CRINmail 193:
In this issue:
View this CRINmail in your browser.
LATEST NEWS AND REPORTS
Testimony from over 60 Israeli soldiers has recently emerged raising further questions over the legality of Israeli tactics in Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s operation in Gaza last summer. A series of interviews with members of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) found that soldiers were told to view everything in Gaza as a “threat”. A sergeant who served in a mechanised infantry unit explained: “The rules of engagement [were] pretty identical. Anything inside [the Gaza Strip] is a threat.”
The investigation was conducted by Breaking the Silence, an Israeli organisation that monitors the activities of the country’s army in the occupied territories.
The report, published earlier this month, uncovers many unsettling details regarding the “lax” approach to the use of armed force. These include stories of tanks firing randomly at civilian buildings, revenge attacks and the intentional demolition of homes. Other accounts state that anyone over 1.40 metres tall and male was deemed a terrorist and legitimate target.
According to the UN, 2,100 Palestinians were killed during Operation Protective Edge. Over 1,500 civilians, 538 of them children, were among the dead. Read more.
An investigation conducted by the UN Joint Human Rights Office in the Democratic Republic of Congo (UNJHRO) has found that a Uganda-based rebel group committed grave violations of international humanitarian law in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The report says that the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) committed systematic and brutal violations, which may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, over a three-month period at the end of 2014.
In total, ADF combatants attacked 35 villages, killing at least 237 civilians, including 65 women and 35 children, between 1 October and 31 December 2014.
The attackers used machetes, hammers and knives, among other weapons, to wound or execute civilians. Some had their throats slit, were shot at while trying to flee or burned alive in their homes. Several cases of looting and destruction of property were also documented.
The report revealed that ADF combatants compelled the active participation of minors - both girls and boys - in these violations.
Revelations have emerged of sexual abuse of women and girls by US soldiers and civilian defence contractors in Colombia. Claims that some 53 women and girls were sexually assaulted between 2003 and 2007 are detailed in a report commissioned by the Colombian government and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The author of the chapter on US involvement in the conflict states that there was “abundant information about the sexual violence” committed in towns near the Tolemaida military base in Tolima province, but “bilateral agreements and diplomatic immunity granted to officials of the United States”, allowed the alleged perpetrators to escape with impunity.
Sexual violence is being committed strategically - in a widespread and systematic manner, and with a high degree of sophistication - by most parties to the conflict in Syria and Iraq, said the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Zainab Bangura, following a visit to the region last month.
She pointed to instances of forced, temporary and early marriage and described how such practices were encouraged among fighters as part of Jihad and used as a “protection mechanism” for families with no other means of ensuring the safety of young girls.
“Girls are literally being stripped naked and examined in slave bazaars,” she said, describing how they were “categorized and shipped naked off to Raqqa or Mosul or other locations to be distributed among [Islamic State] leadership and fighters.”
Reports of dozens of women and children killed, raped and abducted in the Unity state of South Sudan over the past two weeks have been confirmed by UNICEF.
Witnesses say the attacks were carried out by armed groups aligned with the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA).
According to UNICEF representative Jonathan Veitch, some of the fighters explained that it’s better to kill children now, before they grow up and return for revenge.
The situation in South Sudan has been deteriorating since conflict erupted in December 2013 between soldiers loyal to President Salva Kiir, from the Dinka tribe, and former Vice President Riek Machar, a Nuer who now heads the opposition forces. Almost 13,000 children have reportedly been recruited by both sides over the past 18 months.
Omar Khadr, the Canadian born ex-Guantanamo detainee, has been released on bail. Son of Ahmed Khadr, an alleged al-Qaida financier, Omar was captured in Afghanistan in 2002 at the age of 15. Khadr has spent over 13 years in detention, and is the most recognisable juvenile known to have been held in Guantanamo Bay.
During his imprisonment, Khadr was subjected to both physical and psychological torture. Upon capture Khadr was strapped to a stretcher for prolonged periods of interrogation, and threatened with rape. Khadr gives an account of being forced into painful stress positions, hooded, confronted by dogs, and used as a “human mop” after he urinated on the floor during one interrogation session. Khadr also claims he was threatened with rendition to Egypt, Syria, and Jordan for torture, and was refused access to legal advice for two years after his capture.
Khadr’s case and the US’s most recent statement of policy on the detention of child soldiers, demonstrates how complicated the dynamics of balancing security concerns with international human rights standards in the war on terror has become. The US is just one of the states that have openly violated its obligations under international law to rehabilitate and reintegrate children back into society. The torture of these child soldiers is well documented. However, the Obama administration’s rush to step away from the crimes of his predecessors may result in the further abuse of a vulnerable group of children, as opposed to providing them with any future possibility of justice.
Read CRIN's analysis of the US policy on the detention of child soldiers.
Some 350 children associated with armed groups in the Central African Republic have been released this month. UNICEF estimates that between 6,000 and 10,000 children are currently connected with the country's armed factions. This figure includes children serving as combatants, others who are being used for sexual purposes, and those working as cooks, messengers and in other roles.
More than two years of civil war and sectarian violence have displaced thousands of people in the Central African Republic (CAR) amid ongoing clashes between the mainly Muslim Séléka alliance and the predominantly Christian anti-Balaka militia. The UN estimates that some 450,000 people remain displaced inside the country while thousands of others have sought asylum across the borders.
Also on CAR, on 6 May, CRIN, as part of a group of civil society organisations, called on the UN Secretary-General to clarify measures the UN has taken in response to reports of sexual abuse by French, Chadian and Equatorial Guinean troops in the Central African Republic, and the UN’s handling of the situation. The letter, which was copied to the High Commissioner for Human Rights, was published in The Guardian on 11 May - the newspaper that broke the story. We are still awaiting a response from the UN. On 7 May, the French prosecutor opened a judicial investigation against 14 soldiers, 3 of whom have been identified, for the sexual abuse. A preliminary investigation had already begun in July 2014 at the request of the Ministry of Defence when it received the UN’s internal report.
More children are being forced to become soldiers by Islamic State (IS), according to reports released earlier this month. A member of the Iraqi Parliament reported that IS has forced many abducted Yazidi children to serve as soldiers for the terrorist group.
In February, Renate Winter, a member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, said the Committee had received “reports of children, especially children who are mentally challenged, who have been used as suicide bombers, most probably without them even understanding". A video from November displayed militants training children as soldiers at a camp in Iraq.
IS calls the children “Cubs of the Caliphate.” A video from February advertised a new training camp for young boys where children are taught about radical Islam and warfare. Another training camp taught children as young as eight years old how to behead and torture people skilfully.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claims IS recruited 400 children in 2015 alone, targeting schools and mosques in areas under its control in Iraq and Syria.
Despite Saudi Arabia’s announcement last month that it would end its operations in Yemen, airstrikes have continued. Since the conflict erupted in mid-March 2015, over 1,400 people have been killed and close to 6,000 people injured, roughly half of them civilians. At the end of April, UNICEF stated that 115 children had been killed.
According to UNHCR, the fighting has displaced an estimated 545,000 people since March.
A ceasefire was agreed for a few days earlier this month, allowing the provision of humanitarian aid to civilians.
New eyewitness testimonies gathered by Amnesty International in the aftermath of recent airstrikes in Yemen’s capital Sana’a suggest that at least 139 people, including 97 civilians - 33 of them children - were killed by the Saudi Arabian-led military coalition strikes.
Houthi forces have also carried out indiscriminate mortar attacks on civilians and repeatedly targeted medical workers and facilities in the governorate of Aden.
Reports have also emerged of the Houthis, Islamist and tribal militias and armed groups intensifying their recruitment, training, and deployment of children. According to UNICEF, children with the Houthis and other armed groups comprise up to a third of all fighters in Yemen. Armed groups recruited at least 140 children between 26 March and 24 April 2015 alone, the UN agency said. In recent months, journalists in Yemen have reported seeing boys between 14 and 16 with rifles and handguns fighting for Houthi forces and other armed groups. One described seeing a 7-year-old boy at a Houthi checkpoint in Sana’a with a military assault rifle.
Armed conflict is a key reason for the decline in press freedom registered in two thirds of countries this year, according to Reporters Without Borders’ 2015 World Press Freedom Index. Children’s rights advocacy depends on the freedom to speak out - for both advocates and journalists. But the media, used for propaganda purposes or starved of information, have become strategic targets in the proliferation of conflicts around the world. Other reasons for increased limits on media pluralism and independence, respect for the safety and freedom of journalists, and other press freedoms include: the use of reprisals among non-state groups to silence journalists; the stretching of prohibitions to protect political systems from opposition; and the use of national security concerns to muzzle independent voices.
On 5 May, the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) issued the first 10 passports to 16-year-old residents of areas controlled by separatists in Eastern Ukraine. LPR passports are modelled on Russian passports and include information in Russian. However, these documents are only valid in self-proclaimed Eastern Ukraine Republics (Luhansk, Donetsk), which potentially renders children living in the conflict zone stateless besides limiting their freedom of movement.
The leadership of the neighbouring Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) announced that it would issue its own passports in October 2014. In January 2015, the DPR National Council reported that ID cards will be given out instead of passports.
The Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) visited Colombia last month to present the CRC’s observations and recommendations on the latest country report. During the visit, the Committee raised concerns over the recruitment of children by criminal groups formed as a result of the demobilisation of the paramilitary groups (BACRIM). The Committee recommended that children associated with the BACRIM be offered equal treatment as victims of the conflict, including full access to reintegration programmes. The experts also stressed the importance of including issues related to children’s rights in the current peace negotiation with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP) in Havana.
The CRC’s visit to Colombia is aimed at supporting the government’s compliance with its recommendations but is not part of a systematic process to follow up recommendations made to States. While most treaty bodies have follow up procedures to monitor the implementation of their recommendations, the CRC currently has no such procedure.
Read more about the follow up procedures of other treaty bodies.
Read more about the work of treaty bodies.
On 25 March 2015, the UN Security Council (UNSC) held an Open Debate on children and armed conflict. The debate focused on children as victims of non-state armed actors.
In her statement, Ms. Leila Zerrougui, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict (SRSG), explained that “it is not uncommon for children involved in or suspected of association with armed groups are [sic] arrested and detained, sometimes in deplorable conditions and without charge or trial. When they are charged, they are brought before special or military courts, which deprives them of their right to impartial justice or any kind of reparations and does not take into account their status as minors. Children associated with armed groups are first and foremost victims, victims of these groups and of our inability to ensure their protection.”
Save the Children has called on the Secretary-General to develop a policy that prohibits government security forces who appear on the SRSG’s list of shame as violators of children’s rights during armed conflict from contributing their troops to UN missions.
For the second year in a row, this was the first of two thematic debates on children and armed conflict. Since 2005, the Security Council has strengthened its focus on children and armed conflict and has passed a number of specific resolutions. Read more on the UN Security Council and children’s rights.
Read the full report of the debate.
Approximately 100,000 people, the vast majority of whom are women and children, have fled violent clashes in Burundi. The number of refugees is expected to rise, as the situation in Burundi remains volatile.
People have been fleeing the country since early April, seeking refuge in Rwanda, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), amid rising violence and intimidation, mainly by the Imbonerakure, the feared youth wing of Burundi’s ruling CNDD-FDD party, in the run up to June’s presidential elections. The refugee crisis peaked after President Pierre Nkurunziza announced on 25 April that he would stand for a third term, triggering street protests in the capital, Bujumbura. After violent clashes between protesters and police, General Godefroid Niyombare spearheaded an attempted coup two weeks ago but failed to take control of the country.
Memories are still raw in Burundi over the conflict between ethnic Hutus and Tutsis that left around 300,000 people dead a decade ago. During that conflict, Nkurunziza was among the mainly Hutu rebels fighting against the army, which was then dominated by the Tutsi minority. Despite the integration of both groups into the army, fears that the crisis could spiral are still driving people across the country’s borders.
At least 437,000 people die violently around the world each year - a global average of 6.2 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, according to Homicide Monitor.
Roughly 33 percent of the world’s homicides occur in Latin America and the Caribbean, home to just 8 percent of the global population, with almost half of all homicide victims in the region aged between 15 and 29.
The figures reveal that murders are stubbornly concentrated in poor communities, and the victims are mostly young – usually black or mixed-race – men.
Homicide Monitor’s findings also show that at least 41 percent of murders are committed with firearms. According to the Small Arms Survey, armed violence kills around 526,000 people every year, more than three-quarters of whom die in non-conflict settings. Countries such as El Salvador, Jamaica, and South Africa suffer from extremely high recorded levels of homicide, with more deaths each year than in many contemporary wars.
However, several metropolises that were once bywords for violent death – such as Medellín, Bogotá, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro – have seen murder rates decline by more than 60 percent over the past two decades thanks to improved living standards, better education, decelerating urbanisation and more effective policing.
Children are disproportionately affected: they are killed or injured, discouraged from going to school, displaced or even forced into joining gangs and the sense of insecurity that pervades their communities, can leave permanent scars.
Back to top
Closing
“The growing engagement of children and adolescents in organised armed violence is unfortunately becoming more common in some regions of the world. This engagement not only threatens the communities that may be exposed to the violence perpetrated by these groups, but frequently harms and even kills the children and adolescents who are directly involved. The World Report on Violence and Health, 2002, clearly showed that over the last ten years, those aged between 15 and 24 years are the most frequent victims of homicides around the world.”
Paulo Pinheiro’s foreword in "Neither War nor Peace", a study on children and youth in organised armed violence.
Back to top
| 
