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The UN Security Council adopted a resolution calling on all parties in Burundito engage in peace talks, warning of further action against those who incite more violence in the country. The crisis erupted after President Pierre Nkurunziza decided to run for a controversial third term earlier this year. The frequency and brutality of the killings have reached disturbing new levels in the last few weeks. In a recent attack, in Ngagara, a cameraman who worked for the state broadcaster, his wife, nephew, and two children were shot dead in the street, according to multiple witnesses. The resolution calls on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to deploy a UN team in Burundi to work with the government, African Union and other partners to develop options to address political and security concerns and to report back in two weeks with options for a future UN presence in the country.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has confirmed with “utmost confidence” that mustard gas was used in Syria in August during fighting between rebels and the so-called Islamic State (IS) and likely killed a child. Experts also found that toxic chemicals, including chlorine, were likely used as a weapon in an attack in Idlib province in March. Human Rights Watch had accused the regime of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, of dropping barrels filled with chlorine in the rebel-held area during six attacks from 16 to 31 March. Under a deal hammered out in 2013 between Russia and the United States following a sarin gas attack on the outskirts of Damascus in which hundreds died, the regime pledged to hand over all its toxic weapons to the OPCW for destruction.
Violence continued this month in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Since hostilities escalated at the beginning of October, at least 78 Palestinians and 12 Israelis have died. As the violence continues, rights groups have been highly critical of the actions of Israeli police and security forces, particularly their treatment of children. Amnesty International has raised serious concerns about the level of force used by Israeli police and security services. The organisation has documented four cases, including one involving a child, in which it alleges that Palestinians were deliberately shot dead, despite posing no imminent threat to life, a practice that may amount to extrajudicial killing. The organisation has also reported on cases in which suspects were shot and denied access to prompt medical assistance.
Treatment of children accused of committing criminal offences also raised concern, as video footage emerged of a 13-year-old boy being aggressively interrogated, without the safeguards required for questioning a child. This month has also seen Palestinian children placed under administrative detention for the first time in nearly four years. In three cases, the Israeli Defence Minister authorised detention of teenagers for up to six months without charge or trial.
Last week, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict Leila Zerrougui welcomed as “an important step” the commitment by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to stop the recruitment and use of children. Around 2,000 children are thought to be in FARC’s ranks.
The vague definitions and potential amnesties of the agreement on transitional justice signed by the Colombian government and the FARC raise fears that not all human rights abusers will face justice. The FARC and the government have agreed to set up a “Special Jurisdiction for Peace” with jurisdiction over all those who directly or indirectly participated in the armed conflict and are implicated in “grave crimes”. Those who admit responsibility for grave crimes will be sentenced to five to eight years of “restriction of freedoms” but not prison sentences. The focus on the “most responsible” could ensure that many human rights abusers avoid justice since the term has not been clearly defined.
Iraqi militias fighting the so-called Islamic State (IS) alongside Iraqi government forces are recruiting and training children as young as 11. Many of these militias are part of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), the officially recognised volunteer paramilitaries that sprang up in June 2014 in response to a religious call to defend Iraq against IS. Children appear in propaganda videos, such as one from May 2015 showing a group of men in military uniforms standing around a 10-year-old girl who says her name is Zahra, and that she is proud to fight IS "to the death" as part of the PMF. Online videos show children training at PMF camps, and other reports in July documented children as young as 12 on the frontline with IS near Fallujah in Anbar governorate.
Also in Iraq, IS has executed 12 boys for trying to escape a training camp in the northwestern Iraqi city of Mosul, local activists reported. Around 4,000 children are believed to have been trained by IS.
Children as young as five years old are being trained to fight in Afghanistan with Wilayat Khorasan - an armed group under the umbrella of IS which has chosen the name Wilyat Khorasan for the region made up of Afghanistan, Pakistan and parts of neighbouring countries. The group wants to uproot the Taliban and the government of President Ashraf Ghani. Armed battles have increased over the past few months with dozens of Taliban fighters killed in clashes, most notably in the Taliban stronghold of Nangarhar province. Wilayat Khorasan has also managed to attract dozens of fighters from the Taliban's ranks into its fold, while foreign fighters unable to make it to Syria and Iraq have thronged to the group's territory.
In October, a Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres - MSF) hospital was hit in the Afghan city of Kunduz by US aerial attacks. At least 30 people were killed, including 13 MSF staff and three children. After conducting an internal review, Christopher Stokes, the head of MSF said the strike was no mistake, casting doubt on American military assertions that it was. Stokes described the damage inflicted on the trauma centre in Kunduz as an "extensive, quite precise destruction". The facts presented in MSF’s internal review show no indication that the hospital had lost the protected status afforded to hospitals under International Humanitarian Law. Read the full report.
Serbia has yet to completely investigate and adequately prosecute war crimes that occurred in the 1990s conflict, according to a report released by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The report, which details the OSCE's mission to Serbia and the 2003-2014 war crimes proceedings, states that the number of investigations are decreasing and a high ranking official has yet to face prosecution for acts committed in the conflict. The report also states that the Serbian people have little faith that the government is independent and effective enough to prosecute alleged war criminals. The main issue affecting continued prosecutions is that most of the necessary evidence and witnesses are outside of Serbia's jurisdiction, requiring international cooperation that is not always available. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the Balkan States continue to prosecute those accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity that left more than 100,000 people dead and millions displaced.
The Commission of the African Union (AU) has released, for public information, the report of the AU Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan (AUCISS) and the Separate Opinion submitted last year. The Commission of Inquiry concluded that war crimes and crimes against humanity had been committed since the conflict erupted in December 2013 and recommends the establishment of accountability mechanisms.
South Sudan was plunged into violence in December 2013 when fighting erupted between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and defectors led by his former deputy Riek Machar.
The UN has declared that dozens of children were killed in South Sudan during clashes between the South Sudanese warring parties in October. UNICEF also reported on atrocities committed against children, saying that boys were castrated and left to bleed to death and girls as young as eight were gang raped and murdered. According to UNICEF, around 13,000 children have been recruited since the fighting broke out in South Sudan.
A draft law is under discussion in Argentina’s Senate which aims to establish a Truth Commission on Economic Complicity. This Commission will assess the role and responsibility of business people for violations during the 1976-1983 dictatorship.
The military dictatorship committed horrendous human rights violations, including enforced disappearances, torture, extrajudicial executions, and the imprisonment of thousands without trial. For years, babies born to mothers who were victims of enforced disappearances were systematically kidnapped. Amnesty laws granted immunity from prosecution to all members of the military except top commanders. The Supreme Court struck down the country’s amnesty laws in 2005 in a landmark victory against impunity for gross human rights violations.
Last month, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict (SRSG), Ms. Leila Zerrougui, presented her annual report to the UN General Assembly during the Third Committee’s meeting. The SRSG told Member States that here has been an “increasing disregard for international law” in many conflict situations around the world, leading to a worsening of the plight of children. She highlighted multiple countries where conflict is ongoing or tensions and violence are rising, noting that children make up almost half the mounting number of refugees and displaced persons fleeing hostilities.
New allegations of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers in Central African Republic (CAR) were uncovered by a Thomson Reuters Foundation investigation. Three girls displaced from their homes by the fighting, aged between 14 and 17, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that they had sex with Congolese peacekeepers over several weeks, resulting in at least two pregnancies. The girls live in temporary straw shelters in camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) close to where over 500 UN peacekeepers, mainly from Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh and Cameroon are posted.
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Closing
The so-called Islamic State claimed responsibility for terrorist attacks in both Beirut and Paris last week. The twin suicide attacks in Beirut claimed the lives of 46 people while 129 were killed in the multiple gun and suicide attacks in Paris, revealing a shocking disregard for human life. They are among the deadliest in Beirut since the end of the Lebanese civil war in 1990 and one of the deadliest of their kind in French history.
In the wake of these tragedies, "Terrorism Has No Religion" started trending on social media, with many asking speculators not to blame any religion as a whole for these attacks and hoping to promote cultural understanding and mutual support.
Authorities in both countries must respond with a strong commitment to the rule of law and human rights as they seek to prevent both further attacks and any acts of retaliation that may occur. So far, authorities in Beirut have already tightened border controls and there is a risk that France will now seek to further tighten its borders.
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