Armed Conflict CRINmail 181

Armed Conflict CRINmail 181

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Gross violations of human rights in South Sudan

A new report published by the UN describes gross violations of human rights in South Sudan, including possible war crimes and crimes against humanity.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay said the “report detailed accounts of ethnic-based mass killings and revenge attacks, including direct and deliberate murder of civilians, and a litany of other serious violations such as summary executions, rape and other forms of sexual violence [that] are further proof of how extraordinarily dangerous the situation in South Sudan has become over the past five months.”  

The country has been embroiled in a crisis which began in mid-December 2013 as a political dispute between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy president, Riek Machar, who had been forced from office earlier that year. The fighting has since erupted into a deadly conflict forcing tens of thousands of people to seek refuge at UN bases around the country.

The political rivals signed an ‘Agreement to Resolve the Crisis’ last month which failed to end the violence. Since the signing of the agreement the number of internally displaced people has grown by 46,000 people to 1,005,096 according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Over the same period, the number of South Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan and Uganda has risen by over 20,000 to 370,000 people.

“As former President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, I recognise in this account many of the precursors of genocide: hate media including calls to rape women of a particular ethnic group; attacks on civilians in hospitals, churches and mosques; even attacks on people sheltering in UN compounds – all on the basis of the victims’ ethnicity”, Pillay Said.

The UN Security Council this week authorised peacekeepers in South Sudan to focus on protecting civilians instead of state-building activities, backing the use of force by UN troops amid worsening violence in the country.
 

Displacement in the Central African Republic

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), nearly 30 children died in the past month fleeing violence in the Central African Republic (CAR).

“The journey people were making from CAR [to Cameroon] is a journey of starvation and death”, Adrian Edwards spokesperson for the UNHCR said. A number of people were severely wounded, he added: some with knife cuts, gunshot wounds, and others arriving in extremely poor physical shape, often as a result of having lived in bushes for weeks.

Since early December, refugees from CAR have been arriving in Cameroon, many of them after having walked for weeks through the treacherous bush. At present there are at least 85,000 refugees in some 300 villages.

Fighting in CAR has taken on an increasingly sectarian nature following a 2012 rebel-led coup and has since become more brutal with reports of ongoing human rights violations and clashes that have left 2.2 million in need of humanitarian aid.

War lord sentenced to prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has sentenced ex-Congolese militia leader Germain Katanga to 12 years in prison for aiding and abetting war crimes.

Katanga was found guilty in March, only the second person to be convicted by the ICC.

He was behind the 2003 massacre of hundreds of villagers in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The fighting escalated into an inter-ethnic conflict that is estimated to have killed 50,000 people.

Katanga was also found to have procured the weapons - including guns and machetes - used to kill more than 200 of the villagers, but he was acquitted of direct involvement.

Katanga was convicted of accessory to one crime against humanity (murder) and four war crimes (murder, attacking a civilian population, destruction of property and pillaging).

He was acquitted of one crime against humanity (sexual slavery) and three counts of war crimes (using child soldiers, sexual slavery, rape).
 

Child soldiers in the UK

More than one in 10 new army recruits in the UK are 16-year-old children and more than one in four of all new recruits are under 18, according to the latest figures released by the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

Critics accused the MoD of deliberately targeting teenagers in a bid to boost recruitment.

The proportion of army recruits aged just 16 went from 10 per cent in 2012-13 to 13 per cent in 2013-14.

"By recruiting at 16, the UK isolates itself from its main political and military allies and finds itself instead sharing a policy with the likes of North Korea and Iran. These are not states which the UK would normally want its military to be associated with," said Richard Clarke, director of Child Soldiers International.

Despite mounting pressure internationally, with UN bodies such as UNICEF, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, and the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict all in favour of the recruitment age being raised to 18, the MoD continues to take on 16-year-olds.

"Research has shown that 16-year-old recruits are much more likely than adults to suffer bullying and harassment, to develop serious mental health problems, to be injured in training, and to be killed once they reach deployable age," added Mr Clarke.

545 children killed in Afghan conflict last year

A new UN report reveals that the Afghan conflict claimed the lives of at least 545 children and injured a total of 1,149 others last year.

Improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which are the biggest killers of civilians in Afghanistan, were the leading cause of death for children.

“The conflict has exposed children to armed groups that prey on their vulnerability and exploit them, and who use children to participate in active hostilities or as messengers and delivery boys – further exposing children to the dangers of war,” said the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama), Ján Kubiš.

The chairperson of the Independent Human Rights Commission of Afghanistan (IHRC), Seema Samar, criticised the Taliban for misuse of children, specifically in armed conflicts, and called on all parties involved in Afghanistan’s conflict to respect the human rights of children.

UN meeting targets 'killer robots'

A Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) Meeting of Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems took place this month at the UN in Geneva.

Michael Møller, Acting Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva urged bold action by diplomats at the start of the UN's first ever meeting on Lethal Autonomous Weapons (LAWS) better known as “killer robots,” telling them: “You have the opportunity to take pre-emptive action and ensure that the ultimate decision to end life remains firmly under human control.”

The four days of discussions focused on technological developments, the ethical and sociological questions that arise from the development and deployment of autonomous weapons, as well as the adequacy and legal challenges to international law and the possible impact on military operations, according to the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs (ODA).

The outcomes of the Geneva discussions will be submitted to the formal conference of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons in November 2014, where States will discuss possible next steps on autonomous weapons.

The purpose of the Convention is to ban or restrict the use of specific types of weapons that are considered to cause unnecessary or unjustifiable suffering to combatants or to affect civilians indiscriminately.

Currently 117 States are parties to the Convention.

New guide on attacks against schools and hospitals

Every child has a right to education and health, the UN said last week, launching a guidance note to assist the people monitoring, reporting and working to prevent attacks against schools and hospitals.

"We see that attacks on schools, hospitals and associated staff have become an all-too-familiar aspect of today's conflicts," said the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Leila Zerrougui.

The Guidance Note on Attacks against Schools and Hospitals provides practical information for the UN and its partners on how to implement aspects of Security Council resolution 1998. Adopted in 2011, the resolution gives the UN a mandate to identify and list the armed forces and groups who attack schools or hospitals, or protected persons in relation to schools and hospitals.

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