The Political Utility of the Nonpolitical Child in Sri Lanka's Armed Conflict

During Sri Lanka's protracted civil conflict, linkages between ethnicity and homeland have been under considerable strain. Subsequently, alternative rationales for territorial claims have emerged, including each belligerent's human rights record and moral fitness to govern. To this end, child-based narratives such as the child as a zone of peace have been used strategically by each side to rearticulate conflict relations and spaces into moral terms. The case of the Days of Tranquility (DOTs), a humanitarian ceasefire implemented between 1995 and 2001 to immunize children against the polio virus in Sri Lanka's conflict-affected areas, is examined here. Based on fieldwork and an analysis of texts that represent the DOTs, the research reveals how child-centered tropes and humanitarian spaces for children can be politically useful to parties to a conflict as well as to the United Nations agencies that support them.