Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76Plough Quarterly • Summer 2015 25 Fourteen-year-old Hassan’s question caught me off-guard. It was early in Syria’s civil war, and I was talking with refugee children on the Syria-Lebanon border, hoping to discern their needs. I thought I knew what I’d hear about: long bread queues, dirty drinking water, fear of shells landing on your home perhaps, the occasional story of loss. . . . But nothing prepared me for what I heard. In the maelstrom of war, violence is meted out by adults – but children get hurt. International law bans recruitment of children in armed conflict. Yet worldwide, up to 300,000 children are used. Some are forced to fight, lay mines, or carry weapons. Others become spies or messengers. Children may be captured and imprisoned if suspected – or if parents are thought likely to pay for their release. Those not directly involved suffer too, because the health infrastructure is an early casualty in any war. Hospitals tend to focus on Over the last seven years, Cat Carter’s work with Save the Children, the international relief organiza- tion, has taken her to Haiti, Indonesia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and the Philippines. Recently she has been recording the stories of children in Syria, South Sudan, Gaza, and eastern Ukraine. She lives and blogs in London. www.savethechildren.org Hassan, age fourteen, lives with his parents and brothers in a single tent in the Za’atari camp in Jordan. Sixty-five percent of the camp residents are children. Photograph by Jonathan Hyams / Save the Children