Fouzi Nagi
War and Children
Throughout history war has always been one of the most devastating issue many people and children across the world experience.War has divided many countries, separated many families, demolished many houses, killed many lives, impacted the lives of many children, and more importantly war has destroyed many hopes and dreams for children.The play “Anon(ymous)” by Naomi Iizuka is an excellent play that discusses how war impacts people ,especially children.The play is about Anon, a young refugee who has been separated from his mother and faces many obstacles along the way to find his mother and to adapt to the United States.War can be very destructive and violent, “Where I come from bombs rained down from the sky night after night and boys wandered the streets with M16S”(Iizuka 2).No child in the world should ever grow up hearing bomb blasts or carry weapons at a such very young age because events like this can cause health damages to young children both mentally and physically.
Millions of children lose their families under wars, “War affects children in many of the same ways that it affects adults. There are, nonetheless, specific effects on children. Firstly, children’s access to the care, empathy, and attention of adults who love them is often restricted or non-existent. In times of war, the loss of parents, the separation from parents, the parents’ extreme preoccupation with protecting and finding subsistence for the family, and the emotional unavailability of depressed or distracted parents lead to significant and frequent disruption in their attachments”(Impact of War 11).Loss of family can be very unimaginable on children and sadly many millions of children loss their love once or get separated from them under armed conflicts,“You dream the face of the one person you love.And that person, that person becomes like home. Their eyes.Their skin. Their voice, the sound of their voice. And so you dream about that person” (Iizuka 2).In this case, many of children grow up in orphanages, lose hope and become isolated.Life can be very challenging to children who loss their families at young age.They’re forced to be independent, survive harsh conditions, live in fear, and in some cases they will do the impossible to provide for their siblings.
Another way that children are affected by war is by trauma,” Traumatic events can be placed on a continuum based on the degree to which a child is exposed directly to extremely frightening and prolonged stressors that carry long-term impact on personal well being or access to social supports. The most extreme traumas involve high degrees of threat, targeted directly at the child over long periods of time, that produce a loss of social supports” (Pine, Costello and Masten 3). Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be a serious and long-lasting injury in children. Violence, loss and not known what’s going around them can cause them to develop a state of anxiety and depression.Many children lose their social life and they lose sense of who they are.Children exposure to trauma influence them to grow up with psychological problems and long lasting mental issues that would make them feel apart of the world.
Loss of hope and future is also another brutal result of armed conflicts. Millions of children all around the world are experiencing great stress and loss of hope in life.Many children around the world grow up in safe environment go to schools, play sports, and live in homes. But it’s not the same for the children in Syria.Children in Syria are living in a devastating environment and experiencing very tough life. For an example, we can see this issue in what is happening today in Syria, “ since the Syrian civil war began in 2011, over 400.000 Syria have been killed, 4.8 million Syrians have fled the country, about 50% of Syria’s major cities have been destroyed, and innocent children suffer the most”(Syrians Brutal Civil War).The life in a dangerous environment is not always easy for children and living in a country with half of the cities in the country demolished can destroy many hopes and dreams for the younger generation, a Syrian child says “I’m not scared of anything anymore, there’s no need to be scared of anything because there’s nothing left in our lives”(Syrians Brutal Civil War). Being this weak and hopeless at a such young is not fair and children shouldn’t be the victims of armed conflicts.There shouldn’t be any child in the world going through what Syrian children are going through or live in any of their situations.
As we can see, armed conflicts are destroying many countries and more importantly young innocent lives.Wars are destroying many children’s dreams and hopes, wars are also leaving a permanent damage to the health of millions of children around the world.The play “Anon(ymous)”, the articles of “The Effects of War and Terrorism on Children” and “The impacts and effects of war on children”, and the Youtube video “Syrians Brutal Civil War” provided very important information and explained the major negative impact of wars on children.It’s a shame that people are still fighting wars and killing each over political and religious conflicts.It also sickening that the victims of wars are usually the people and innocent children.Therefore, people need to think about the outcome and the innocent lives that would have to be sacrificed under these shameful wars.
Work Cited
Iizuka, Naomi. “Anon(ymous).” American Theatre , Feb. 2007.
Pine, Daniel., Costello, Jane., and Masten,Ann. “Trauma, Proximity, and Developmental Psychopathology: The Effects of War and Terrorism on Children.” Neuropsychopharmacology, vol. 30, no. 10, 2005, pp. 1781–1792.
“The Impact and Effects of War on Children.” UNHCR, Apr. 2008, pp. 11–13.
“Syrians Brutal Civil War – The Effects of War on Children [Short Film].” Youtube, Arucanari // ShortFilms, 7 Dec. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5uSUk-1-h0&t=305s.
Reflective Artist’s Statement
This research essay was a great assignment that me and other students can learn from.I got to learn more on my topic which was “ the impact of war on children”, I learned the different ways children can be affected. They can be affected both mentally and physically, they can lose hopes and dreams, loss trust, and have trauma.The essay also helped me improve at researching and finding the right resources for the assignment. I also got to learn to compare and contrast different resources. Lastly, this research essay helped me learned that a research paper isn’t as easy as a regular essay and therefore I will not do it all at once in the last minute.This research essay can be helpful in the future, it could help me to do a better and a longer paper in the future.It will also help find the right resources faster.The research that I completed helped me analyze the play “Anon(ymous)” even further. It allowed me to go further in details to break down one the themes of the play which which was war and its impact on children.The research also helped me connect four different resources to the play which was interesting to focus more on the play.I believe that I could have pushed my analysis even further by looking at more different resources and these resources could have contained more information than my resources.I could have also spent more time doing this essay and that would have pushed it further.The rhetorical choices that I took were writing about children than adults because children are more vulnerable than adults. I also talked about the important damages on health instead of economy impacts and I belive that made the paper more interesting.The process of peer reviewing helped me to go even further in my research paper, it helped correct some of the mistakes I did in the pre-draft, and this process helped me come up with new ideas I didn’t think of.Me and my partners can conduct our peer review differently next time by bringing in more work because most of didn’t bring a lot of work, and we can also be more honest and not afraid to point out or stating opinions.For the future I will write about topics that most people around can relate to and I will spend more time on the paper to grab the reader’s interest and attention.
