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Thursday 13 April 2023
11.00 - 13.00
N-6
EDU06
International Child Relief in Times of War and Crisis: Humanitarianism, Politics and Children
C33 (Z)
Friederike Kind-Kovács :
Rädda Barnen in Budapest: Swedish Humanitarianism and Hungarian Children after both World Wars
The proposed talk explores various forms of Swedish relief in Budapest in both post-war periods of the 20th century. The talk investigates various Swedish relief organizations and initiatives that were invested in relieving the suffering of Hungarian children in the aftermath of the First World War and contrast them with ... (Show more)The proposed talk explores various forms of Swedish relief in Budapest in both post-war periods of the 20th century. The talk investigates various Swedish relief organizations and initiatives that were invested in relieving the suffering of Hungarian children in the aftermath of the First World War and contrast them with relief initiatives and activities in the post-WWII period. It will analyze the activities of Rädda Barnen, the Swedish Save the Children which is considered the most prominent Swedish relief organization and which was represented in Hungary by the Swedish humanitarian activist Asta Nielsen, as well as of smaller Swedish relief initiatives that aimed to better feed, clothe and care for Hungary’s destitute children. The talk will also take into account the children’s trains from Hungary to Sweden as one form of transnational Swedish relief in the aftermath of war. In the framework of these children’s trains around 100 Hungarian children were sent to Sweden, where they were to be better fed and cared for than it was possible in postwar Hungary at the time. To shed light on the diverse forms of transnational Swedish intervention in Hungary, the planned talk will both engage with the perspective of the Swedish relief organizations as well as the receiving end. The talk thus aims to adequately reflect on the contribution of and response by local Hungarian relief agents, and most importantly give room to also uncover and reflect on the experiences of the hungry and destitute children that were the main trigger of this transnational relief endeavor. (Show less)
Martina Koegeler-Abdi :
Politicized Children and Humanitarianism—Comparative Perspectives on Scandinavian Children Born of War in Post-WWII Germany and Post-2019 Syria
Children born of war (CBOW), that is children born to foreign soldiers during conflicts, often suffer from stigmatization and discrimination due to their parents’ actions. The context of their birth is highly politicized, and this can extend to the children themselves—excluding them from modern notions of innocent, apolitical childhood. This ... (Show more)Children born of war (CBOW), that is children born to foreign soldiers during conflicts, often suffer from stigmatization and discrimination due to their parents’ actions. The context of their birth is highly politicized, and this can extend to the children themselves—excluding them from modern notions of innocent, apolitical childhood. This exclusion can have severe consequences, for example, barring recognition of the child’s needs, rights, or national belonging. In this paper, I focus on two distinct generations of Scandinavian children born of war in the last century: children born to German soldiers and Danish as well as Norwegian women during WWII and the children born to Scandinavian IS followers during the Syrian Civil War between 2014 and 2019. The so-called ‘IS children’ remained with their mothers in detention under dire conditions in Kurdish camps after 2019. The WWII CBOW for the most part faced discrimination within their mothers’ homelands. However, a few hundred of these children also were displaced in post-war Germany after 1945. Scandinavian governments were reluctant to support the repatriation of these children, despite their Nordic citizenship, due to their politized status in both contexts.
The conception of a ‘war child’ had to be actively constructed, domestically as well as abroad. My analysis will compare how international NGOs (UNRRA and the IRO after WWII and the Red Cross as well as Save the Children today) tried to facilitate the repatriation of the respective stranded children—constructing their national belonging from the outside. I argue that in doing so they attempted to re-align perceptions of the children’s ethnic and civic citizenship to establish their innocence, and thus a perception of childhood deserving of aid and repatriation. (Show less)
Samuël Kruizinga :
‘That curious, magical cry that penetrates everything: the cry of a hungry child’. The Politics of Children's Relief in Belgium and the United States, 1914-1918
During the First World War, the German invasion of Belgium and the plight of its population under the subsequent occupation caused a worldwide outcry of sympathy and support - albeit one centred primarily on the "Global north". A transnational relief organisation, the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB), was set ... (Show more)During the First World War, the German invasion of Belgium and the plight of its population under the subsequent occupation caused a worldwide outcry of sympathy and support - albeit one centred primarily on the "Global north". A transnational relief organisation, the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB), was set up in October 1914 by future US president Herbert Hoover to provide food aid to the Belgians (and, from 1915 onwards, the French) in German-occupied territory. Crucially, internal distribution of relief goods was left to a civilian Belgian organisation, which operated with a degree of independence from the German occupier. Children played a crucial role in both the image and the execution of Belgian relief, outside ánd inside of Belgium. Critically dependent on US political and financial support, the image of the Belgian suffering child was utilised to keep the American public engaged, and in doing do shaped American conceptions of an 'active' neutrality while preparing the road for eventual belligerency. In Belgium itself, the fate of children and of 'the nation' became near-synonymous, and children's relief became the subject of heated battles between the German occupiers, Belgian civilian relief organistions, and partisan movements associated with calls for Flemish autonomy or even independence (Show less)
Nazan Maksudyan :
Reenacting Testimony: Child Survivors of the Armenian Genocide, Early Cinema, and Humanitarianism
Focusing on the conception, production, distribution (and disappearance) of two silent films on the Armenian Genocide from a gendered perspective, this paper combines “technologies of witnessing” with the history of humanitarianism. Two movies, the oldest films on the Armenian genocide, were shot with the initiative of the Near East Relief ... (Show more)Focusing on the conception, production, distribution (and disappearance) of two silent films on the Armenian Genocide from a gendered perspective, this paper combines “technologies of witnessing” with the history of humanitarianism. Two movies, the oldest films on the Armenian genocide, were shot with the initiative of the Near East Relief (NER) in order to collect donations. The fate of Ravished Armenia (1919) and Alice in Hungerland (1921) was a short-lived fame and revenue, followed by their disappearance and subsequent oblivion. Moreover, their lead orphan girl actresses, Arshaluys and Esther, who were brought to the United States as minors and took part in a huge PR campaign, walked a thin line between being “saved” and “exploited”. The early cinematic representation of the Armenian genocide sheds light on the mediatization and marketing strategies of humanitarian agencies, specifically as to how the Armenian Genocide was publicized, sold, bought, and was no longer in demand in philanthropic circles. Providing an account of the visual and artistic representation of the genocide in these films, I discuss the impact of these early representations in shaping mediatized and marketed humanitarianism in the twentieth century. (Show less)
Johanna Sköld, Ingrid Söderlind & Joel Löw :
Saving Others’ Children: Swedish Relief Committees between Humanitarian Internationalism and Domestic Agendas 1914–1950
A significative part of Swedish international humanitarian aid for children 1914–1950 were carried out by a number of temporary non-government relief committees. The committees founded orphanages abroad, delivered food and clothes, and evacuated thousands of children to Sweden. In contrast to transnational NGOs, like Save the Children or The Red ... (Show more)A significative part of Swedish international humanitarian aid for children 1914–1950 were carried out by a number of temporary non-government relief committees. The committees founded orphanages abroad, delivered food and clothes, and evacuated thousands of children to Sweden. In contrast to transnational NGOs, like Save the Children or The Red Cross, which provided humanitarian relief to many countries, the committees directed their efforts towards individual countries, to children of a specific ethnic origin or from a particular political side of a conflict. Their different agendas, their relations to each other and to transnational NGOs are an unexplored feature of Swedish international relief preceding state foreign aid. This not only helps problematizing the Swedish neutrality policy, but also the very notion of humanitarian aid for children in war-torn countries as politically neutral. The neutral appearance of helping innocent children can be biased and used to mask political ambitions.
In this paper we are focusing on the actions of some of these committees in our effort to explore how saving children became a way for citizens from neutral Sweden to engage with foreign policy, how this engagement intersected with international and domestic agendas, and what consequences it had for the relief offered. The preliminary results shows that relief actions were not only guided by notions of what was best for children, but also Swedish interests in foreign policy, trade policy and mobilization for domestic policy. The activities stemmed from an ideological anchoring and extended to the top of the Swedish political elite, which affected both the direction and organization of foreign aid. In effect, the relief committees became players in international politics through their humanitarian support for children. (Show less)
Lina Sturfelt :
‘Double Neutrals.’ The (A)political Work of Swedish Save the Children in the Post-war Humanitarian Crisis of 1919–25
Most scholars today hold that humanitarianism is and has always been political. This paper will discuss some of the political dilemmas and ideas of international child relief in relation to the massive humanitarian crisis of the First World War. My case is Swedish Save the Children, a secular, transnational NGO ... (Show more)Most scholars today hold that humanitarianism is and has always been political. This paper will discuss some of the political dilemmas and ideas of international child relief in relation to the massive humanitarian crisis of the First World War. My case is Swedish Save the Children, a secular, transnational NGO founded in 1919 to provide emergency relief to starving children in Vienna and temporarily place Austrian ‘war children’ in Swedish homes. During the years 1919-25, Save the Children provided extensive help to children and families in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as promoting children’s rights and welfare nationally and internationally. Building on press material and archival sources, this paper will show how the NGO thought the ‘apolitical’ child vital both to the post-war reconstruction of Europe, and a useful instrument for a new international role for Sweden as a ‘humanitarian great power’. As representing both a humanitarian NGO and non-belligerent Sweden, Save the Children branded themselves as ‘double neutrals’; impartially helping all children regardless of nationality, race, gender, class, creed, or the political affiliation of their parents. In the field, however, the organization prioritized to ‘save the middle class’ and the values and virtues the children of this class were thought to represent for the future of the continent. For this the NGO was also accused of putting the welfare of European (middle class) children over (working class) Swedish ones. The strong bias towards assisting the former Central Powers was also believed to compromise neutrality, both from within and outside the organization. Building on these examples, the paper will argue for considering interwar international child-relief as an arena where reconstruction politics and foreign policy was made ‘on the ground’, largely by women. (Show less)
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