War’s Toll On Children

I recently came across a video from the European Parliament in Brussels where an interpreter broke down in tears while translating for an 11-year-old Ukrainian boy. She stopped mid-sentence, overwhelmed not by politics, but by the weight of a child’s testimony. The boy, Roman Oleksiv, was injured in a Russian missile strike on a hospital in central Ukraine in 2022. His mother was killed in the attack, and he has since undergone multiple surgeries. What may have silenced the interpreter was not the violence itself, but the fact that it was being voiced by a child who had lived through it.

Children do not choose sides. They do not have the right to vote for leaders, draft policies, or declare wars. And still they are expected to absorb its consequences with a resilience we rarely demand of adults. They learn fear before they learn geography or, even further, geopolitics. They learn to identify the sound of sirens before they learn nursery rhymes. What is described as conflict on the news becomes, for them, a daily struggle with loss, uncertainty, and terror.

What struck me most about that video was not only the boy’s pain, but the fact that even an adult trained to listen could not remain composed. If an interpreter could not emotionally translate his experience, how do we expect a child to live through it? We speak of children as resilient, celebrating their ability to endure, without asking why endurance is required of them at all. Resilience, in this context, becomes less a strength and more a necessity that hides enduring wounds.

When I come across videos of Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, Myanmar, and beyond, I see children growing up in conditions that would be considered unlivable anywhere else. Their schools are destroyed or turned into shelters. Their families are broken by death or displacement. Their childhoods are defined not by play or routine, but by constant fear. Different wars, different languages, but the same years stolen from all their lives.

The most devastating impacts of war on children are also the least visible. Trauma shows up later as anxiety, difficulty trusting, disrupted learning, or an inability to imagine a future without violence. These issues will not end with a ceasefire. When children are left unprotected in war, the harm extends beyond the present, shaping a future marked by psychological and emotional scars.

It’s shameful to see that children’s suffering is often treated as collateral damage, an unfortunate but unavoidable consequence of adult decisions. Images circulate, outrage spikes, donations flow briefly, and then attention moves on. Remember the Gen-Z protests? Some children lose their lives. Some remain. They grow older carrying memories no child should have to hold. Our empathy is momentary; their suffering is incessant.

The inability to fully understand geopolitics does not free us from responsibility. If anything, it should demand more of us. Protecting children cannot be a secondary concern in times of conflict. How well we safeguard children defines the value of our actions and the cost of our inaction.