Child identity protection in times of armed conflict

This essay outlines the concept of the child’s identity, examining its legal imperatives in the context of armed conflict. Drawing on international human rights treaties and academic literature, this study conceptualizes the child’s identity as a set of elements that can be grouped around the concepts of origin, customs, and inclinations, and then further subsumed into the identity paradigm in an evolutionary key. The study focuses on one of the main dangers to the child’s identity, namely forced re-education programs targeting children in the context of armed conflict, noting that such programs are also used outside the context of armed conflict, causing the same effects as genocide in the strict or cultural sense, which constitutes an international crime. The essay highlights that the destruction, alteration, and interference with the child’s identity constitute various forms of attack on a supreme good protected by international law, even independently, deserving of solid protection.