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According to UNICEF, 15 million children are caught up in violent conflicts around the world.
Conflicts in 2014 exposed children to extreme violence, forcible recruitment and targeted attacks by warring groups. Yet many crises no longer capture the world’s attention.
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In the Central African Republic, 2.3 million children are affected by conflict, up to 10,000 children are believed to have been recruited by armed groups, and more than 430 children have been killed and maimed – three times as many as in 2013;
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In Gaza, 54,000 children were left homeless as a result of the 50-day conflict during the summer which also saw 538 children killed, and more than 3,370 injured;
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In Syria, with more than 7.3 million children affected by conflict including 1.7 million child refugees, the UN verified at least 35 attacks on schools in the first nine months of the year, which killed 105 children and injured nearly 300 others;
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In Iraq, where an estimated 2.7 million children are affected by conflict, at least 700 children are believed to have been maimed, killed or even executed this year;
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And in South Sudan, an estimated 235,000 children under five are suffering from severe acute malnutrition. Almost 750,000 children have been displaced and more than 320,000 are living as refugees.
The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced last week that she has decided to drop the charges against the President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta.
Mr. Kenyatta faced five counts of crimes against humanity (murder, deportation or forcible transfer of population, rape, persecution and other inhumane acts) grounded in allegations that he helped incite ethnic violence following Kenya’s disputed December 2007 presidential election.
Protests over the results of the elections degenerated into widespread violence. In the days immediately after the results were announced, gangs blocked Kenya’s main roads and set fire to hundreds of homes of perceived ‘outsiders’. On January 1st 2008, over 50 unarmed women and children, some as young as a month old, were burnt alive in Kiambaa village.
In total, more than 1,200 people were killed and some 600,000 were displaced and forced to live in temporary camps, with the same number seeking refuge with friends or relatives.
“The withdrawal of the charges does not mean that the case has been permanently terminated. Mr. Kenyatta has not been acquitted, and the case can be re-opened, or brought in a different form, if new evidence establishing the crimes and his responsibility for them is discovered,” said the Prosecutor in a statement released in the Hague.
The Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) decided to uphold the conviction and sentence of Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga Dyilo.
Mr Lubanga – leader of the Union of Congolese Patriots (Union des patriotes congolais, UPC) and commander of its military wing, the Patriotic Force for the Liberation of Congo (Forces patriotiques pour la libération du Congo, FPLC) – was convicted on 14 March 2012 by Trial Chamber I of the ICC after having been found guilty of the crimes of conscripting and enlisting children under the age of 15 into the FPLC, and using them to participate actively in hostilities in 2002-2003.
Child Soldiers International stressed that although this conviction is an important step in the global fight to end child recruitment and use in conflict, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and elsewhere, too many perpetrators continue to evade accountability. Such impunity not only denies victims justice and reparation, but also produces an environment conducive to the continuing perpetration of these crimes.
The Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC) said that the ICC is contemplating bringing war crimes charges against Islamic State (IS) jihadist fighters. The Prosecutor pointed to credible reports of numerous foreign fighters from countries party to the ICC's statute, all of whom can can be prosecuted by the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
IS has caused increasing international alarm over its human rights abuses since its insurgence in Syria and Iraq in 2013.
A recent report documents cases of Kurdish children from the Syrian city of Kobani who were tortured and abused while detained by IS. Four children gave detailed accounts of the suffering they endured while held for four months with some 100 other children. Read the report here.
The UN commission of inquiry for the Syrian Arab Republic reported in November that IS is responsible for war crimes on a "massive scale" in Syria.
The White House is under growing pressure to hold individuals accountable for covering up the torture of terrorist suspects after the Senate Intelligence Committee released hundreds of pages of a report on secret CIA torture practices conducted over seven years at hidden sites around the world after the 9/11 attacks.
The report describes many previously reported facts about the CIA torture programme, including the agency’s use of painful stress positions, forced standing, extended sleep deprivation, extensive bright light and loud noise exposure, waterboarding, and throwing detainees against walls or closing them into coffins.
The report reveals new evidence that the CIA was well aware of the illegality of the techniques it was employing and accounts of how brutal interrogations were often outsourced to a private company.
Commenting on the report, Clare Algar, Executive Director at Reprieve, said:
“This is a good start, but it is far from the whole picture. The names of many victims of rendition and torture are absent – not least that of Khadija al Saadi, who was just 12 years old when she was ‘rendered’ along with her entire family to Gaddafi’s Libya, in a joint CIA – MI6 operation. She, her younger brothers and sister, and so many others are still owed an apology. [...] We are still a long way from acknowledging the horrors of the CIA’s torture programme, and achieving real accountability.”
The UN Special Rapporteur on counter terrorism called for criminal prosecutions, saying, “the individuals responsible for the criminal conspiracy revealed in [the] report must be brought to justice.”
European countries should also answer for their roles in the CIA torture programme. Human Rights Watch reports that Poland, Romania, and Lithuania hosted secret CIA prisons and that Sweden, Macedonia, Italy, and the United Kingdom were complicit in US rendition of terrorism suspects to countries known to torture prisoners.
The fighting in Ukraine, which erupted in April, has claimed more than 4,300 lives and left some 10,000 people wounded.
UNICEF is investigating "anecdotal evidence that children have been recruited and may be directly involved in the fighting".
"Armed groups should not, under any circumstances, recruit or use in hostilities people under the age of 18 years," says the agency's Ukraine representative Giovanna Barberis.
According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, the fighting in eastern Ukraine has internally displaced over half a million people, 27 percent of them children.
In a report published this week, Human Rights Watch is urging the government of South Sudan to make an unequivocal commitment to justice for serious crimes committed during the brutal war which erupted a year ago.
On December 15, 2013, fighting began in the capital, Juba, between soldiers loyal to President Salva Kiir, from the Dinka tribe, and former Vice President Riek Machar, a Nuer who is now the head of the opposition forces. The fighting quickly spread, engulfing much of the country. Despite intensive regional and international efforts to promote a negotiated settlement, the conflict continues.
Between mid-December 2013 and mid-April 2014, both sides engaged in attacks and revenge killings on Nuer and Dinka civilians because of their ethnicity, including in gruesome massacres in towns and villages outside of Juba. Men, women, and children were shot in their homes, churches, and hospitals, and as they fled. Destruction and pillage of civilian property ensued by forces on both sides.
Human Rights Watch documented a range of problems in South Sudan’s justice system that would impede prosecutions for serious crimes before domestic courts, including a lack of independence and capacity of prosecutors, and a climate of intimidation and insecurity for judges. Furthermore, South Sudanese law does not include specific provisions on war crimes and crimes against humanity, or the concept of command responsibility, which can be important to hold those in leadership positions to account.
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Closing
The United States' use of torture when interrogating prisoners captured in its “War on Terror” has damaged the country's moral high ground and created a set-back in the global fight against the condemnable practice, according to Juan Mendez, the UN's Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
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