Foreword

I remember my first viewing of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. I was of course struck by the shiny marble wall engraved with an apparently interminable list of names of those who died—reminding me of the extent of the tragedy of lives lost in that difficult war. But it was the Three Soldiers statue that stopped me cold. I was struck by their youth, made suddenly acutely aware that most of the almost 60,000 dead listed on the wall were just this young—really, just barely out of childhood, many of them still teenagers. In this month's issue of CPPAH, Drs Bhutta, Youssafzai, and Zipursky describe the effects of war on children, including both civilians and young soldiers. The impetus for this article was a symposium held during the May 2008 PAS meeting. The authors briefly report on the sessions of the symposium itself and then provide us with a concise but comprehensive review of the literature about the effects of armed conflict on children and youth. Wars are more and more often fought in cities and towns rather than on battlefields, resulting in loss of infrastructure, loss of normal daily routines, injuries and deaths to noncombatants, conscription of children, and even extending to the after-effects of conflict, including millions of unexploded landmines. The authors conclude their review on an optimistic note, with suggestions for ways to ameliorate the inevitable damage to children's lives from armed conflict. Sadly, this is a topic that is relevant to us all, as much as we might wish it were not.