Putting Children at the Center of International Justice

Putting Children at the Center of International Justice

Why Child-Sensitive Investigations Matter in Conflict Settings

Tahir Ali Shah

In conflicts across the world, children are often the most deeply affected and the least meaningfully heard. They are killed, displaced, recruited, abused, separated from their families, and exposed to violence that reshapes their lives long after the fighting stops. Yet when international justice mechanisms are activated through investigations, fact-finding missions, or accountability processes, children’s experiences are still too often treated as peripheral rather than central. This gap weakens justice itself. If international justice is to be credible, effective, and survivor-centred, it must place children at the heart of its work, not as an afterthought, but as rights-holders whose experiences reveal the true scale and nature of international crimes.

International law clearly recognizes children as rights-holders. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, international humanitarian law, and international criminal law all affirm that crimes committed against children during conflict are serious violations, not incidental consequences of war. Forced recruitment, sexual violence, attacks on schools, unlawful detention, forced displacement, and the killing or maiming of children are not only moral failures but prosecutable crimes. Despite this legal clarity, justice processes often struggle to operationalize a child-sensitive approach. Investigations are frequently designed with adults in mind, using methods, timelines, and assumptions that do not reflect children’s realities. As a result, vital evidence is missed, children are exposed to harm, and accountability efforts remain incomplete.

Treating children primarily as “vulnerable victims” can also be misleading. While children clearly require heightened protection, framing them only through vulnerability risks overlooking their agency, knowledge, and lived experience. Children witness crimes in places adults may not access: homes, schools, detention facilities, recruitment sites, and informal checkpoints. They observe patterns of abuse, coercion, and fear that reveal how violence operates at a community level. When investigations are conducted safely and ethically, children’s accounts can significantly strengthen findings related to patterns, intent, and impact. A child-sensitive approach, therefore, does not dilute justice standards; it improves the quality and depth of justice outcomes.

At the same time, engaging with children in justice processes requires care, skill, and restraint. Poorly designed interviews, repeated questioning, or exposure to unfamiliar and intimidating processes can retraumatize children and undermine their well-being. Ethical failures in this area not only harm individuals but also damage the legitimacy of justice mechanisms. Communities quickly lose trust when they see children harmed in the name of accountability. Conversely, when children are treated with dignity and care, communities are more willing to engage, share information, and support truth-seeking processes. Trust, once lost, is extremely difficult to rebuild, particularly in fragile or post-conflict environments.

A genuinely child-sensitive approach must therefore run through every stage of an investigation. It begins at the planning stage, where teams assess whether children are likely to be affected in a given context and what types of crimes may involve them directly or indirectly. It requires asking whether the right expertise is available and whether child-specific risks have been identified and mitigated. During implementation, it means adapting procedures to children’s needs rather than forcing children to adapt to rigid systems. This includes decisions about who conducts interviews, where and how interviews take place, how consent is obtained, and how information is recorded and stored. At the reporting stage, it involves careful decisions about language, confidentiality, and the long-term consequences of public findings for children and their families.

Importantly, child-sensitivity should not be reduced to a narrow focus on sexual violence alone. While sexual violence against children is a grave and widespread crime, children are also profoundly affected by killings, starvation, denial of education, destruction of civilian infrastructure, arbitrary detention, and forced displacement. A justice process that captures only one dimension of harm risks presenting a distorted picture of conflict. Children’s experiences cut across multiple violations and can illuminate how different crimes intersect and reinforce each other. Recognizing this complexity is essential for meaningful accountability.

Specialized expertise plays a critical role in translating child-rights commitments into practice. Child rights advisors, child-focused investigators, psychologists, and legal experts with experience in juvenile justice bring skills that most investigation teams do not possess by default. Their presence helps teams avoid common mistakes, such as using inappropriate questioning techniques, failing to recognize signs of distress, or overlooking the need for referrals to support services. These experts also contribute to the development of child-sensitive terms of reference, investigation methodologies, and risk assessments. In doing so, they support not only children, but entire investigation teams, many of whom are eager to work ethically but lack the necessary tools.

One of the most difficult challenges in international justice is balancing the need to gather evidence with the obligation to protect victims and witnesses. This tension is particularly acute when children are involved. A child-sensitive approach does not mean avoiding engagement with children altogether, nor does it mean prioritizing protection to the extent that children’s voices are erased. Instead, it requires careful judgment about necessity and proportionality. In some cases, documentary evidence, medical records, school data, or adult testimonies may reduce the need for direct engagement with children. When engagement is necessary, it must be conducted by trained professionals, with clear safeguards, informed consent, and access to follow-up support. Justice should never come at the expense of a child’s well-being, but excluding children entirely can also constitute a form of injustice.

Recent investigations in contexts such as Ukraine and parts of the Middle East have highlighted both progress and persistent gaps in this area. There is increasing recognition of crimes affecting children, including the forced transfer of children, attacks on education, and denial of humanitarian access. At the same time, coordination between justice actors and child protection systems remains uneven, and child-specific expertise is still not systematically embedded in all investigations. These experiences show that child-sensitive justice cannot be improvised after a mission has begun. It must be integrated into rapid response mechanisms, deployment frameworks, and partnerships from the outset.

Moving from stated commitment to consistent practice requires sustained effort. It involves investing in training, developing practical guidance, and creating spaces where practitioners can share lessons learned. It also requires organizational leadership that treats child rights as a core element of justice, rather than a thematic add-on. Above all, it requires listening to children themselves, to survivors, and to practitioners working in difficult field conditions who understand both the possibilities and limits of justice processes.

International justice ultimately seeks to restore dignity, acknowledge harm, and prevent future violations. These goals cannot be achieved if children are sidelined or harmed by the very processes meant to protect them. Placing children at the center of international justice strengthens accountability, improves the quality of evidence, and reinforces the ethical foundations on which justice depends. As conflicts continue to shape the lives of millions of children worldwide, the challenge is no longer whether justice mechanisms should be child-sensitive, but whether they are prepared to adapt quickly and seriously enough to meet that responsibility.

The author has worked for more than three decades in humanitarian and development contexts across conflict and crisis-affected settings, with experience in senior leadership, program management, and advisory roles. tshaha@gmail.com