CRINmail 200
In this issue:
View this CRINmail in your browser.
To continue receiving the Children and Armed Conflict CRINmail, existing users will need to re-subscribe to the CRINmail, and follow the instructions for existing users, who will be asked to update their preferences.
This is because we are in the process of making our CRINmail service more reliable by changing the system through which we send our newsletters.
We also want to expand our network to help spread the word about children’s rights and the fantastic work carried out by our partners. To this end, please consider forwarding this email on to others.
Happy reading! (And don't forget you can re-subscribe to the Children and Armed Conflict CRINmail here.)
The CRIN team
Parties to conflicts worldwide continue to disregard their obligations under international humanitarian, human rights and refugee law, according to the latest report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict (SRSG), Leila Zerrougui.
During the reporting period (December 2014 to December 2015), much of the Middle East and North Africa was in the grip of, or affected by, overspill from increasingly complex and widening conflicts. In Africa and Asia, many protracted and relapsing conflicts showed no signs of abating. Extreme violence and deprivation of liberty were prevalent features of these conflicts.
Extreme violence
The SRSG stressed that respect for human rights is a prerequisite for any effective response to extreme violence. “Military responses targeting groups perpetrating extreme violence continued to raise challenges for the protection of children. Children caught in the middle of such operations have been killed and maimed and their homes and schools destroyed. The proliferation of airstrikes is of particular concern for the protection of children, as many airstrikes are of an indiscriminate nature. Moreover, in some cases, State-allied militias and vigilante groups have been mobilized, and children have been used in support roles and even as combatants.”
The report also addresses the situation of effective reintegration of children associated with armed groups, noting that “indoctrination and trauma from exposure to extreme violence can increase the complexity of reintegrating children into their former communities.”
Deprivation of liberty
Mrs Zerrougui reminded all parties that “the best interests of the child should always be taken into account, detention should only be used as a measure of last resort and for the shortest time possible, and there should be no capital punishment or life imprisonment for children.”
The SRSG expressed concern over the ”increasing numbers of children [...] deprived of their liberty for their association with armed groups under counter-terrorism and national security laws.” She stressed that children associated with armed groups should be seen as victims instead of being treated as offenders. “Depriving children of liberty is contrary not only to the best interests of the child but also to the best interests of society as a whole.”
She added that “in instances where children are accused of specific crimes during their association with an armed force or group, they should not be brought to trial before military courts or special courts, which often do not fully recognize the special status of juveniles before the law.”
Read CRIN’s paper “Stop making children criminals.”
Over the past four and a half years, thousands of detainees have been killed while in the custody of warring parties, according to the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria.
The latest report, “Out of sight, out of mind: Deaths in detention in the Syrian Arab Republic”, details how Syrian civilians have been arbitrarily arrested, unlawfully detained, taken hostage, or kidnapped, since the conflict erupted nearly five years ago. Eyewitness accounts and documentary evidence strongly suggest that tens of thousands of people are detained by the Syrian government at any one time. Thousands more have disappeared after initial arrest by state forces or while moving through government-held territory. The overwhelming majority of those who have perished while in government-controlled prison facilities were men. However, the Commission has documented cases of women and children as young as seven years old dying in state custody. This includes the case of a 13-year-old boy arrested during a protest in Sayda (Dara’a) in late April 2011 - one of the earliest documented cases - whose mutilated body was returned to his family in May 2011.
Some 86 people, including children, have been killed in a town in Nigeria by Boko Haram fighters who shot at villagers and set fire to their homes. The attack took place on Saturday in the village of Dalori, which lies about 12km from the northern city of Maiduguri, the birthplace of Boko Haram. The city has been the target of several attacks in recent months as militants have tried to retake the city from which they were pushed three years ago. The six-year uprising by the Islamist militant group has killed some 20,000 people and driven 2.5 million from their homes.
The Taliban gunned down a 10-year-old soldier who had been hailed as a hero by the Afghan government for leading an attack against the terror group last year. Wasil Ahmad fought alongside his uncle with a US-backed government militia called the Afghan Local Police. “There’s nothing heroic about putting a child in danger by arming him and having him fight in a war. The Taliban killed 10-year-old Wasil Ahmad, but those who encouraged him to fight bear responsibility as well,” said Patricia Gossman, the senior Afghanistan researcher for Human Rights Watch.
According to the UN, tens of thousands of boys and girls are associated with armed forces and groups in conflicts in more than 20 countries around the world. An upsurge in global conflicts and brutal war tactics is making children extremely vulnerable to recruitment and use by armed groups. Leila Zerrougui, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, in a press release marking the International Day against the Use of Child Soldiers, explained that children are sent to the frontlines as combatants, but many are also used in functions that put their lives in danger, such as cooks, porters, spies and informants. During their association with armed groups or forces, children are exposed to high levels of violence. When they are captured or arrested for alleged association with armed groups, too often children are not treated primarily as victims and denied the protection guaranteed by international norms and standards of juvenile justice.
Read UNICEF’s report: Ending the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict. Published last week, the report sets out areas where important progress has been made towards ending the recruitment and use of children in conflict and makes recommendations for action by governments.
Hundreds of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, gang-rapes, sexual slavery, forced abortion, massive child recruitment and indiscriminate attacks against civilians with entire villages in South Sudan, the UN reported. Despite repeated commitments by both Government and opposition forces to end all child recruitment, the UN documented a sharp increase in child recruitment, with at least 13,000 to 15,000 children recruited as soldiers mainly as of December 2015.
An independent media outlet in Georgia, the Information Center of Kakheti (ICK), has uncovered a network of youth recruitment in Pankisi, two hours from the capital Tbilisi, to fight for the so-called Islamic State in Syria. Since 2014, the ICK has broken several stories about teenagers in Pankisi who left for Syria to join ISIS, and in April 2015, ICK wrote about a 17-year-old girl sent to Syria as a bride with her parents’ consent. In December last year, an ICK journalist reported the case to the police of another 17-year-old girl who had been chosen by a local man to be sent to Syria as a bride. The police brought the girl back to her parents and prevented her from being sent to Syria.
In Guatemala, a historic trial is underway as the search for justice by a group of women is coming to an end. Between 1982-1983, 15 women from the Q’eqchi’ group, which is of Mayan origin, were enslaved with their children and systematically raped by military men in the Sepur Zarco army unit. The military was sent to that area of the country where the Q’eqchi’ group were demanding their traditional lands be returned to them. But the military detained and “disappeared” the husbands of the women and took the women as their slaves. The criminal action is now being taken forward by the National Union of Guatemalan Women, as part of the Alliance Breaking the Silence and Impunity, along with the Jolok U Collective.
In Colombia, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Ejército del Pueblo (FARC-EP) confirmed last week that they will stop the recruitment and use of children under 18, following meetings with the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict (SRSG), Leila Zerrougui. The SRSG stressed that in the coming months, it will be important to ensure that adequate services are available for children separated from the FARC-EP and that they are treated primarily as victims in accordance with national and international standards. The best interest of the child and international protection standards should be the guiding principles to ensure that reintegration programmes are sustainable and address the specific needs of all children, including children without parental care, girls, and those coming from Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities.
A fresh inquest opened this month into the death of a young army recruit at Deepcut barracks in Surrey, UK in 1995. The inquest follows a 20-year battle by the parents of Cheryl James, 18, to share evidence concerning her death, which was treated as suicide. But Surrey police passed the investigation into James’ death over to the Royal Military police special investigations branch almost immediately - an investigation found to be "extremely limited” with “flaws" by a high court ruling in 2014. James was one of four young recruits, who also included two 17-year-olds and one 19-year-old, to die of gunshot wounds at Deepcut between 1995 and 2002. Emma Norton, legal officer for human rights group Liberty, which won the new inquest, said the 20-year wait for an independent investigation should be “extraordinary and shocking”. “But hang on, it is not extraordinary at all, because that is what happened to all four of the Deepcut deaths. It is apparently not extraordinary, and it should be, that these young people who died so long ago were not given the benefit of an independent investigation and their families were shut out and treated with contempt.”
Conflict Dynamics International has released a new publication Anti-Impunity Tool: Guidance for investigating and prosecuting serious violations against children in armed conflict. It provides concrete guidance and tips for investigating and prosecuting serious violations against children in armed conflict, such as recruitment and use of children by armed actors and attacks on schools. An annex features an example of a domestic legal and procedural framework, using the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a case study.
Hostilities in eastern Ukraine have damaged or destroyed hundreds of schools, many of which were used by parties to the conflict for military purposes, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch. The report documents how both the Ukrainian government forces and Russian-backed militants have used schools for military purposes, deploying forces in and near schools, turning them into legitimate military targets. The resulting destruction has forced many children out of school and many schools to stop operating or to operate with overcrowding and difficult conditions.
Targeted attacks on educational institutions that do not have military objectives and indiscriminate attacks that fail to distinguish civilian institutions, such as schools, are prohibited under the laws of war, and can be prosecuted as war crimes.
Tens of thousands of civilians are fleeing weeks of clashes between troops and rebels in Darfur’s Jebel Marra area. Fighting in the area has flared up between forces loyal to president Omar al-Bashir and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA-AW), led by Abdelwahid Nur, which has been battling al-Bashir since 2003. The surge in violence “has seen, as a result, the worst civilian displacement that we have seen in the UN in the past decade” in the Jebel Marra area, where there were also heavy clashes in previous years, according to Marta Ruedas, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Sudan. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said 38,000 people are reported to have fled to North Darfur state. Jebel Marra is a stronghold of the SLA-AW, one of several groups in the western Darfur region that rebelled against Bashir’s government 13 years ago, complaining they were being marginalised. Bashir has been indicted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges related to the campaign against the rebels, with the UN estimating that some 300,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
The UN warned that the rate of child refugees and migrants coming to Europe has soared to one in three compared with one in 10 less than a year ago. For the first time since the start of the crisis, the majority of those crossing from Greece into the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia at Gevgelija - nearly 60 per cent - were children and women. Germany and Sweden have the most comprehensive data on the numbers of unaccompanied children who have requested asylum – 60,000 and 35,400 respectively. Most unaccompanied children are between 15 and 17 years old, coming primarily from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. According to the EU’s criminal intelligence agency, Europol, at least 10,000 unaccompanied children have disappeared after arriving in Europe. Many are feared to have fallen into the hands of organised trafficking syndicates. Europol’s chief of staff, Brian Donald said 5,000 children had disappeared in Italy alone, while another 1,000 were unaccounted for in Sweden. He also confirmed Europol had received evidence that some unaccompanied child refugees in Europe had been sexually exploited.
Allegations of sexual abuse of children in Central African Republic (CAR) by members of foreign military forces, including UN peacekeepers, continue to emerge. A joint UN team in CAR recently interviewed a number of girls who said they had been sexually exploited or abused by foreign soldiers. Four of the girls said their abusers were attached to contingents operating as part of the European Union operation (EUFOR / CAR). UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein raised the cases with the European, Georgian and French authorities, as well as with another country about a similar allegation for which additional corroboration is needed. All four authorities have promptly responded to the High Commissioner and stated that they have already begun investigations or referred the cases to relevant judicial authorities in their respective countries.
Back to top
Closing
Are current conflicts affecting children differently?
Children have become more vulnerable due to new warfare tactics, the absence of clear battlefields, the use of extreme violence, the increasing number and diversity of armed groups that add to the complexity of conflicts and the deliberate targeting of traditional safe havens such as schools and hospitals.
Of growing concern is the use of children to carry or plant explosive devices. In the past few years, we have witnessed an increase in the use of child suicide bombers.
The detention of children is another concern. They can be detained because of their alleged association with an armed group, or because they have allegedly participated in hostilities. Instead of being considered the victims of the adults who recruited them, children are considered as security threats. When children are arrested, they are too often detained without due process, for long periods of time and in contravention of international standards applicable to juvenile justice.
Leila Zerrougui, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, Q&A on the Recruitment and use of child soldiers, 12 February 2016.
Back to top
| 
