Chapter 15 authors: Daniel J. Christie, Catherine Panter-Brick, Jere R. Behrman, James R. Cochrane, Andrew Dawes, Kirstin Goth, Jacqueline Hayden, Ann S. Masten, Ilham Nasser, Raija-Leena Punamaki, and Mark Tomlinson

Introduction

Healthy human development lays foundation for development of peaceful children. In this context, the term peaceful refers to a nonviolent pursuit of socially just arrangements between individuals and groups. Peaceful children can be observed through prosocial behavior as well as capacity for empathy, respect for others, commitment to fairness and trust in relationships with other individuals and groups. Prosocial behavior includes the ability to form secure attachments, engage in self-regulation, stable social identity, exercise agency as well as well-honed social skills, and the capacity to reason and communicate.

Pathways to peace varies with geohistorical contexts. In unfair conditions that pose a risk to child development, the primary task is mitigation of structural violence, a more equitable structural arrangement in access to resources. In cases of direct violence, interventions should create social environments that restore peace in and around the child.

Peace and Violence / Direct and Structural Violence

Peace means addressing both direct and structural violence. Annually, there are 14-18 million deaths due to structural violence of hunger, unsanitary water, or lack of access to medical care. One way to think about structural violence is the number of deaths that could be avoided if human needs were satisfied equitably. On a global scale, structural violence can occur through social inequalities that marginalize, devalue and discriminate based on identity, economic inequalities that distribute assets and opportunities unequally, political inequalities that deprive people of representation in matters affecting their well-being, and spatial inequality in which geographic location can make it less likely that people will have access to goods and services.

Healthy Human Development: Barriers

There are a variety of political and socioeconomic sources that shape social equity in terms of opportunities to enhance the wellbeing of a child. For example, if potable water is not available, there is an increased risk of infection. The mental health of the caregiver is also is very important and directly impacts the child. Maternal depression is associated with infant growth and negatively impacts early interaction, child care, and parenting practices.

Poor self regulation abilities in years prior to school threaten sound cognitive, language, and socioemotional development. Poor self regulation may be result of neglect and harsh parenting, limited stimulation of development capacities. Foundational skills are important for prosocial behavior,and later peaceful children, and depend on brain development and other healthy development aspects which can be compromised by inadequate nutrition, poor caregiving, exposure to toxic substances, and lack of learning opportunities. Exposure to neurotoxins prenatally as well as maternal malnutrition, stress, and trauma is linked to alterations in a child’s developing neurological systems which important for later self-regulation and functions related to prosocial behavior. The first thousand days are particularly sensitive. There are recent links that have been established, acknowledging the relationship between stunting and externalizing behavior. The studies postulate a relationship between malnutrition and violent conduct, which in turn impacts the performance of a child in school, causing them to be more likely to drop out and engage in interpersonal violence. As time goes by, difficulties grow because they build on each other for young children. Barriers to the implementation of comprehensive family-based strategies include lack of funding, resources concentrated in urban areas, and lack of adequately trained and supervised workers.

Catalysts

Strategic interventions can be designed to initiate positive cascades, and when interventions well-timed and targeted, they are can be lasting and spreading effects associated with high return on investment. Promotion of maternal health is a priority for positive cascades. This includes nutrition, reducing the intake of substances during pregnancy, and mental health, particularly perinatal depression. Formal preschool education or home and community based initiatives for at risk children have long-term positive outcomes through adulthood on to the next generation in both high and low income countries. The effectiveness of such programs to promote healthy human development depends on the alignment of actions, vertically and simultaneously, through multiple levels of social systems, building on deep values, goals, assets, and institutions already present in the community.

Case Study 1: The Philani Project in Khaykelitsha, South Africa

Specially trained “mentor mothers” from the community visit vulnerable pregnant mothers, infants, and children to ensure that they gain access to health services, reduce or eliminate alcohol consumption during pregnancy, improve nutrition for mothers and babies, prepare for the baby’s arrival, learn about breast-feeding options and effective parenting techniques, and care for mother’s own physical and mental health. Mothers who received this intervention were less likely to engage in hazardous drinking during pregnancy, less likely to have low birth weight infant, more likely to breastfeed longer and to breastfeed exclusively for six months, and were more likely to adhere to complete protocol to prevent MTC transmission. In addition, their infants had fewer episodes of diarrhea and require fewer clinic visits, their children at 18 months were less likely to be malnourished, and children of antenatally depressed mothers who got the intervention, became more likely to have better growth and cognitive development at 6 and 18 months.

Case Study 2: Progresa / Oportunidades in Mexico

Progresa provides cash transfers to mothers that are eligible on the basis of a proxy poverty index, conditional on “co-responsibilities” such as attending regular information and check-up sessions at health clinics and 85% school attendance rate for children. The program had two important features, monitoring and evaluation was central component, using random assignment for those receiving the program benefits and a baseline and periodic follow-up where longitudinal data was collected. The second important feature, the “buy in”, was critical at various levels. The Mexican Congress maintained and expanded the program, and because of credible evidence of program effectiveness, the program accepted and extended with change of leadership in 2000. The outcomes of this program included positive effects on child schooling and health and on adults, high benefit-cost ratios, and the expansion to cover over 30 million poor Mexicans, newly adapted in over 30 countries.

From Healthy to Peaceful Human Development: Levels of Analysis

The unit of analysis is the individual child, who is embedded in multiple ecologies and networks of influence. At the most distal level, international and societal-level structures along with associated norms collective narratives, reduce direct and structural violence while promoting relational harmony and equitable well-being. At the more proximal level, prevention and promotion takes place within the community and the family, and finally at the individual level, actions are aimed at the prevention of direct and structural violence and the promotion of nonviolence and social justice. All of these networks of influence are interdependent and interactive, individuals and groups influence distal processes and the macrosystem influences the individual and groups.

Social Ecologies and the Peaceful Child

Structural violence undergirds direct forms of violence, while direct violence contributes to structural violence. The percentage of global poverty concentrated in fragile states has grown considerably in recent years and is expected to exceed 50% by 2014. Sustainable peace requires a systems approach that addresses both direct and structural violence, and focusing on direct violence only leaves the open possibility of maintaining “peace” through coercive means.

How Do We Conceptualize Peaceful Children?

“Peaceful children are healthy, self-regulated children who have a sense of identity, agency, social skills, the capacity to reason and communicate, as well as the capacity to form trusting relationships with other individuals and groups” (286). Children are both the product and producer of the social ecologies in which they are embedded, and a child’s peacebuilding ability allows them to engage in mutually beneficial and harmonious relationships.

Harmonious Relations and the Role of Conflict Resolution

Conflict is primarily a cognitive and affective experience, ubiquitous and inevitable in human relations. Managing conflict allows for prevention of direct violence and a popular conflict management technique involves encouraging opposite parties to understand their interests and work toward a mutually beneficial outcome. The principle of empathy is a key method in this approach. In the occurrence of cognitive empathy, children can effectively comprehend a distressing situation experienced by someone else, recognize their emotional state, and assume another person’s perspective; focus of programs designed to induce learning and cooperation. During affective empathy, individuals actually experience a vicarious emotional response to someone else’s expressed emotion. In groups of conflict that are brought together, cognitive and affective empathy can play a role in the improvement of intergroup relations and reduction of prejudice.Intergroup contact is positively associated with empathy, while in turn, empathy is negatively associated with prejudice. Children’s perceptions of social norms also influence whether increased contact is associated with more positive attitudes. Forgiveness is a key step in restoration of harmony in relationships. There is a strong correlation between the degree to which one decides to forgive, and the victim’s experience of empathy with an example being the victim accepting an apology from the transgressor and offering their complete and genuine forgiveness.

Case Study 3: Focusing Interventions and Promoting Family “Unity and Harmony” in Afghanistan

Focusing is a technique to teach a culturally grounded technique of “mindfulness.” It is aligned with Sufism and allows perpetrators and victims of violence to reach inner state of safety and calm to rebuild emotional and social lives. This technique is taught to over 400,000 women in small workshops throughout Afghanistan. Strong families and strong cultural values are the main anchor of hope and resilience, as family unity and harmony is a salient value of the Afghan culture. One intervention gave children a voice on the radio to address culture of violence in domestic settings where children clearly distinguished between containment and punishment as acceptable forms of violence. As it can be concluded from these lessons, effective interventions build upon cultural assets. Various techniques to promote safety have been implemented throughout Afghanistan, and even in the most difficult contexts of structural, war-related, and domestic violence, change can be effected when cultural goals are aligned with cultural practices to promote peace at personal, family, and community levels.

Child’s Internalization of a Social Justice Orientation toward “Others”

Peaceful children acquire a commitment to socially just arrangements and take action to promote equitably the well-being of others. Collective agency is very important for this, as the belief in collective action as a means of achieving a range of outcomes including, but not limited to, more socially just arrangements. Newborns are biologically prepared at birth to respond to distress cues of others, and such distress may be a rudimentary form of empathy. Proximal environmental influences such as nurturant and responsive caregivers have been found to play a role in child’s development of empathy and conscience. Empathy is an ideal candidate for a mechanism underlying caring behavior in response to another’s need, distress, or pain. Prosocial behaviors are voluntary actions that benefit others and include helping, cooperation, sharing, caring, donating, comforting, and volunteering. Prosocial actions often mediated by empathy and concern about the welfare and rights of others.

Extending the Scope of Social Justice to Out-group Members

Infants become aware of social categories and exhibit visual preferences for those in their own category by three months. However, infants who have considerable cross-race exposure during first few months after birth do not show same race bias. Early development of ingroup bias can lead to development of prejudice, while racial out-group attitudes either remain stable through middle childhood and adulthood or become even more negative. There are studies that are designed to encourage children to develop common ingroup identity such as shared school, community, national identity to reduce bias against members of other ethnic groups. Higher levels of intergroup contact leads to lower levels of intergroup prejudice. “As children develop, their foundation for a life in pursuit of social justice would seem most likely if they are raised in an indicative approach, develop an accurate theory of mind, are exposed to conversations within the family that discourage exclusion and encourage inclusion as a principle of morality, have peers who similarly value inclusion, live in a society with norms of inclusion, develop an inclusive group identity, have direct contact with outgroup members under conditions that enhance intergroup contact effect, know of friends who have befriended out-group members, and are exposed to media that encourages an inclusive social justice orientation. Given a healthy start, children proceed to establish harmonious relations in primary relationships followed by prosocial interpersonal relationships in early childhood. A peace and social justice orientation lies beyond early childhood and requires the extension of harmonious relations and equity to out-group members” (294).

Foundation 1: Healthy Human Development

Target prenatal care, nutrition programs, and development of caregiver skills that can result in physical, cognitive, and socioemotional gains.

Foundation 2: Interventions for Emotion Regulation and Healthy Primary Relations

For child soldiers, the process of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration into families and societies is required. This process, as well as the utilization of cultural constructs such as purification rituals, is used in most African countries. Children in war zones or post-war contexts focus is on emotional well-being through practices such as expressive arts and playful activities to ameliorate stress, distress, and trauma. The use of toys and role playing is also important to regain sense of control and safety, reduce anxiety and suicide risk, and facilitate healing of emotional trauma in wake of natural disaster.

Foundation 3: Social Skills and Prosocial Orientation

To large extent, foundation three and its implications for programming to enhance a prosocial orientation are based on findings from research in high-income countries. Conflict resolution skills are used to teach children to manage interpersonal conflicts constructively and teacher training on conflict management and problem solving is shown to increase prosocial behavior and decreased negative conflict management techniques such as verbal and physical aggression.

Foundation 4: Fostering an Orientation toward Intergroup Peace and Social Justice

Children in social ecologies are characterized by intergroup conflicts and episodes of violence, and the combination of interventions and development programs should bring together groups in conflict and work toward improved relations. The Media Initiative for Children Respecting Difference, for example, is a preschool program in Northern Ireland that utilizes cartoons and activities that focus on tolerance, inclusion, and respect for diversity. Contexts with deep fault lines between identity groups encourage children to develop empathy for the other. Such fault lines are particularly impactful in the environment of a school through mixed classrooms and dialog sessions to understand each other’s viewpoints on a given issue. It is important to nurture a child’s sense of social injustice and nonviolent means especially in geohistorical contexts where notion of peace is suspect For example, in South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, and parts of Africa, the term “peace” is associated with pacifism and oppression under colonial rule. It is important for children to develop a sense of agency and exploit power of nonviolent approaches to social justice.

Directions for Future Research

One particular importance in regards to the development of peaceful children are linkages between the prosocial child and the peaceful child: how is the development of a prosocial orientation related to the child’s competence and skills in extending the scope of prosocial actions to those who fall outside the child’s identity group? A productive research program should identify other pathways to peace that are more nuanced and varied as a function of the geohistorical contexts in which children are embedded.

Conclusions

It is unlikely societies will support research and intervention programs designed to develop peaceful children unless there are strong indications of societal benefits. How can the measurement of peaceful child development be improved in order to encourage such development programs to improve? Some beneficial outcomes that can be examined include violent behavior within the family and cooperative and helping behaviors. In the context of school, reductions in aggressive behavior, decreases in bullying, change in cascade of negative outcomes including school failure, dropping out, and engaging in crime. A positive cascade can create an increase in empathic responses during early childhood, higher levels of sharing, cooperation, and helping behavior in school and increases in achievement, school attachment, attendance, leadership, and school completion.