War doesn’t just destroy nations — it destroys our children. It tears through borders and bodies alike, shattering buildings and the very identities of those caught in its path. 

From Gaza to Ukraine, Yemen to Sudan, and now as tensions escalate between Iran and Israel, children are caught in the crossfire of decisions they never made. Their lives are forever caught in a violence that seeks neither their consent nor their forgiveness. And here in Chicago, many of these children carry those invisible wounds to our own doorstep.

According to UNICEF, more than 50,000 children have been killed or injured in Gaza since October 2023, including a recent surge following the collapse of the latest ceasefire. In the Middle East and North Africa alone, more than 30 million children are currently out of school, a staggering reversal of years of progress in expanding access to education, now undone by conflict and displacement in countries like Sudan, Syria and Palestine. 

These figures, horrifying on their own, become even more devastating when we consider what they mean: A generation that may never know the feeling of safety, the freedom of play or the joy of school. And while these numbers are shocking, they are not anomalies. They are part of a global pattern in which children are not just casualties of war — they are deliberate targets.

In Ukraine, the World Health Organization has verified more than a thousand attacks on hospitals, maternity wards and schools. In Iran, where missile strikes and infrastructure destruction have compounded existing public health crises, children suffer from a lack of access to essential medication and trauma care.

But these children are not distant to us. 

Here in Chicago, we welcome refugees every day. Families arrive at O’Hare airport with nothing but a suitcase and hope for a better future. Children enter our school systems already carrying invisible scars. 

Reports published by Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital found rising rates of PTSD, anxiety and developmental delays among newly arrived refugee youth. These aren’t isolated cases; it’s an unfolding emergency that demands attention from our clinics, our conscience and our communities.

War doesn’t end when the bombs stop falling. Its aftershocks ripple through time, through bodies, through entire childhoods. 

The American Academy of Pediatrics has warned that children exposed to armed conflict face a lifetime of health issues, from stunted cognitive development to premature cardiovascular disease. Brain-science confirms that chronic exposure to violence floods a young brain with cortisol and adrenaline, weakening neural growth, eroding memory and hampering emotional regulation far more destructively than any bullet wound — this is damage that lasts for decades. Longitudinal research across 12 low- and middle-income countries reveals that even one year of nearby conflict lowers the chance of a preschool child being developmentally on track by 5.9 %, and five years of exposure doubles that effect.

As a member of the World Health Organization Youth Council, I’ve sat in conversations with young people from war zones — children who should be studying for exams or dreaming about the future, not fleeing airstrikes or burying siblings. 

In one conversation, a teenage girl from Ukraine, displaced to a refugee settlement in Poland, described trying to keep up with school through spotty Wi-Fi and WhatsApp voice notes. She looked into the screen and asked, “Do we only matter when we’re dead enough for a headline?”

Her words weren’t a question. They were a quiet indictment of the world’s selective compassion. In her voice was the weight of every child made old too soon, every dream deferred by the sound of sirens. A generation raised under bombardment, children who have learned the sounds of war before the sounds of peace, who measure time not in birthdays but in ceasefires that never last.

These silent wounds compound across generations. Children scarred by violence face higher rates of substance abuse, self-harm, health issues and lower educational attainment. Without intervention, they grow into adults whose grief and loss echo through decades of lost potential. In essence, the true cost of war is not on geopolitical maps; it’s found in brain scans, school records and heartbeats skipped by trauma.

It is tempting, in a city like ours, to feel removed from these crises. But we are not immune to their consequences. 

We are a city built by immigrants, shaped by diaspora and called to action by our diversity. If we care about health, equity or the futures of the young people who walk our streets, we cannot look away.

Our public health institutions must scale up trauma-informed care. Our schools must equip educators to recognize and respond to war-induced anxiety and displacement. Our elected officials must push for stronger refugee protections, increased federal humanitarian aid and accountability for governments that target children in conflict.

What’s at stake isn’t just policy. 

It’s lives. It’s futures. It’s the idea that childhood should be protected.

Wars don’t just kill. They stunt. They hollow out childhood. They replace crayons with crutches. The true cost of war will not be measured in territory gained or lost, but in the lives disfigured, the potential extinguished and the generations doomed to rebuild on ashes.

When we speak about war, we must speak about children. Not as afterthoughts, but as the reason to end it.

And that responsibility belongs to all of us.

Especially here in Chicago, a city known for its resilience and compassion — a city with the capacity to shelter, to heal and to lead. We cannot fix every war. But we can choose to center humanity in our response. We can amplify the voices of young people living through the unthinkable. We can support organizations providing care on the ground and demand better from the leaders who claim to represent our values.

To remain silent is to side with the shrapnel. 

To act — even in small ways — is to reach out a hand across the world and say: You are not forgotten.

Being a sanctuary city isn’t just about what we say; it’s about how we treat the individuals who come here carrying the weight of war. Because peace isn’t just the absence of war, it’s the presence of care. And that begins with us.

Abhinav Anne is a student through Northwestern’s Center for Talent Development program and a Youth Advisor to the World Health Organization, advising on youth mental health, children’s welfare and climate-driven health disparities. He can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.