kind of knowledge is gained from contrasting two different self- testimonies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The First World War marked a turning point in the lives of children, whose daily existence and emotional experiences were deeply impacted. "War children" faced significant emotional strain, for example due to separation or the loss of family members, as well as material sacrifices, malnutrition and famine. In addition, they were exposed to a culture of war which stylised them as heroic members of their communities. The topics of this paper are war experiences and perceptions of children in Germany. In addition, the paper assesses the academic conceptualisation of children's war experiences in contemporary academic literature. This paper shows that leading researchers, in particular psychologists, practicing and academic pedagogues and paediatricians, did not focus on the reality of children during the war, marginalised the psychological and physical consequences of war and prioritised the stabilisation of the home front over the needs of children. Nationalist hubris, the interpretation of war as a "natural" phenomenon, which was seen as rooted also in children's minds, as well as the limitations of contemporary research on children are key reasons for the lack of focus on the consequences of separations and losses caused by war as well as the misinterpretation or downplaying of children's fears and grief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Images of children have long been used to encourage populations to embrace war, to provoke anger at an enemy or humanize them after an engagement. Children—or at least representations of them—thus do important emotional work in coalescing public opinion and social action. This article uses a case study of portraits of Bonnie Prince Charlie—Charles Edward Stuart, grandson of the deposed James VII of Scotland and II of England and Ireland—to explore how his youthful representation was used to create love and loyalty in Stuart supporters leading up to and following the 1745 Rebellion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the tumultuous wars and rebellions in early modern Ireland, children were inevitably drawn into conflicts that spread far from battlefields and into homes, farms, and villages. While most of the evidence about children in these wars depicts them suffering from violence, hunger, and disease, there were also many reports of violence perpetrated or threatened by Catholic Irish children. Such violence was presented by Protestant witnesses and commentators as evidence of the barbarity of their Irish Catholic parents as well as of the children themselves. This paper will examine the emotional work that these narratives performed for the Protestants in Ireland and the English readers of anti-Irish propaganda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Italian Wars (1494–1559), Francesco II Gonzaga (1466–1519) and Isabella d'Este (1474–1539) agreed to send their firstborn son, Federico II Gonzaga (1500–1540), to Rome (1510–1513) and France (1515–1517) to protect the marquisate of Mantua. Analysing both voyages reveals that he began his journey as a passive object, but his sojourns resulted in education and, eventually, a significant role as a dynastic mediator. In light of these experiences, this article argues for greater recognition of childhood travel to inform current interpretations of diplomatic relations and childhood in Renaissance Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Families with children born to Danish mothers and German soldiers during WWII often resorted to secrecy to ward off discrimination and harm. Not knowing their origins, though, could have long-term consequences for the identity formation of these children born of war (CBOW). Based on a qualitative analysis of personal testimonies and interviews, this paper shows that the secret burdened, protected, and implicated the CBOW in the case studies in different ways at different points in their lives. This article approaches secrecy not only as a root cause of CBOW identity crisis, but also as a potential resource for resilience through memory work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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What makes child recruitment into armed conflict more likely? Violations against children in armed conflict pose a significant challenge to conflict resolution, long-term peacebuilding efforts, and international stability, yet little data are available on a global scale to understand the scope and causes of child recruitment into conflict. This article makes two contributions towards closing this analytical gap. First, utilising annual reports of the United Nations Secretary-General on children and armed conflict, this article codes child recruitment and other grave violations against children for 28 countries from 2006 to 2015 producing a new data set. Second, using this data set, this article examines the broad role of displacement in shaping child recruitment into armed conflict. Ultimately, this article finds that displacement within a country is positively and statistically significantly correlated with violations against children in armed conflict to include child recruitment and introduces policy recommendations for engaging this finding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we examine exceptional circumstances in which men who father children born as the result of conflict-related sexual violence assume full or partial responsibility for their child's well-being. Children 'born of war' are increasingly recognized as a particular victim group in relevant international policy frameworks. Their social status falls somewhere between the victimization of their mother and perpetration of their father. Given the circumstances of their birth, they often experience social rejection and loss of identity with a long-term impact on their well-being. Previous scholarship has primarily documented the challenges faced by their mothers as caregivers and as victims of wartime sexual violence. A discussion on fathers to children 'born of war' is absent, attributable not only to their perpetrator status, but also to the assumption that their identity is unknown or that a relationship between father and child is undesired. The article demonstrates this is not always the case. Based on research in northern Uganda between 2016 and 2019 which included interviews and focus group discussions with former male combatants in the rebel group the Lord's Resistance Army, we explore how some fathers seek to maintain a relationship with children born as the result of 'forced marriage' and assume partial or full responsibility for their well-being and care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1980 to 1992, the Salvadoran government and the Farabundo Martí Front for National Liberation (FMLN) fought each other in a civil conflict that devastated El Salvador, killing 75,000 people and leaving thousands more homeless or injured. Over 80 percent of the government's troops and over 20 percent of the FMLN's were under eighteen years of age; however, thus far, historians have missed the centrality of the role of children in this conflict. This article explores the legacy of both sides' reliance on child soldiers and examines the costs of child soldiering in terms of demobilization issues and postwar societal problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Armenian Genocide the Turkish Government forcibly converted and assimilated Armenian children. The defeat of the Ottoman Empire in WWI brought the opportunity to retrieve such children, whose identities and future became a battleground between Armenians and Turks. This article addresses the fate of these child-survivors, many of whom, after being rescued, continued to deny their Armenian identities. The article presents a history of Neutral House, a unique organization established in Istanbul to return these children to their nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the exhibition "Quick march: The children of World War One," focusing on children's experiences of World War I, on view at the State Library of New South Wales in March 2019.

The article discusses the issues of human rights and child soldiers in war, as well as the efforts by the U.S. to stop child soldiering. Other topics include the United Nations' (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child, the U.S. child protection laws like Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008, and the international humanitarian law in armed conflicts.

The article "Guns and Butter: Child Mortality and the Mediators of Militarization" addresses the important subject of the social and political roles of militaries in nations above a minimum population size. Each national population is evaluated in terms of 10 characteristics including survival rates of children, level of armed conflict, economic development, political representation, and others. The authors draw a sharp distinction between social militarization and praetorian militarization. The essay is valuable in providing one dimension of the impacts of militaries on nations. However, qualitative information and analysis would greatly benefit this work. In this regard, the work of Samuel P. Huntington is instructive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: During wars, many soldiers and civilians either get injured or die. In civil wars, older people, women, and children are more vulnerable to injuries and traumas. The aim of this study is to reveal the demographic features and variety as well as the characteristics of the injuries in children who were impacted from the Syrian civil war and underwent surgeries in the plastic, reconstructive and aesthetic surgery department. Patients and Methods: This is a retrospective study which initially included 121 children aged 0-18 years out of a total of 402 Syrian patients treated in the plastic, reconstructive and aesthetic surgery department between December 2011 and December 2016. Results: Of 83 children with war injuries treated in our clinic, 42% were female and 58% were male. Forty-one percent of the injuries were located in the head-neck region. 43.4% of the injuries were due to burns. Thirty-six percent of the injuries were located on the extremities. All the patients underwent a total of 242 surgeries. The mean number of surgeries per child was 2.9. The mean time of hospitalization was 17.12% days. Conclusion: The results of the study show that children are impacted just as much or more than adults in the Syrian civil war and had more severe injuries than those effected by similar wars and terrorist attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Second World War, the Nazis evacuated over two million children from war- torn cities through the Erweiterte Kinderlandverschickung program. The program's stated purpose was to provide children and youth with the nutrition and safety no longer available to them in big cities. But an arguably equally important goal was to separate children from their families in order to indoctrinate them and incorporate them into the Volksgemeinschaft. Suddenly every German family in a threatened city was confronted with the question of whether to allow children to be evacuated by the state. The EKLV thus became an arena for struggle between the Nazi state and German parents over children's experience. This study, by expanding the focus from the institutional level to children's experiences, provides a deeper understanding of how children experienced and Germans remember the EKLV. Using archival sources, memoirs, and interviews, this article examines how German children experienced the EKLV, how families negotiated the Nazi attempt to control their children's lives, and how the EKLV is remembered today. Unlike other studies, it examines children's experiences at the end of the war. It argues that the chaotic end of the EKLV and the creation of the collective memory of the Nazi era in Germany created circumstances distinct from the youth evacuations in Britain and France and that were central to German experience and memories of the EKLV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Pruritus or itch is a common symptom after burn injuries. The Itch Man Scale has been recommended to assess itch severity in children. The aim of this prospective observational study was to perform a cross-cultural validation of the Itch Man Scale by comparing it with the Numeric Rating Scale (NRS) and the Toronto Pediatric Itch Scale.Method: At Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, parents of pediatric burn patients assessed their child's itch with the Itch Man Scale, NRS and Toronto Pediatric Itch Scale. Children from the age of 6years also rated the Itch Man Scale and NRS themselves. The Spearman rank order correlation between the different scales was calculated to determine construct validity.Results: Over a two-month period, 255 pediatric burn survivors with a median age of 2.3years (IQR 1.4-4.0) were included; 35 of them were aged 6-13years. Parents' Itch Man Scale ratings correlated significantly with parents' NRS ratings (0.82, 95% CI 0.78-0.86) and with the Toronto Pediatric Itch Scale of the parent (0.80, 95% CI 0.75-0.84). The correlation between the older children's Itch Man Scale rating and those of their parents was 0.66 (95% CI 0.37-0.83).Conclusion: We concluded that the Itch Man Scale has promising validity and is a user-friendly tool to use in clinical practice to determine the itch intensity in children younger than 13years in a South African setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two contemporary co-produced films, Operación E (Miguel Courtois, 2012) and Alias María (José Luis Rugeles, 2015), touch on events that took place in Colombia in recent history and in which the FARC participated. In this article I analyse these two films, suggesting that despite their different sources of financing, they are both anti-war films that employ two categories of the threatened child: the sick child in Operación E and the deprived child in Alias María. These categories stress the abuses committed by guerrillas and the important function of the 'child-savers' who, by protecting threatened children, stand for the hope of Colombian society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian girl, was eleven years old when she first "went viral." In 2015 and again in 2018, photos and images of Ahed's confrontations with Israeli soldiers went viral and she became a symbol -- in both the positive and negative senses -- of the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation. In almost every article that mentions her, there is one fact that sets her apart: Ahed is not only a girl and a child, she is also blond-haired, light-skinned, and blue-eyed. As a child -- a female child, especially -- Ahed is seen as a symbol -- rather than a leader -- of the Palestinian resistance. Women and children are often seen as symbols rather than as leaders of a movement. Why? This paper posits three main reasons: first, Ahed does not "look Palestinian;" with features of her appearance that make white "Western" audiences remind them of their own daughters or sisters. Second and third, women and children are most often not viewed as "leaders" in situations conflict and resistance because they are instead seen as needing to be protected. men are the ones fighting; women and children are the ones they are fighting for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles published in the December 2019 edition of the journal about topics including scholarship in the field of U.S. Civil War-era political history, the difficulties faced by children during the Civil War, and books reviewed in the journal.

Children are currently being recruited to an increasing extent by armed groups, assuming both ancillary and combat roles. Academic research on this phenomenon has grown in scope over the last few years. However, the current research lacks a comparative perspective. As a result, we presently have a very restricted perspective of the state of the art on the subject of child soldiering, making it difficult to recognise research areas that urgently require further investigation. The ambition of this article is twofold: first, to explore the existing state of child soldier studies across disciplines, and second, to encourage potential research by highlighting three relatively underdeveloped research areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]