Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann has published, in the century-old, peer-reviewed international law journal of the U.S. Naval War College, an article analyzed international child law in order to imagine ways that peace processes may engage with children and ensure that children’s issues are addressed in future peace agreements.

Entitled “International Child Law and the Settlement of Ukraine-Russia and Other Conflicts,” the article appears at 99 International Law Studies 559-601 (2022) and is available here.

Amann, who is Regents’ Professor of International Law, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and Faculty Co-Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center here at the University of Georgia School of Law, she served from 2012 to 2021 as the Special Adviser to the International Criminal Court Prosecutor on Children in & affected by Armed Conflict.

She undertook research on this topic while a Visiting Academic at University College London this past summer. An earlier version of her research forms part of the Ukraine Peace Settlement Project of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. (prior post)

Here’s the abstract for Amann’s just-published article:

The Ukraine-Russia conflict has wreaked disproportionate harms upon children. Hundreds reportedly were killed or wounded within the opening months of the conflict, thousands lost loved ones, and millions left their homes, their schools, and their communities. Yet public discussions of how to settle the conflict contain very little at all about children. This article seeks to change that dynamic. It builds on a relatively recent trend, one that situates human rights within the structure of peace negotiations, to push for particularized treatment of children’s experiences, needs, rights, and capacities in eventual negotiations. The article draws upon twenty-first century projects that examine the lives of children in armed conflict by synthesizing international child law. The projects’ syntheses have influenced the work of certain international organizations bodies but not, to date, the work of peace settlements.

To demonstrate their relevance to conflict resolution, the article first outlines two syntheses by the United Nations and by the International Criminal Court Office of the Prosecutor. After mapping child rights and conflict harms, it examines the treatment of children in Colombia’s 2016 peace agreement and a 1999 agreement related to Sierra Leone. The article concludes by proposing child-inclusive options for peace processes and eventual peace agreements.