Armed Conflict, Transitional Justice and Children and Youth

Abstract

As the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions for especially Sierra Leone, Liberia and Peru reveal, the atrocities committed against children are breathtakingly cruel, and committed without any second thought to their sensitivity and vulnerability. As Siegrist argues, in the context that more than half of the populations that are affected by armed conflict are made up of children and young people and that they are often among the most victimized, from this follows that it is necessary for children and youth to be able to participate in transitional justice processes especially at the community level with regards to reconciliation and recovery in order to fulfil the aims of these processes. The context that sexual violence for instance has continued in these countries in the post-conflict phase. Keywords:armed conflict; children; sexual violence; transitional justice