Children as Stakeholders in the Conflict Transformation Process

When considering post-conflict processes—negotiating peace treaties, facilitating dialogue, conducting truth and reconciliation processes, among others—the stakeholder groups seem clear. Combatants, politicians, international actors, and local communities all have a clear role to play in resolving conflict and laying the foundation for a peaceful future. Notably, there is an assumed common denominator among these groups: age. Adults, and increasingly, youth (ages 16-25), engage in this work, but this leaves out children. While they cannot participate in prevailing conflict transformation methods, they are members of their communities with a role to play in the current and future social dynamics that can underpin and contribute to conflict at a local level. It is important to consider children as stakeholders in a conflict transformation process because they are deeply affected by conflict long after a ceasefire and have a role to play in intergenerational peacebuilding. 

The concept of involving children (ages 0-8) in post-conflict peacebuilding work at first seems illogical, even inappropriate. However, reconsidering what it means to be a stakeholder in post-conflict processes may suggest otherwise. Stakeholders are those who have both influence over and interest in a given project and its outcomes. While children have limited influence, the impact of conflict on children—both physically and psychologically—suggests they have significant interest in the long-term outcomes of post-conflict processes which can affect the trajectory of their lives.

The long-term trajectory of conflict transformation processes connects the underlying factors that enable violent conflict to children’s potential to influence these dynamics in the future. 

Physical and Psychological Impact of Violent Conflict on Child Development

Reports show that in conflicts around the world, children suffer at a disproportionately high rate, relative to active combatants. In 2022, the United Nations reported a record high number of grave wartime violations against children in over 30 conflicts around the world, including over 8,000 deaths. This number tripled in 2023. In Gaza today, over 15,000 children have been killed, and a further 21,000 missing or separated from their families. Beyond the shocking physical suffering, children also experience acute psychological effects as a result of living through conflict. In Yemen, where the average child has lived through over 18,000 airstrikes in their lifetime, roughly 55 percent of children in Yemen feel sad or depressed, and 19 percent feel constant fear. Further, a study among school-aged children in the capital revealed that 79 percent display symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 

These statistics are not only a tragic reality, but a warning. The physical and psychological impact of conflict, particularly on young children, carries long-term implications that connect children’s development to future prospects for peace. A child’s early exposure to violence or conflict can fundamentally alter their brain architecture, impacting long-term decision-making processes and strengthening a predisposition to high levels of stress and reactive, anti-social behavior. In other words, an experience of violence or toxic stress in these years can change the ways children engage with conflict throughout their lives. 

Connecting Childhood Experiences to Cycles of Conflict

Yemeni children play in the rubble of buildings destroyed in an air raid. Credit: EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid, 2019

This dynamic helps to situate children within intergenerational cycles of conflict. Children exposed to violent conflict at an early age may begin to normalize violence and conflict in their thoughts and actions. They may also begin to normalize social divisions and relationship dynamics that facilitate conflict. The war in Yemen has lasted ten years, and many children have grown to adulthood in this state of constant violence, learning the lessons experience has taught them. Similarly, the war in Gaza does not yet have an end in sight, and children living in the region have also grown up in a state of conflict. Without redress, children carry their experiences into adulthood, increasing the risk of continuing the conditions of conflict in which they were raised. 

It is important to note that there is no evidence to support total causality, but the literature suggests a  positive correlation between experiences of violence in childhood and an increased predisposition to conflict.

Child-Centered Conflict Transformation

Current trends in humanitarian aid and post-conflict development present children primarily as victims, highlighting their suffering and resilience. While children are undeniably victims of conflict, there is more to their story. Despite the dire circumstances impacting children in conflict zones today, the same psychological processes that increase the risk of long-term consequences create an opportunity for children who are victims during the conflict to become stakeholders in long-term solutions. If a conflict transformation project can target the developmental processes that shape long-term decision making, it can, in theory, also affect in some small way how a child engages in violence throughout their lives. In practical terms, initiatives such as peacebuilding education and projects designed to help children heal from their experience of conflict can help mitigate the long-term psychological effects and encourage pro-social behavior.   

This also shows the importance of acknowledging children’s current and potential agency in a post-conflict context. Three-year-old children can’t conduct a truth and reconciliation practice, but they can learn the skills needed to apologize and feel empathy for harm caused. Five-year-old children may not understand the social or political drivers for conflict, but they can engage in a dialogue and talk about their feelings with peers. These social-emotional skills form the building blocks for developing effective personal conflict management strategies and can in turn lead to conflict transformation approaches with intergenerational implications. Developing age-appropriate, localized options that utilize existing infrastructure and involve caregivers would support post-conflict healing while laying the foundation for long-term conflict resolution that brings peacebuilding to the individual level and acknowledges children’s immediate agency and long-term potential. 

Ultimately, recognizing children as stakeholders means recognizing they have a role to play in conflict transformation processes. Further, acknowledging their agency and potential future contributions to social dynamics can help lead to more opportunities for sustainable peace.

There are many other factors that play a role in post-conflict conditions, and more research is needed. However, for conflict transformers working to change the underlying dynamics of conflicts, considering children as stakeholders can close a blind spot in this process. If peacebuilders do not account for the traumatic experiences of young children or keep them separated from conflict transformation work until they are old enough to participate in current prevailing methods and practices, the efforts to create lasting dynamics of peace will need to be renewed with each generation as children grow and cope with their adverse experiences. Children are negatively impacted by conflict, but they are also able to engage in approaches that can—over time—connect healing with peacebuilding and help them find peace in themselves and contribute to peace in their communities. 

About the author

Rachel Ansley is a consultant with the International Organization for Migration and the program manager of Partnership for Transparency Africa. She recently graduated with a Master of International Development Policy degree from Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy as a Paul D. Coverdell Peace Corps fellow. She also earned a Peace and Conflict Resolution Certificate from the Duke-UNC Rotary Peace Center. During her graduate program Rachel worked on child-centered programming and data management at Refugee Community Partnership in Carrboro, NC. From 2020-2022 Rachel was the Communications Manager at the Partnership for Transparency. Previously, she served in the Peace Corps as a literacy specialist in Guyana from 2018-2020. Prior to her Peace Corps service, Rachel was the assistant director of editorial content at the Atlantic Council from 2016-2018. She graduated from the University of St Andrews in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and Art History.