Abstract
The authors seek to give an overview of ways in which social indicators relevant to research on children affected by armed conflict can be developed, and how such research can be carried out. Technical and methodological challenges involved in this pursuit are discussed. It is argued that data production must consider issues of definition and delineation of the phenomenon of war-affected children more actively than it does currently. An analytical approach is proposed, in which children’s characteristics in different situations, or in different stages of conflict, may be used as intakes to understanding how the social processes pertaining to life histories of children in armed conflict are created and reproduced.
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Notes
WatchList, The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, the Children in Armed Conflict Unit and (formerly) the Swedish Save the Children (Rädda Barnen), to name some of these organisations.
All social research must necessarily confront ethical issues, but few as much as studies of children in armed conflict. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child stipulates that children’s right to participate in activities that affect them is a fundamental principle. Even though research may be seen as an investigative quest, and not as straightforward program activity, it is still an activity that affects children, or, through informing interventions, is intended to do so in the future. In this sense, research is no different from other activities when it comes to child participation. Research easily raises ethical concerns in regard to other actors too, such as adult respondents, researchers and fieldworkers. These issues are discussed in Gironde et al. (2002, chapter 2). Moreover, ethical considerations partly underlie the methodological approaches that are proposed here, and we do not make them explicit again here. For another sources that has informed our thinking on ethical considerations, see Brett and Specht (2004). On the specific issue of child participation, see Ben-Arieh (2005).
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The authors are grateful to Alcinda Honwana and Ron Kassimir for comments to earlier drafts.
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Pedersen, J., Sommerfelt, T. Studying children in armed conflict: data production, social indicators and analysis. Soc Indic Res 84, 251–269 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-007-9117-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-007-9117-3