Conferences

“Children born of war” are children who have been fathered by members of occupational or peacekeeping forces and local women. Although it may be assumed that such children are born in every war and conflict that has taken place throughout the history of mankind, only little research on this topic exists. Knowledge available indicates that these children have often been exposed to discrimination and stigmatisations in their families, communities and societies, though. From the methodological perspective this research field comprises several challenges. Firstly, no theoretical model has been developed yet, which includes all aspects relevant to the analysis of children born of war. So far theories and explanations from other research fields have been used to analyse social, psychological, medical, juridical etc. aspects of this particular group. Secondly, it is rather difficult to obtain data as children born of war often belong to the hidden and marginalised population groups. Thus, an estimation of the population size of this group is difficult and representative samples thus difficult to achieve. In addition, the topic is very sensitive. This implies that in the process of acquiring knowledge on the dimension of the ‘problem’ researchers have to be careful not to uncover mothers and children thereby increasing their stigmatisation and discrimination in family and society. In this presentation a general overview of the state of the art will be given and suggestions for a methodological approach which facilitates the analysis and comparison of children born of war across time and space will be elaborated.