How do we make up for lost time?: Tackling current questions and realities of children during and following armed conflict

Abstract

as the armed conflict in Afghanistan escalated and the United States (US) withdrew its troops, seven-year-old Helia fled with her family and boarded a boat to Turkey and then to the Greek Islands with the hope of reaching Europe. Yet, instead of reaching the protection and safety they dreamed of, Helia and her family were met by Greek police officers who confiscated their documents, money, and cell phones, and ferried them out to sea on a rudderless raft. After drifting for hours in the dark, they were rescued by the Turkish Coast Guard and brought to shore (Gall, 2021).In February 2022, when eight-year-old Tymofiy's family home was destroyed, he fled with his mother, aunt, and grandmother, alongside 150 others, to a basement-turned-bomb-shelter in northeast Ukraine. While others have managed to flee to neighbouring countries, Tymofiy has been living in the bomb shelter for months and is the only child left in his village. Spending his days drawing hearts, green trees, and yellow suns, Tymofiy waits for the day the war will end (Boffey, 2022).On April 14, 2014, in Chibok, a city in northeastern Nigeria, the militant group Boko Haram arrived late at night in a blaze of gunfire. The gunmen raided a school dormitory where a total of 276 schoolgirls were kidnapped and loaded onto nearby trucks. Some girls managed to escape within hours of their abduction, mostly by jumping off the trucks and running into the bushes. In total, 219 girls were abducted. Naomi, who was freed in 2017, remembers how she and another classmate wrote secret diaries in notebooks they were given to write Islamic verses. She kept them hidden in a makeshift pouch tied to her leg. Naomi explained: "We decided that we should write down our stories … so that if one of us got to escape, we could let people know what happened to us" (Jones, 2021).These real-life stories -as well as countless others across the globe -illustrate the multiple ways in which armed conflicts are impacting the lives of children, youth, 1 and families around the world with profound effects. Recent decades have witnessed a significant increase in the number of armed confrontations, ranging from international warfare and mass violence played out between states, to intrastate conflict involving violent confrontations between non-state actors (rebels, guerillas, insurgents), to long-term unstable post-conflict situations. These armed conflicts are marked by various strategies -killings, disappearances, and psychological terror,