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In this issue:
Hundreds of people were killed in South Sudan during an outbreak of violence last July and more than 200 people were raped, according to a new United Nations report. The UN found that the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army in Opposition (SPLM/A-IO) showed “complete disregard of civilians” continuing to target women and children, and in particular, Nuer people with tribal markings on their foreheads. Six months later, the report documented “widespread impunity, as violations continue unabated.”
South Sudan has faced ongoing challenges since a political face-off between President Salva Kiir and his Vice-President Riek Machar erupted into full blown conflict in December 2013. The crisis has produced one of the world's worst displacement situations. Despite the August 2015 peace agreement that formally ended the war, conflict and instability have spread to previously unaffected areas in the Greater Equatoria and Greater Bahr-El-Ghazal regions of South Sudan.
Many refugees leaving South Sudan spoke of horrific abuses, including rape, abduction and killing. Women and children are the most vulnerable and account for nearly 86 per cent of the total number of refugees reaching Uganda. UNICEF reports that violations against children have continued to occur since 2013, including 2,342 who have been killed or maimed, 3,090 who have been abducted, and 1,130 sexually assaulted. There have been reports of 303 instances of attacks on, or military use of, schools and hospitals.
Also according to UNICEF, some 1,300 children were recruited by armedforces and armed groups in 2016, bringing the total number of childrenused in conflict since 2013 to more than 17,000. The SPLA and SPLM/A-IO have both signed agreements with the UN in order to end and prevent the recruitment and use of children in the conflict. So far, 1,932 childrenhave been released by armed forces: 1,755 in 2015 and 177 in 2016.
The UN Human Rights Council held a special session on the situation in South Sudan on 14 December 2016, during which member States adopted a resolution condemning the ongoing violations and abuses of human rights law and international humanitarian law and reaffirmed the mandate of the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan. The resolution placed renewed emphasis on the need of the Commission to establish the facts and circumstances of alleged violations and abuses of human rights, with a view to ensure that those responsible were held to account. The Government of South Sudan also was urged to appoint a Special Representative on sexual and gender-based violence.
Sounding the alarm at the rising ethnic tensions in the country, including increasing hate speech from many in leadership positions as well as the warning from Adama Dieng, the UN Special Envoy for the Prevention of Genocide, the then-UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon underlined: “The [UN] Security Council must […] send a clear warning that hate speech, incitement and violence must end, and that there will be accountability for mass atrocities and other crimes.”
At least one girl has been killed and four others injured in attacks near a school outside the Yemeni capital, Sana'a, earlier this month. The attack targeted a market near Al-Falah school in the district of Nihm, northeast of the capital Sanaa according to Agence France Presse (AFP). “Schools should be zones of peace at all times” said Meritxell Relaño, UNICEF Representative in Yemen. “Children should never risk their lives only to attend school.”
The Yemeni NGOs Coalition for Child Rights Care (YNGOC) condemned the attacks by the Saudi-led coalition. In a statement, the coalition explained that airstrikes continue day and night, targeting civilian structures, and have destroyed more than 1,900 schools and other educational institutions.
Since the escalation of the conflict between Houthi rebels and the Saudi-led coalition supporting the government in March 2015, the UN estimates that nearly 1,400 children have been killed and at least 2,140 injured with actual numbers likely to be “much higher”. In addition to child casualties, nearly 2,000 schools in Yemen have been damaged or destroyed, or are being used for military purposes.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) released estimates this week that at least 10,000 people have been killed. The news came as a UN envoy met Yemen’s President, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, aiming to revive hopes for peace after a previous proposal for a new unity government, including the withdrawal of rebels from the capital and other cities in the country, was rejected.
The Myanmar security forces are responsible for unlawful killings, multiple rapes and the burning down of houses and entire villages in a campaign of violence against Rohingya people that may amount to crimes against humanity, according to a report by Amnesty International.
The security forces launched a large-scale security operation in the northern Rakhine State following an attack on border police posts on 9 October. The attack, in which nine police officers were killed, was blamed on militants from the Rohingya minority.
Multiple eyewitnesses described how soldiers entered their villages, fired randomly at - and killed - women, men and children. In at least one instance, soldiers dragged people out of their houses and shot them dead. Interviews have revealed that Myanmar soldiers have raped and otherwise sexually assaulted women and girls during the security operations, usually as part of raids when the men of the village had fled.
Tens of thousands of Rohingya have poured across the border to Bangladesh over the last months in search of safety. The exact number of refugees is impossible to determine, but the UN estimates that at least 27,000 people have been uprooted since the violence began.
Since the start of the Iraqi military operation to retake the city of Mosul from the so-called Islamic State (IS) in October last year, 144,588 people have been displaced with the majority now in desperate need of live-saving humanitarian assistance, according to the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM).
According to the IOM, 144,588 people were displaced between the 17 October 2016 and 12 January this year. Particularly startling is that between 5 and 12 January, some 12,354 people, including 2,059 families with children, were forced to move. These latest figures come amid fears that the western part of the city could soon face a siege, with enormous implications for the civilians remaining there.
According to UNICEF, more than 50,000 children have been affected by the Mosul military operation and associated conflicts, and are in need of basic services, psychosocial support, and access to education.
The worsening of the global migration and refugee crisis has had a devastating impact on the rights of millions of children worldwide, including their rights to life, survival and development, said Kate Gilmore, Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, at the opening in Geneva of the 74th session of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, which will run until 3 February 2017. One in every eight migrants is a child, and one in 200 children is a refugee. Moreover, some 26 million children today are displaced by conflict.
According to UNICEF, in 2016, some 25,800 unaccompanied or separated children arrived in Italy – compared to the 12,360 who arrived in 2015. These children also accounted for a staggering 91 per cent of all the 28,200 children who reached Italy’s shores last year as refugees or migrants. Most of them arrived from Eritrea, Egypt, Gambia and Nigeria. Though most of the children were boys aged 15-17 years, younger children and girls were also among the arrivals.
Girls are at a particular risk of sexual exploitation and abuse, including commercial sexual exploitation by criminal gangs. Several of the girls who were interviewed by UNICEF earlier this year in Palermo, the capital of the Italian island of Sicily, reported that they were forced into prostitution in Libya as a means to ‘pay off’ the cost of the boat travel across the Mediterranean. Most of the boys interviewed spoke of being forced into manual labour.
In addition to protecting child refugees and migrants – particularly unaccompanied children – from exploitation and violence, UNICEF urged States to stop detaining refugee or migrant children; keep families together; provide quality, learning, healthcare and other related services to all refugee and migrant children; address underlying causes of large-scale movements; and combat xenophobia, discrimination and marginalisation.
Also in Europe, Amnesty International reported that refugees are struggling through an unusually cold winter on the Greek islands, trapped by inhumane EU policies. Since the adoption of the EU-Turkey deal last March, European leaders have stopped asylum-seekers on the Greek islands with the expectation of sending them back to Turkey, under the flawed assumption that their rights will be respected there. But returns have not happened in the way leaders expected, resulting in overcrowding, growing anxiety and crushed hopes. The organisation underlined that this treatment of refugees would go down in history as a stain on our collective conscience.
Six French soldiers accused of sexually abusing children in the Central African Republic (CAR) have not been charged following a criminal inquiry. The assaults allegedly took place at a camp for displaced people near the airport in Bangui between December 2013 and June 2014. The prosecutor's office in Paris will make the final decision of whether to bring charges, but its decision is expected to reflect the judges’ findings. While it is likely the prosecutor’s decision will result in no further investigations or charges, there is a three-month window for interested parties to demand fresh investigations. Meanwhile, the UN announced the creation of a high-level task force to respond to sexual exploitation and abuse following a request from the new Secretary-General António Guterres to Jane Holl Lute, the Special Coordinator for improving the organisation’s response to such crimes. Members of the task force all hold official positions within the UN system and will present their strategy in the upcoming report of the Secretary-General on special measures for protection from sexual exploitation.
About 158 children are amongst the 2,473 victims of violations and abuses of international human rights and humanitarian law in CAR, which include arbitrary killings, sexual violence and inhuman treatment, according to a UN report published last December. During the period covered (1 June 2015 to 31 March 2016), which includes the final six months of the Transitional Government, the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) described violations and abuses, such as arbitrary deprivation of liberty, destruction and confiscation of property, and restrictions on the right to freedom of movement.
It confirmed that the main perpetrators continued to be armed elements from the Anti-Balaka, ex-Séléka, the Front démocratique du peuple centrafricain, Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), and Fulani affiliated with Retour réclamation et réhabilitation and the Révolution et Justice.
In addition to violent attacks on civilians, armed groups throughout the country have continued to occupy schools, establish illegal checkpoints, and arbitrarily deprive civilians of their liberty.
According to Amnesty International, individuals suspected of committing war crimes including killing and rape during the conflict in CAR are evading investigation and arrest, and in some cases live side by side with their victims. Efforts to ensure accountability have been hampered by a lack of capacity both within CAR’s government and the UN peacekeeping force in the country.
In December last year, the UN General Assembly voted on a resolution to establish an international panel to assist in the investigation and prosecution of those responsible for war crimes or crimes against humanity in Syria since March 2011. The “international, impartial and independent mechanism”, whose terms of references have yet to be prepared by the UN Secretary-General, will collect, consolidate, preserve and analyse evidence pertaining to violations and abuses of human rights and humanitarian law, in close collaboration with the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria.
Also on Syria, according to the UN there are 15 besieged areas in the country today where up to 700,000 people, including an estimated 300,000 children, remain trapped, while nearly five million people, including more than two million children, live in areas that are extremely difficult to reach with humanitarian assistance due to fighting, insecurity and restricted access. While efforts to fully implement a ceasefire continue, senior UN humanitarian officials are appealing for immediate, unconditional, and safe access to children and families who are still cut off from relief aid across the country.
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Closing
Children are believed to be among the fatalities of a deadly Christmas day clash near a South Sudanese refugee camp. Celebrations in Maban County were disrupted by deadly clashes near the Doro refugee camp between local communities and Sudanese refugees. A local official claimed that at least 14 people from the host community were killed after the fatal beating of a refugee by a local prompted a violent retaliation. A missionary from the Sudan Interior Church at Doro claimed that more than 70 Blue Nile refugees were murdered by the White Army militia and members of the local community, alleging that children were among the dead scattered in the outskirts of town and in mass graves. With over 134,000 refugees living in four camps in Maban county, tensions have long been rising between host communities and Sudanese refugees, exacerbated by the heightened presence of armed groups in the camps as locals and refugees find themselves in the crossfire between two war zones.
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