A multitude of research projects has been devoted to identifying the cause of violence, based on an assumption that ‘violence is a preventable disease’.54 Seeking a cure, a simple remedy, often follows such a diagnosis. This follows from the implicit assumption that violence can be explained, its causation described, types of perpetrators profiled, and subsequently violence can be eliminated. Education is seen as a key, especially for children. However, ‘where violence is a means not of expressing identity, but of creating it,’55 as may well have been Civilian’s fate, there does not seem to be a ready-made answer. The routine response of governments to children involved in violence is to treat them as if they were adults. As a consequence, our laws and policies fail to respond to the fact that children can resort to violence but remain children, regardless of what they may have done. A departure from this approach was triggered by the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989 and the decade-long negotiations of its Protocol on child soldiers, summed up by Dita Reichenberg and Sara Friedman as the need to address ‘all contributing causative factors’56 in trying to help children scarred by warfare, including child soldiers. For children such as Civilian, prospects are pretty much dependant on luck. This boy is too young to stand trial for killing fifty people, as he seems to freely admit, since the lowest age to hold children legally responsible in the existing proposals is fifteen. His prospects for getting education depend on the funding which his current school can secure. The government has committed itself to provide free education to children only for the first three years of primary school,57 which is likely to leave too many out of school. If Civilian is lucky and continues going to school, his education should be directed to ‘fostering respect for human rights’ as well as his preparation of ‘responsible life in free society,’58 as international human rights treaties require. If this turns out to be the case, he may well encounter the first verse of this poem: If children were to decide, there would be no hatred in the world, and all people would agree that war remain only a word.59 54 Will, G.F. – Violence is a ‘preventable disease,’ International Herald Tribune, 28– 29 November 1992. 57 55 Woollacott, M. – Terrorism and the warfare of the weak, Guardian Weekly, 7 November 1993. Concluding observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, U.N. Doc. CRC/C/15/Add. 116, 2000. 58 Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the African Child, Article 11 (2) (b) and (d). 56 Reichenberg. D. and Friedman, S. – Traumatized children. Healing the invisible wounds of children in war: A rights approach (The contribution of UNICEF), in: Danieli, Y et al. (eds.) – International Responses to Traumatic Stress, Baywood Publishing Company, Amityville/New York, 1996, p. 315. 42 Right to Education Primers No. 3 59 This poem was written by Zljok Sabol, a Slovenian school child, and translated by Majda Celik. Reproduced from: Reardon, B.A. – Tolerance – The Threshold of Peace. Primary-school Resource Unit, UNESCO Publishing, Paris, 1997, p. 83.