Victims and Perpetrators: A Clinician’s Account of Ex-child Soldiers and the Child Development Process in Sri Lanka

Given the pervasiveness of political violence and terrorism in certain geographic regions, it is reasonable to consider the impact of the violence as all-encompassing and therefore as a feature of child development in those communities. Growing up in an environment of perceived and actual violence is an unfortunate element of child development for large segments of the population existing in conflict zones. Apart from the children who witness, directly experience or silently incorporate the direct or intergenerational transmission of political violence, the complex experiences of another subgroup of children also need to be understood — child soldiers. As both victims and controversially termed ‘perpetrators’ of political violence, these children navigate the treacherous moral highway between child and adult notions of innocence, abduction, agency and culpability.