Children's Exposure to Violence

Abstract Despite ever-growing calls for peace and the proliferation of peacekeeping initiatives, many areas in the world continue to be violent environments in which children develop, often struggling to survive amid frightening conditions and destruction. Wars, terrorism, social conflicts, and political violence are man-made disasters. Perhaps one of the most tragic consequences of modern warfare is that present global conflicts are mostly prosecuted as a prolonged series of violent events by irregular forces and within civilian cities and communities. This implies that the horrors of war extend beyond traditional battlefields to places where children live, implicating them both as direct and indirect victims.