Jean C. Ortiz Calderón INGL 3012 ME5 May 18th, 2012

The war orphans

The planet has been sundered over the years of our existence by the most horrible and

despicable, and only human act: war. The war itself is the most traumatic event in the course of

our history yet; it can shatter families, scar the lands, and most importantly mark the children.

The war orphans are the children left parentless, of that have lost their fathers, or their

mothers, or maybe even their siblings. The children of any country are their future, and the war

scarred countries can rise up again if the children manage to overcome the traumas of war. The

war orphans, including the child soldiers, should not be prosecuted for their war crimes.

Most war orphans skip what we know as

adolescence, the stage in which most of the children develop their psychosocial skills. The

psychological studies (Daniel S Pine, Jane Costello, Liliana Cortes, and Fionna Klasen, among

many more) have found that the more the children are exposed to the traumatic events the

more aggravating is their psychopathology. The mental illness or disorder is basically redundant

in the post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), these children are often extremely anxious and can

change moods drastically, others develop attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and in the

worst cases psychosocial skills, the tools to manage social relationships and the skills to control

the emotions and personalities. One of the most important parts of the psychosocial

development is the moral reasoning, Lawrence Kholberg arranges the development of

reasoning of what’s right or wrong, the social norms, also law and order during the

adolescence. Elkind, another psychosocial theorist, describes the immature reasoning of the

adolescents: indecisiveness, excessive self-consciousness, the perception of invulnerability and

some others. These two theorists clearly show that the lack of the psychosocial development of

the war orphans interferes with their reasoning and that they are incited to commit the war

crimes.

It has been proven that war orphans and child soldiers if taken out of the traumatic

environment of war can manifest resilience against the traumas. Psychological resilience can be

defined as the ability to bounce back and function adaptively after facing traumatic events.

Most of the war orphans, including child soldiers, have been proven that they can manifest

resilience against their traumas and continue to live a normal life, and even fully develop the

psychosocial skills they weren’t given the opportunity to. “I will be a person who is responsible in

the community; I will be an honest person; I will be a person who helps people. (16-year-old boy, former

child soldier)”; a quotation of the insight of a former child soldier who clearly show signs of resilience.

Some people might argue that war orphans and child soldiers should be prosecuted for

their crimes during war, however, how are the countries supposed to rise up after their wars? It

has been proven the ability of war orphans to overcome their traumas and become full develop

adults without pathological signs. War had its take over every part of the war, be it as old as the

Alexandrian conquest, or as recent as the Iraq occupation of the US, even Europe had its part

on war during the World Wars, even Asia during the Vietnam War. Our society today is the

remnants of the resilient war orphans who were able to overcome their traumas and rose up to

become the man and woman of our society.

The war orphans should not be prosecuted for their war crimes. The society should

provide the tools necessary for the war orphans to experience resilience, which in most cases is

natural and in some other can be incited. We, as a society should help the countries ravaged by

war providing at least understanding and believing that their healing can be achieved.