Armed Conflict CRINmail 185:
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Targeting schools and schoolchildren is a grave violation of children’s rights. Even in times of war, schools and hospitals must remain safe places for children to learn and develop.
But in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, children have been forced to study outside school buildings since 21 September when rebels took control of the city and occupied a number of schools, after a few days of brief but bloody fighting.
The Houthis, Shiite rebels, now control almost all state buildings, from the airport and the central bank to the Ministry of Defence.
The Houthis have fought the Yemeni government forces and pro-government tribal fighters through six rounds of fighting since 2004 from their stronghold in Saada, north of Sanaa. In 2011, they took complete control of Saada province.
Their takeover of the capital threatens to provoke a violent backlash from Sunni militants belonging to al-Qaeda. Last week, an al-Qaeda suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden car into a hospital used by the Houthis, killing one person. The group, known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, vowed to fight the rebels and called on other Sunnis for support. Read more about the Sunni-Shia’a divide.
A suicide bomber struck again on Thursday, killing at least 42 people, including several children, apparently targeting a Houthi checkpoint. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks. The death toll was expected to climb further, with many of those wounded in serious or critical condition.
The Houthis have signed an agreement to end the fighting, mediated by UN envoy Jamal Benomar. The accord stipulates the withdrawal of their forces from Sanaa once a new prime minister is named. But president Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi has so far failed to name the new premier.
Read more about the conflict in Yemen and how it affects children.
In Syria, at least 39 people, 30 of whom were children between six and nine-years-old, were killed in twin bombings outside a primary school in the government-controlled city of Homs last week, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The blasts happened as the children were leaving the school, said an official from Homs.
The UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Leila Zerrougui, condemned the bombings and called on all parties to the conflict to end such attacks and for perpetrators to be brought to justice.
According to Ms. Zerrougui’s office, attacks on schools and hospitals have become a feature of the Syrian conflict and deprive millions of children of their right to education and health.
Since 2011, over three million children have dropped out of school and thousands of schools inside Syria have closed their doors because they have been destroyed, damaged, or are now used for military purposes or as shelter for families forced to abandon their homes.
Also on Syria, an American-led intervention targeting the Islamic State was launched last month. Human Rights Watch reported a US missile strike that killed at least two men, two women, and five children, urging the US government to investigate the attack for possible violations of the laws of war.
The UK is one of just 19 countries in the world - and the only country in the European Union - that still recruits 16-year-olds into its armed forces. The others include Bangladesh, El Salvador, Iran, and North Korea.
Child Soldiers International (CSI) will call for a judicial review into the terms of enlistment for minors joining the British Army.
Although minors have a right to be discharged before their 18th birthday, after this point the so-called “Catch-22” clause commits them to serve until they are at least 22 years old, regardless of their age when they joined. This means the youngest recruits have to serve for longest. Lawyers acting for CSI claim this constitutes unlawful age discrimination in employment conditions.
A group of human rights organisations* urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) to send investigators to the Central African Republic (CAR), and called on the UN peacekeeping mission to help set up a special court in the country.
CAR’s President, Catherine Samba-Panza, officially asked the ICC in June to launch an investigation into crimes committed in her country since 2012.
In August, the UN and the CAR government signed a memorandum of understanding to create a Special Criminal Court (CCS) with both international and Central African judges. But the court can only be set up after CAR’s transitional parliament (CNT) passes a specific law.
CAR has been in a state of crisis since Seleka rebels seized power in 2013 in a campaign marked by widespread killing, looting and destruction. In mid-2013, groups of so-called ‘anti-balaka’ (anti-machete) organised to fight the Seleka, committing grave atrocities, with accounts of ethnic cleansing reported earlier this year.
The violence in CAR has forced about one million people to flee their homes. Most Muslims now live in Seleka-controlled areas in the north and east of the country, creating a de facto partition.
Elections meant to complete a return to democracy are due to be held in February. But amid continuing violence, officials in the country believe the polls will be delayed.
*The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Central African Human Rights League (LCDH) and Central African Human Rights Monitor (OCDH).
Two children were killed and five were injured in rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine last week when they tried to move an unexploded shell. The incident late Friday occurred in Zugres, a town about 30 kilometres east of Donetsk, the largest city controlled by pro-Russian separatists.
Children are particularly vulnerable to landmines, cluster munitions and unexploded ordnance in a number of ways. These devices sometimes look like toys and children are likely to pick them up out of curiosity. The Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor reports that since 2004 explosive munitions left behind during armed conflicts have been shown to consistently cause the greatest percentage of child casualties in 31 countries (64%) (See footnote no.5 for the list of countries).
The victims of the current Afghan conflict are primarily children. According to the UN Secretary General's Report on Children and Armed Conflict, in 2013, more than 1,700 children were among the 3,000 civilian casualties- a 34 percent increase from 2012.
As reported by a spokesman for UNICEF in Afghanistan, the UN has documented 97 cases in which combatants recruited children, some as young as eight.
A report by Al Jazeera tells the story of Moheb, 12, who was forced to become a suicide bomber by his uncle, a Taliban commander. His uncle forced him to wear a suicide vest last year and instructed him on how to blow himself up next to a convoy of foreign troops. He was thrown out of his home when he failed to ‘accomplish’ his mission. He now lives in a government-run orphanage.
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) said that although officially there are no children in the Afghan army and police, they continue to be recruited by local authorities because of inappropriate recruitment mechanisms. Read the full story.
The US passed a groundbreaking law in 2008 that prohibits the country from giving several forms of military assistance to governments using child soldiers. Its intention was to use a powerful incentive – withholding US military training, funding, and weapons – to influence governments to stop using children in their military forces.
The Obama administration identified nine countries this year where children are still recruited, but announced that only three would be barred from US military assistance. For the other six, Obama used his presidential authority to give partial or complete waivers.
Yemen, for instance, may receive $25 million in US military financing in 2015, with no strings attached. The country signed a UN agreement in May to end its use of child soldiers, but is a long way from eliminating the problem.
For Somalia, where the UN documented nearly 1,300 cases of child recruitment in 2013, including hundreds by the Somali National Army and its allied militias, the administration gave Somalia a full waiver as well, allowing it to receive $115 million.
In an analysis of this year’s waiver of the law, Jo Becker, Children’s Rights Advocacy Director at Human Rights Watch, notes that the administration’s actions should match the words of its ambassador to the UN pronounced in a meeting of the UN Security Council on children and armed conflict two weeks ago: “perpetrators have to be held accountable. Groups that fail to change their behavior must be hit where it hurts.”
According to Makarim Wibisono, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, there is not a single child who has not been adversely affected by the recent conflict in Gaza, where children suffer from bedwetting, difficulties sleeping, nightmares, a loss of appetite, and display more aggressive behaviour at school.
At the end of his first mission to the region, Wibisono expressed alarm at the terrible cost paid by Palestinian civilians, especially children in Gaza, as a result of Israel’s military operation that lasted 50 days in the summer of this year.
According to a press release on his findings, the latest round of violence from 7 July to 26 August 2014 has left 1,479 civilians dead, including 506 children. He added that 11,231 Palestinian civilians, including 3,436 children were injured, many of whom are now struggling with life-long disabilities. Tens of thousands of children live with the trauma of having witnessed the horrific killings of family members, friends, and neighbours before their own eyes.
“In the 50 days of relentless bombing and shelling, 228 schools in Gaza were damaged, including 26 destroyed or damaged beyond repair,”according to the press release.
Thousands have been killed and nearly two million have fled their homes since the war broke out last December in South Sudan. Oxfam and other agencies have warned that an expected upsurge in violence could wipe out recent gains in food security and push the number of hungry people up by a million in the first three months of 2015.
Nearly 100,000 people are crammed into UN compounds across the country for their own protection, often in inhumane and unsanitary conditions.
At present, 5,660 children have been registered as missing in South Sudan and only 393 reunited with their families.
What began as a political power struggle last December quickly assumed an ethnic dimension, pitting President Salva Kiir's Dinka tribe against militia forces from the former vice-president Riek Machar's Nuer people.
Economic self-interest is also fuelling the conflict. A report last month by the Enough Project noted: “The country’s competing privileged elites are sacrificing their own people’s lives to secure the political and economic benefits – including massive state-corroding corruption – derived from control of the state.”
The advance unedited version of the report of the Human Rights Council (HRC) on its 22nd special session held on 1 September 2014 has been published. To comment on the report, email the HRC by 20 October 2014 at: [email protected] or send a fax (0041 22 917 9008).
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Closing
The United Nations and the League of Arab States signed an agreement last month to strengthen the protection of children affected by armed conflict in the Arab world.
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