Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12Plough Quarterly • Summer 2015 9 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 chil- dren 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