Child Soldiers and Glass Castles

It is laudable that the UN is addressing the serious problem of war-affected children in developing countries. But I wonder if there is a problem with conceptualizing “children and armed conflict” as a problem that is happening only out there, in the refugee camps and killing fields of Africa.

As Americans, we rarely think of our own children as “war-affected” even though our nation is at war and military recruitment ads appear to captive audiences of five-year-olds in movie theaters for children’s movies. We do not consider them “militarized” even if it is impossible today to buy rescue toys for little boys that portray manly careers in humanitarian work or medicine, rather than death and destruction. For an excellent blog that deals with this issue, click here.

Similarly, there has been far too little outcry by human security specialists about the infiltration of America’s own public middle and high schools by military recruiters under the No Child Left Behind Act. These officers hang out in our children’s PE classes and cafeterias, are permitted access to student assemblies to promulgate their message, seek friendships and contacts with and provide gifts to children as young as 11, often without parental consent.

I wonder if we should not be as deeply concerned about these acts when practiced by our own government as we are about the abduction of children into rebel forces in Uganda.