This volume presents research from an international, interdisciplinary, and intersectoral research project in which 15 doctoral researchers explored a range of issues related to the life-course experiences of children born of war in 20th-century conflicts. Children Born of War (CBOW), children fathered by foreign soldiers and born to local mothers during and after armed conflicts, have long been neglected in the research of the social consequences of war. Based on research projects completed under the auspices of the Horizon2020-funded international and interdisciplinary research and training network CHIBOW (www.chibow.org), this book examines the psychological and social impact of war on these children. It focusses on three separate but interrelated themes: firstly, it explores methodological and ethical issues related to research with war-affected populations in general and children born of war in particular. Secondly, it presents innovative historical research focussing specifically on geopolitical areas that have hitherto been unexplored; and thirdly, it addresses, from a psychological and psychiatric perspective, the challenges faced by children born of war in post-conflict communities, including stigmatisation, discrimination, within the significant context of identity formation when faced with contested memories of volatile post-war experiences. The book offers an insight into the social consequences of war for those children associated with the ‘enemy’ by virtue of their direct biological link.

'Born of War' examines the human rights of children born of wartime rape and sexual exploitation in worldwide conflict zones. Detailing the impacts of armed conflict on these children's survival, protection and membership rights, the text suggests that these children constitute a particularly vulnerable category in conflict zones.

"Excellent, well-documented, thoughtful, and comprehensive, Forgetting Children Born of War challenges the prevailing discourse on human rights and humanitarian intervention."-ALISON BRYSK, University of California, Irvine.

Donna Seto investigates why children born of wartime sexual violence are rarely included in post-conflict processes of reconciliation and recovery. The focus on children born of wartime sexual violence questions the framework of understanding war and recognizes that certain individuals are often forgotten or neglected. This book considers how children are neglected sites for the reproduction of global norms. It approaches this topic through an interdisciplinary perspective that questions how silence surrounding the issue of wartime sexual violence has prevented justice for children born of war from being achieved. In considering this, Seto examines how the theories and practices of mainstream International Relations (IR) can silence the experiences of war rape survivors and children born of wartime sexual violence and explores the theoretical frameworks within IR and the institutional structures that uphold protection regimes for children and women.

The origins of a transnational adoption strategy that secured the future for Korean-black children The Korean War left hundreds of thousands of children in dire circumstances, but the first large-scale transnational adoption efforts involved the children of American soldiers and Korean women. Korean laws and traditions stipulated that citizenship and status passed from father to child, which made the children of US soldiers legally stateless. Korean-black children faced additional hardships because of Korean beliefs about racial purity, and the segregation that structured African American soldiers’ lives in the military and throughout US society. The African American families who tried to adopt Korean-black children also faced and challenged discrimination in the child welfare agencies that arranged adoptions. Drawing on extensive research in black newspapers and magazines, interviews with African American soldiers, and case notes about African American adoptive families, A War Born Family demonstrates how the Cold War and the struggle for civil rights led child welfare agencies to reevaluate African American men and women as suitable adoptive parents, advancing the cause of Korean transnational adoption.

Born to War is intended to, through my eyes as a Berlin child, point out how easily freedom can be lost, and the pain and suffering required to regain that lost freedom. It's a message that war does not distinguish between guilt and innocence. The pain and suffering of war is ladled out equally to all in its path. Ours was a constant struggle for survival, for food, water, and warmth, the bare necessities of life. For many months we lived above ground when possible, and below ground when necessary, as hundreds of Allied aircraft dropped bombs on the city both day and night. Fear and fury were my reality during the many hours spent in the musty and uncomfortable bomb shelter. I had not even the luxury of hope for better times, for I had no concept of better times. I knew only war, and the suffering and misery that it brought. The war would end, but misery lasted long after. And death was to remain a constant companion to Berliners due to starvation, hypothermia, suicide and other war-related circumstances. I lost many people dear to me during and in the wake of WWII. Yet I was one of the lucky children born to war who survived. And I survived largely due to the love and care of "Oma," my grandmother, to whom this work is mainly dedicated. It remains very difficult for me to imagine the anguish she must have suffered in that terrible period.

This book recounts a little-known history of an estimated 2,000 children born to black GIs and white British women in World War II. Stories from over 50 of these children, alongside many photographs, reveal the racism and stigma of growing up in what was then a very white country.