Overview

The recruitment and operations of child soldiers have been hitting the headlines in politics and the media for many years. However, a much broader circle of children is affected by armed conflicts. Hence, the many challenges to deal with youth affected by armed conflict exceed by far the issue of the recruitment and demobilisation of child soldiers, but also extend to questions of rehabilitation, reintegration and reconciliation processes of all children and youths. In stark contrast to the complex reality of armed conflict and the involvement of children therein, academic work thus far has taken a rather narrow view on the matter. International children's rights law has mostly focused on age limits for the recruitment of children and international criminal law has dealt with the prosecution and punishment of child recruiters. The disciplines of psychology and pedagogical sciences have merely emphasised the effects of and recovery from traumatic exposure by individuals, with some attempts for a more psychosocial perspective. Finally, studies in the field of transitional justice have paid remarkably little attention, until very recently, to the role of children in transitional justice mechanisms, both as victims and offenders. This book brings together for the first time a wide range of leading scholars from three disciplinary perspectives (children's rights, psychosocial studies and transitional justice). It aims at enhancing a multidisciplinary and comprehensive approach to the rehabilitation, reintegration and reconciliation processes of children and adolescents affected by armed conflict. The 22 chapters are specifically written for this volume and deal with theoretical perspectives, empirical findings and country reports. The book also contains prefaces from two distinguished academics and policy makers in the field of international children's rights. It will therefore not only be of interest to academics, but also to policy makers, practitioners, non-governmental organisations, the media, and every citizen interested.

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Ilse Derluyn obtained her PhD in Pedagogical Sciences at Ghent University with a dissertation on the emotional well-being of unaccompanied refugee minors. From 2000 until 2002, she worked as a music therapist in a psychiatric hospital. From 2002 she was affiliated at the Department of Orthopedagogics - Ghent University as researcher, first as doctoral researcher, and later as post-doctoral researcher. At the moment she is professor at the department of Social Welfare Studies. Since the start of the Centre for Children in Vulnerable Situations (CCVS), Ilse is the acting as coordinator, later as co-director. Cindy Mels started her research career at the Ghent University's Department of Orthopedagogics, working on social support in unaccompanied asylum seeking minors residing in Belgium. Throughout her PhD study on the psychosocial wellbeing of war-affected Eastern Congolese adolescents she specialized in the cross-cultural adaptation and validation of psychological screening instruments, issues of trauma and daily stressors and their effects on mental health, and community-based research aimed at promoting psychosocial assistance in low-income and war-affected areas. Currently living in Montevideo, Uruguay, she is professor at the Department of Developmental and Psychology and Education at the Universidad Católica de Uruguay, where she continues working on the cross-cultural adaptation of mental health instruments and the impact of community violence and daily stressors (poverty, social exclusion) on Latin-American low-income adolescents' mental health. Stephan Parmentier studied law, political science and sociology at the universities of Ghent and Leuven (Belgium) and sociology and conflict resolution at the Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (U.S.A.). He currently teaches sociology of crime, law, and human rights at the Faculty of Law of the University of Leuven and is the former head of the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology (2005-2009). He is in charge of international relations in criminology at Leuven University and in July 2010 was appointed Secretary-General of the International Society for Criminology (re-elected in August 2014). He also serves on the Advisory Board of the Oxford Centre of Criminology and the International Centre for Transitional Justice (New York). He has served as a visiting professor (Oñati, San José, Sydney, Tilburg, Tokyo), visiting scholar (Oxford, Stellenbosch, Sydney) and guest lecturer in the fields of human rights, criminology and socio-legal studies. He is editor of the newly established Restorative Justice International Journal (Hart Publishing, Oxford). He co-directs the Flemish Interuniversity Network on Law and Development and co-organises the summer course on Human Rights for Development. He also serves as a referee to the ERC funding scheme of the European Union, and other national and international research foundations. Wouter Vandenhole (BA in Philosophy, University of Leuven (Belgium), LL.B., LL.M. University of Leuven (Belgium), LL.M. in Law in Development, University of Warwick (UK); Ph.D. University of Leuven (Belgium)) is an internationally recognized expert in transnational human rights obligations and in human rights and development. He has been invited as guest lecturer to universities all over the world. He serves on the editorial board of several international journals, among which the Journal of Human Rights Practice and Human Rights and International Legal Discourse. He has taken up management functions in European research and teaching networks: he was the chair of the Research Networking Programme, Beyond Territoriality: Globalization and Transnational Human Rights Obligations (GLOTHRO), funded by the European Science Foundation (2010-2014); he was the vice-chair of the COST Action The Role of the EU in UN Human Rights Reform (2009-2013); and is a member of the executive committee of the Children's Rights Education Academic Network, funded by the Life Long Learning Programme of the European Commission (2012-2015). He is the lead convenor of an international summer course on Human Rights for Development (hr4dev.be). Wouter Vandenhole holds the chair in human rights and the UNICEF chair in children's rights at the faculty of law of the University of Antwerp since 2007. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Tilburg University (Veni Grant) from 2005 to 2007, and a senior teaching assistant at the European Master's Degree in Human Rights and Democratisation in 2002-2003. From 1995 to 2005, he was a researcher at the University of Leuven.

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