Post-Conflict Programming: Feelings Fatigue?

• Author: Cohn, Ilene
• Position: Children's rights

The last decade has seen increased attention to and awareness of children's rights throughout the international system, and yet children are rarely represented during peace processes and are largely overlooked when post-conflict, peace-building agendas are hammered out. The effect is to marginalize persistent problems like the rehabilitation and reintegration of child soldiers, and to overlook valuable opportunities to address widespread systemic problems common to war-torn societies. To what extent is this oversight a function of short-lived donor interest, and what other factors influence the short-term nature of child-conscious programmes as societies transition from war to peace?

Surely the problem does not derive from a lack of normative guidance on child rights and protection. The international community has reached consensus on a wide array of child rights. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history and obliges States to take positive measures to respect and ensure children's rights both in peace and in war. International law strives to regulate the conduct of warring factions and protect children in wartime. International institutions have issued any number of exhortatory calls to action on behalf of war-affected children and youth.

In war's aftermath, States are obliged by article 39 of the Child Rights Convention to take "all appropriate measures to promote physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration of a child victim of . . . armed conflict". Other issues in need of much greater and more concerted attention in post-conflict settings include the demobilization of child soldiers, the return and reintegration of displaced and refugee children, mine clearance and mine awareness, educational and vocational training capable of replacing the economic incentive of war, and issues of juvenile justice.

Donors, lenders, bilateral aid agencies and development organizations must have children squarely on their radar screens when they undertake to assess the long-term post-conflict, peace-building needs in any given country. But what are the appropriate measures to take?

Before prescribing, we might ask: How much do we know about the needs of war-affected children and what have we learned about the long-term impact of responsive programmes?

For example, what has the international system learned from the experience of demobilizing child combatants in El...