Girls at War: The United Nations estimates that 300,000 children, aged 7 to 8, are participating in armed conflicts around the world.

It is hard to imagine what use children would be in a war zone, and perhaps even harder to believe that anyone would use them this way. But girls and boys are used in conflicts around the globe with increasing regularity. The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers attributes this to the diminishing availability of adult personnel, as well as to the emergence of weapons light enough to be used by someone as young as 10. Evidence also suggests that girls are used as suicide bombers in several parts of the world for a sinister tactical reason: who would suspect a small girl?

In discussions about children in armed conflicts, the special problems faced by girls are seldom addressed. The experiences of girls at war, and their impact, are the subjects of research being done by Susan McKay, professor of women's studies at the University of Wyoming (UW) in Laramie, and Dyan Mazurana, Research Scholar in Women's Studies at the University of Montana in Missoula.

The two women have worked together to document the ways in which girls in particular are brought into conflict situations. With funding from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) in partnership with Rights & Democracy (Montreal), they have traveled, over the past year, to Mozambique, Uganda, and Sierra Leone.

A Psychologist for Peace

McKay holds a Bachelor's degree in nursing, a Master's degree in maternal/child nursing, and a PhD in counselor education. She has been a licensed psychologist in Wyoming since 1979. When asked to describe her career, McKay refuses to separate her interwoven fields into distinct areas, stating, "I have been an academic almost from the start, and this demands teaching and research as well as practice. I have practiced nursing, psychology, or both, through private practice, community-based work, and national work."

McKay has long been interested in the subject of women and war. In 1983, she received a W.K. Kellogg Foundation Fellowship to study peace issues. McKay began thinking about the broader threat that war brings to women and children and developed a course for UW called "Women, War and Health," which was cross-listed between women's studies and nursing, and which she still teaches today.

In the 1990s, McKay became an international leader in the emerging field of peace psychology. As the first female president of the Division of Peace Psychology (now called The Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence) of the American Psychological Association, she provided a gender perspective that had not been recognized previously. A former editor of the journal published by the Division of Peace Psychology credits McKay with leading psychologists to a greater appreciation of the role of gender in war, the prevention of war, and the realization of peace. McKay perceives war as the greatest threat to mothers and babies and sees women and children as the primary victims of contemporary warfare.

Where Have All the Children Gone?

The nature of war is changing, and its impact on civilians is growing. Graça Machel's 1996 United Nations report Impact of Armed Conflict on Children underlines the severity of the problem: "Civilian fatalities in wartime have climbed from 5% at the turn of the century … to more than 90% in the wars of the 1990s." The report details deliberate targeting of civilians and rape and torture as systemic policies of war – policies from which children are seldom spared.

Concy Abanya is a 14-year-old girl who was abducted in northern Uganda and taken to Sudan by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a Sudanese-backed Ugandan rebel group comprised mainly of Ugandan children (some aged 12 or younger). "In Sudan we were distributed to men, and I was given to a man who had just killed his woman. I was not given a gun, but I helped in the abductions and grabbing of food from villagers. Girls who refused to become LRA wives were killed in front of us as a warning to the rest of us." (child-soldiers.org)

In the Machel report, a Honduran girl states: "At the age of 13, I joined the student movement. I had a dream to contribute to make things change … later I joined the armed struggle … I found out that girls were obliged to have sexual relations 'to alleviate the sadness of the combatants.'" These stories illustrate a key aspect of the girls' situations: whereas boys are more often soldiers, girls tend to have varied and overlapping roles. As McKay says, "They [the girls] might be cooks or porters; they might fight some of the time; they may be engaged as 'wives' for the boys or as rewards for valor in fighting." They might also be used for suicide missions or as mine sweepers, spies, enforcers of punishment against others, or abductors of other children.

Picking up the Pieces

For girls who have been at war, the end of hostilities does not mean the end of suffering. Sometimes this is because the girls have been "given" to traditional leaders and chiefs to secure their loyalty, and their "owners" are unwilling to identify the girls and release them.

However, McKay says that the most profound long-term effects stem from the fact that virtually all of the girls have been repeatedly sexually assaulted. Many become mothers under combat conditions, when they are barely out of childhood themselves. McKay finds this issue especially worrisome. "I ask how they are able to breast-feed and care for their babies while attached to a fighting group," she says, then pauses. "A lot of times, they can't. The babies die." And, as Physicians for Human Rights reports, if the children live, they may be branded "undesired," "children of hate," "rebel babies," or "children of bad memories."

The focus of McKay's research is on how to reintegrate war-affected children into their communities. "Girls and boys have terribly traumatic experiences which make reconciliation and reintegration extraordinarily difficult on a psychological level," McKay says. "There is a lot of interest in using community-based approaches and rituals, but again, we know more about the rituals for boys than those for girls."

The girls frequently suffer from serious reproductive health problems and STDs as a result of their experiences, and in the aftermath of continued sexual assault experience shock, loss of dignity, shame, low self-esteem, poor concentration and memory, persistent nightmares, depression, and other post-traumatic stress effects. McKay asks: "What can be done to ease that trauma? Will these girls be allowed to marry? Can they have children? Or are they going to be outcasts and survive only by becoming prostitutes?"

McKay finds it difficult to resist the urge to care individually for each girl she meets. "There are too many who need help," she says. Fortunately, relief groups have begun working with the girls, providing medical assistance, counseling, education, and vocational training. But McKay, a firm believer in the efficacy of community initiatives, stresses, "Bringing in our Western ways is not nearly as appropriate as using our resources to help them do what they already know how to do … but cannot do because they don't have the resources." Local healers, for example, know firsthand the effects that wars have had on girls and also know the rituals and remedies needed to help the girls to reintegrate.

Although international aid and grassroots sources address the girls' immediate needs, McKay feels that real change must reach, then go beyond, the individual. "It isn't enough to focus on what you're doing for that one person. If you're not changing the system, you're not really accomplishing very much. You have to approach it on both levels." McKay's aim is to reach a broader audience by documenting the effect war zones have on girls. When their research is complete, McKay and Mazurana will present their findings and make recommendations to the Canadian International Development Agency and other international groups.

The mother of two daughters, McKay is passionate about her work. "Too often, girls at war are forgotten or lost in circumstances of poverty, social isolation, and psychological distress. But as future mothers and caregivers, their well-being has a critical impact on the overall health of their nations and the world in general." With this in mind, McKay strives to end the frequent indifference she sees in international politics. "Oil becomes more important, or diamonds become more important, whereas the 'people resources' seem expendable."

How are girls brought into conflict situations?

According to McKay and Mazurana, girls are brought into conflicts in several ways. Often, they have a parent, boyfriend, or husband who encourages or forces their participation in an armed group. Some are given to armed forces or opposition groups by a parent as payment of "tax," and others are orphaned girls who are abducted or gang-pressed. Sometimes, girls join voluntarily for protection, to gain access to food, shelter, or clothing, to obtain an income, or to further their government, political, or military careers. Finally, they may join in response to state violence against their families or communities. (Background Papers, International Conference on War-Affected Children, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Sept. 2000)

For more information on the effects of war on children, see:

• Graça Machel's Impact of Armed Conflict on Children

• Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers

• Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)

• Rights & Democracy

• Human Rights Watch

• Physicians for Human Rights