Summary

War violates numerous rights of the child – a right to live, a right to be with one’s family and community, a right to health, a right for personal development, and a right to be protected. Many conflicts nowadays last for the duration of an entire childhood, meaning that children experience repetitive and cumulative attacks starting from being born until becoming an adult. Such interruption of social networks and family relations may have a deep physical and psychological impact because in a normal situation, such relationships and networks support the physical, cognitive and social development of a child. When conflicts end in an agreement between the parties, the specific needs of children and child soldiers are rarely addressed. At the same time, an increasing number of international parties participate in peace talks, influencing the parties to pay more attention to the rights and needs of children.

Since conflicts have not disappeared from the international scene, it is important to understand why and how the rights and needs of children should be addressed in peace talks and peace agreements. This article analyses the way the rights and needs of children are being addressed in peace agreements, and views the shortcomings of the approaches used thus far. The first task is to determine the international legal standards in the field and the potential discrepancies of international peace agreements with these standards. The other task is to analyse peace agreements to see to which extent they contain provisions on the rights of children or any other issues regarding children.