Child mortality following armed conflict: how long does it take to reduce to pre-conflict level?

There are many dozens of armed conflicts going on around the world. Some of these conflicts are well known, others are not. Some began recently, while others have been going on for more than 50 years. The drivers and dynamics of current wars vary widely in their political, military and humanitarian dimensions. Armed conflicts have complex, multilevel impacts on many aspects of human development through destruction, degradation, disruption, diversion and devaluation.Millions of children are injured, killed and separated from their families and witness brutal violence. Kidnapping, rape and the use of children as soldiers are also among the horrific side effects of most wars. Nearly one in five children globally lives in or is fleeing conflict zones, and half of all civilians killed by landmines and explosive remnants of war are children. Worldwide, children are killed in war and are more likely to die before the age of one or five than children born in the same region during periods without conflict. Child mortality is a proxy for overall well-being and a leading indicator of progress (or the lack of it). The evolution of the under-five mortality rate (U5MR) over time, before, during and after an armed conflict is an index of child health conditions. The three historical cases reported in this article (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Syria, and Rwanda) indicate that, after the acute phase of an armed conflict, it takes approximately 15 years to restore, maintain and resume the trend of improvement in U5MR levels to those prior to the conflict. How long does it take to restore the baseline conditions of child health at the end of an armed conflict? This is an essential question to which adequate answers must be provided in order to guarantee the rights denied by war.