Time and place for the trial lecture
25th of September 10:15am-11:00am in Gamle festsal.
The title for the trial lecture will be: How can the lived experiences of children born of war be recognised beyond narratives of victimhood, and to what extent can recognition theory and its critiques help us understand the role of care, belonging, and the capacities of mothers, families, communities, and legal and social institutions in providing recognition?
The trial lecture and the disputation can also be followed by zoom.
Adjudication committee
- Professor Anette Bringedal Houge, University of Oslo (leader)
- Professor Luke Moffett, Queen’s University, Belfast (first opponent)
- Associate Professor Sanna Mustasaari, University of Eastern Finland (second opponent)
Chair of defence
Vice dean Maria Astrup Hjort
Supervisors
- Professor Peter Scharff Smith
- Professor Kjersti Lohne
- Professor Ingvill Constanze Ødegaard
Summary
Thousands of children are born into war every year. Some of them are even closer to the conflict than others: They come into being when a soldier or member of an armed group on the opposing side, has a child with a local civilian, usually a woman, in the midst of an armed conflict. In research, they are referred to as children born of war (CBOW). These children have one parent on the ‘enemy’ side and one parent rooted in the local community.
This thesis explores legal and personal narratives on and by this understudied group. By analysing legal sources and life stories, it examines how children born of war are understood, described and recognised, and how war leaves traces across their entire life course.
The project contributes to scholarship on CBOW as well as to broader debates on gender, victimhood, sexual violence and the limits of international criminal justice. As CBOW are increasingly emerging as legal subjects in international and national law, this detailed account of their recognition makes valuable theoretical and practical contributions.
Threats or victims?
Throughout history, CBOW have been faced with a dominant narrative positioning them as threats. This narrative is present in many places where CBOW live, including in the case studies chosen for this study: Germany and Norway, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The narrative of CBOW as threats is evident in phrases such as ‘children of the enemy’ which position them as outsiders and as a potential danger to local or national collectives. Consequently, many CBOW face discrimination and social exclusion growing up. In more recent history, a new narrative of CBOW as victims has emerged, partly advocated for by CBOW themselves.
Overall, the opposing narratives of CBOW as threats and victims and how this has shaped their recognition – in law and beyond – is the central topic of this thesis, as reflected in the main research question: How have narratives of (legal) (non-)recognition of CBOW evolved and how can the perspectives of CBOW inform approaches to their recognition? This question is addressed in reference to legal sources, documents and interview materials in a combination of legal and narrative analysis.
National variations
The trajectories of recognition for CBOW vary significantly across countries. CBOW in Norway and BiH have collectively advocated for legal recognition, albeit not always with satisfactory results. In Germany, CBOW have not engaged in collective efforts for legal recognition, but for other forms of visibility and public acknowledgement.
In the DRC, CBOW have not mobilised for legal recognition either, but they have received it. CBOW in the DRC were declared victims of international crimes for the first time in international legal history, by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2021. This was followed by another ICC decision in 2024, which recognised Ugandan CBOW as victims of international crimes. International criminal justice is where recognition for CBOW has most prominently been taking place in recent years. For that reason, this thesis contains legal analyses of international criminal law with regard to CBOW, combined with qualitative analyses of interview and documentary materials from the mentioned case studies.
Risks of recognition and the need for narrative nuance
The analysis of legal sources in this thesis shows how courts can reproduce stigma even while aiming to recognise harm, for example by having constructed CBOW as “victims of their own conception”. This is flagging the risks of recognition: legal visibility can be empowering, but it can also distort the subject it seeks to protect. To prevent such distortion, the findings indicate that legally relevant harm suffered by CBOW needs to be better understood.
This claim is pursued through the analysis of interview materials from CBOW born in the context of World War II in Germany and Norway as well as in the 1990s in Bosnia. These materials provide a rich account on the lived realities of multiple generations of CBOW and introduce narrative nuance to the understanding of harm and blame as experienced by CBOW themselves. The interviewed CBOW break with stereotypes and portray the life-long complexity of being raised a child whose identity is divided across conflict lines.
Overall, the thesis proposes a victim-centred socio-legal account of CBOW. This approach helps address theoretical, empirical and practical ‘puzzles’ and research gaps in the existing literature on CBOW. These contributions are relevant and timely as the recognition of CBOW is an increasingly emerging issue in legal practice and in scholarship.
This thesis was conducted as part of the EuroWARCHILD project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and led by Professor Inger Skjelsbæk. See www.eurowarchild.org