Dr Sean Molloy shares the thinking behind his new article, Living Apart Together: Child Participation in the Context of Peace Process Theory and Practice.
This blog discusses why children’s perspectives are needed in peace agreements, practical considerations to enable their participation, and how the liberal peace model can deny children’s agency.
Ultimately, Molloy argues that children must be involved in conversations that will shape peace—and their futures.
Living Apart Together: Why Children Belong at the Heart of Peace Processes
When I first began researching peace processes, one question kept resurfacing: where are the children? Despite years of scholarship and practice aimed at making peace processes more inclusive, the role of children—as political actors, as survivors of conflict, as stakeholders in the future—remained conspicuously absent. This observation eventually led to my recent article, Living Apart Together: Child Participation in the Context of Peace Process Theory and Practice, where I explore not just why this exclusion happens, but how we might begin to change it. In this blog, I want to share the motivations behind the paper and its core arguments, and to reflect on what child participation could look like when we treat it as more than a token gesture.
Inclusion Without Presence
It is not that children are entirely missing from peace processes—far from it. Many peace agreements include references to children: their rights, their protection, their future. But what I found is that these mentions often occur without real engagement. Children are invoked rhetorically, but they are not part of the negotiation processes that define the terms of peace they will live under. We’re used to hearing that “children are the future,” but if peace agreements lay the constitutional foundations for post-conflict states, how can we justify excluding the very group that will inherit and uphold those foundations?
Why Participation Matters
In the article, I set out several overlapping reasons for including children’s perspectives in peace processes:
- Material Impact: Peace agreements determine policies on education, healthcare, justice, and social reintegration—all of which profoundly affect children.
- Legal and Normative Obligations: Under Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, children have the right to be heard in all matters that affect them. Peace processes are no exception.
- Knowledge and Insight: Children often experience conflict differently than adults. Their insights into social divisions, marginalisation, and everyday insecurity can offer invaluable perspectives on what needs to change.
- Agency and Ownership: Including children fosters civic identity and helps build a durable peace by recognising them as stakeholders in transformation-not just its passive recipients.
Rethinking Participation
But I also recognise that direct child participation in elite peace negotiations is fraught with challenges—logistical, ethical, and political. So, I propose a broader, more flexible model that includes “track 2” pathways: mechanisms for children’s views to be communicated through civil society actors, youth consultative bodies, or representative institutions. In doing so, I have previously drawn on the Lundy Model of Child Participation, which outlines four key dimensions: space, voice, audience, and influence. These can help guide both policymakers and practitioners toward more meaningful forms of engagement.
The Liberal Peace Problem
Nevertheless, to fully understand the marginalisation of children in peace processes, I argue we must confront the assumptions that shape peacebuilding itself—most notably, the influence of the liberal peace model. This model, dominant in post-Cold War peacebuilding and while increasingly challenged, prioritises institutional reform, elections, and market liberalisation. While these goals are not inherently flawed, they often lead to top-down, technocratic approaches that crowd out local voices—especially those of children. Under the liberal peace model, children are often framed either as at risk (vulnerable victims) or risky (potential threats to peace), which fuels protectionist approaches that ignore their agency. By relying on universalised, Western notions of childhood and liberalism, peace processes often end up speaking for children rather than with them.
Toward a Critical and Contextual Turn
What I hope this paper contributes is a shift from asking whether children should be involved, to asking how peace processes can be reimagined to make their inclusion possible. That means challenging static, linear models of peace, and embracing complexity. Children’s participation must be seen not as a box-ticking exercise, but as a political and ethical imperative, tied to the legitimacy and sustainability of peace itself. This also means being attentive to diverse cultural understandings of childhood. Participation may look different in Sierra Leone than it does in Northern Ireland. But the principle remains the same: if children are affected by conflict—and they always are—they must be part of the conversation that follows.
Final Thoughts
Writing “Living Apart Together” was a way for me to bridge a gap I saw between peace process theory and the emerging literature on children’s rights and participation. But it is only a starting point. There is much more to explore—comparative case studies, practical tools for negotiators, and deeper engagement with post-liberal peace frameworks.
What’s clear, however, is that children can no longer remain on the margins of peacebuilding. The time has come to recognise them not only as future citizens but as present-day political actors, capable of shaping the peace they will inherit.
Dr Sean Molloy is a NUAcT Fellow in Law at Newcastle Law School, Newcastle University, and a Senior Research Affiliate of PeaceRep at the University of Edinburgh.
Sean’s recent research focuses on constitution-making in transitioning contexts, children’s rights, peace processes and transitional justice. He holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh and degrees from Queen’s University, Belfast, University of Ulster and Liverpool John Moore’s.