4 April 2007 - CRIN Children and Armed Conflict 106
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- UGANDA: Children killed in military operation [news]
- LANDMINES: Twenty per cent of those killed and disabled by mines are children [news]
- SEXUAL VIOLENCE: The Shame of War [book]
- COTE D'IVOIRE: Targeting Women and Girls – the forgotten victims of conflict [publication]
- SRI LANKA: Armed groups continue abducting and recruiting children [news]
- NEPAL: Girls suffer horrific abuses in Terai [news]
**QUIZ**
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UGANDA: Children killed in military operation [news]
[KAMPALA, 30 March 2007] - Sixty-six children have been killed in Uganda's northeastern Karamoja region during military operations against armed pastoralists, according to Save the Children UK.
The children died during a clash on 12 February in the remote district of Kotido, the charity said on Friday. "Save the Children has met 256 people in three locations who reported that the children were shot, crushed by armoured vehicles or killed by animals during raids by the army on a cattle ranch where they were living," it said in a statement.
The Ugandan military denied the charge, calling the report "[as] shocking as it is malicious". Army spokesman Maj Felix Kulaigye said the army was more interested in protecting lives and there could be no way they would kill children.
"Today I had a meeting with the defence minister who wanted to discuss with me the report and during our discussion they confirmed that there were clashes on that day, but could not confirm whether children were killed," Valter Tinderholt, the Save the Children country director in Uganda, told IRIN.
"Reports of children being killed in an indiscriminate, illegal and inhumane way are absolutely devastating. They have agreed to institute an investigation to find out what took place," he added.
The charity said interviewees had reported that landmines were subsequently laid, creating ongoing risks for children. "Reports of children being killed in an indiscriminate, illegal and inhumane way are absolutely devastating," Tinderholt said. "Such allegations must be fully investigated and those involved brought to account."
The army insisted it had not used landmines since they were outlawed in Uganda years ago. "That report is terribly outrageous. It is shocking for us in the military that someone has the audacity to write such [things]. We did not trample over children," Kulaigye said.
The charity called for an independent investigation into the events and the prosecution of those found to be guilty or complicit in "these grave abuses against children".
The UN Children’s Agency (UNICEF) in Uganda expressed grave concerns over the report, and with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the UN Human Rights Commissioner and other agencies, was verifying the allegations.
"We express serious concern about the impact of the escalating insecurity on the lives of children and families in Karamoja. Local and international agencies should undertake all measures required to protect vulnerable members of the society in Karamoja," UNICEF spokesman in Kampala, Chulho Hyun, said.
Karamoja region is Uganda’s ‘wild west’, where armed pastoralists raid each other for livestock in bloody skirmishes fuelled by the high proliferation of firearms; these clashes have left hundreds dead.
Efforts by government to disarm the tribesmen have yielded few results and the military operation to forcefully disarm the warriors has attracted criticism for heavy-handedness.
[Source: IRIN/ Save the Children UK]
Further information
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LANDMINES: Twenty per cent of those killed and disabled by mines are children [news]
[NEW YORK, 4 April 2006] – Ridding the world of landmines and other explosive remnants of war could be accomplished in years instead of decades, saving thousands of children from devastating injuries and death, UNICEF said yesterday on the first International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action.
The agency said explosive remnants of war, including landmines and unexploded ordnance, pose a huge threat to children and their communities in more than 80 countries, most of which are no longer in conflict. At least 20 per cent of the estimated 15,000-20,000 people who are killed or disabled each year by these deadly weapons of war are children.
But UNICEF said recent progress has renewed hope that the threat of explosive devices can be eliminated sooner than previously thought. The number of new victims has been decreasing over the last decade, due largely to increasing efforts by governments and NGOs to destroy and clear mines and to educate communities about their dangers. UNICEF said the continued support of donors and the public is vital to these initiatives.
“Wars are not truly over until children can play safely and walk to school without fear of landmines and other explosive remnants of war,” UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman said in New York. “We cannot afford to reverse the gains that have brought us closer to making the battle against landmines a success story.”
Landmines are designed to disable, immobilise or kill people travelling by foot or in motor vehicles. Other explosive remnants of war include unexploded ordnance – weapons such as grenades and cluster bombs that did not explode on impact but can still detonate – and weapons that are discarded in civilian areas by combatants, known as abandoned ordnance. These munitions outlast the conflicts during which they were planted and become hazards for innocent civilians, particularly for unsuspecting children who often make the fatal mistake of playing with the unfamiliar objects.
Children face the daily threat of explosion in every region of the world. Landmines are buried in nearly half of all villages in Cambodia, and in Lao PDR nearly one-quarter of all villages are contaminated with explosive remnants of war. Other countries that are among the most contaminated include Colombia, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Russian Federation (Chechnya), Iraq, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
Children suffer debilitating physical injuries from mine explosions, often losing fingers, toes and limbs. Some are left blind or deaf. An estimated 85 per cent of child victims die before they can get medical attention. Many disabled victims lose opportunities to go to school, and often cannot afford rehabilitative care. The persisting threat of mines takes its toll on entire societies, perpetuating poverty and underdevelopment.
Progress in the battle against mines
More than three-quarters of the world’s nations have ratified the Mine Ban Treaty since it came into force in 1999, outlawing the production, stockpiling and use of antipersonnel landmines. According to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, the number of countries thought to be producing, stockpiling and using landmines has dropped significantly over the last decade.
Antivehicle mines, unexploded ordnance and other types of explosive remnants of war are addressed in a new protocol to the Convention on Conventional Weapons. Approved three years ago, Protocol V on Explosive Remnants of War is the first international agreement obligating parties to conflict to clear explosive munitions that threaten civilians after war has ended. The Protocol will enter into force once it has been ratified by four more countries.
According to UNICEF, an increasing number of mine-affected countries have been involved in mine action over the last decade, which includes a range of efforts to find and destroy explosive remnants of war, assist victims, and raise awareness about their dangers.
UNICEF supports and implements mine action activities in over 30 countries, and believes that mine-risk education is key to preventing the death and disabling of children. Through programmes brought to their schools and communities, children are taught how to live safely in areas contaminated with landmines and other explosive remnants of war.
“The tragedy of children being wounded or killed in landmine explosions is preventable,” Veneman said. “We must work together to help ensure that children do not face these horrors in the future.”
More information
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SEXUAL VIOLENCE: The Shame of War [book]
[NAIROBI, 7 March 2007] - The Shame of War: Sexual violence against women and girls in conflict, which was launched in March by IRIN, is a reference book and photo essay of portraits and testimonies of the sexual violence women suffer when men go to war. It examines the scope and nature of this violence and looks at the different ways the international community is addressing sexual violence against women and girls during and after conflict.
Above all, the aim of this book is to inform, to shock and to join the voices saying ‘Enough!’ Sexual violence against women and girls does not have to be an inevitable consequence of war.
“Violence against women and girls continues unabated in every continent, country and culture. It takes a devastating toll on women's lives, on their families, and on society as a whole. Most societies prohibit such violence - yet the reality is that too often, it is covered up or tacitly condoned,” said Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, on Tuesday at an informal General Assembly debate on gender equality and the empowerment of women.
Unprecedented levels of violence against women have occurred in recent conflicts reaching what many refer to as “epidemic proportions”.
UNDP, OHCHR, UNHCR, OCHA, UNIFEM, UNICEF, WHO, UNFPA and DPKO have joined forces to improve the quality of programming to address sexual violence, to increase the coordination of efforts for comprehensive prevention and response services, and to improve accountability.
Despite the efforts of the UN system and its partners to stop sexual violence during and after conflicts, the problem continues to grow. The UN Action initiative is designed to highlight and create awareness of these abuses and, ultimately, end sexual violence to make the world safer for women and girls.
“The brutality and viciousness of the sexual attacks that are reported from the current conflicts in Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, Iraq and Sudan, and the testimonies from past conflicts in Timor-Leste, Liberia, the Balkans and Sierra Leone are heartbreaking. Girls and women, old and young, are preyed upon by soldiers, militia, police and armed thugs wherever conflict rages and the parties to the conflict fail to protect civilian populations,” says Yakin Ertürk, Professor of Sociology and UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, its causes and consequences, in the preface of the book.
We need to wage a different war, one against violence against women and girls and against the culture of impunity that protects the perpetuators and their accomplices. To some extent, this battle is already underway, but it is in its very early days. People around the world, shocked at the revelations from conflict zones, are becoming motivated and engaged to look for ways to end impunity and create effective legal mechanisms that protect women and deny perpetrators sanctuary from prosecution and punishment,” she added.
The 137-page book’s primary focus is on sexual crimes in war, their impact on women’s lives, and includes harrowing personal testimonies from raped and abused women who have had the courage to speak out about their experiences.
The Shame of War is IRIN’s second publication on gender-based violence. Broken Bodies, Broken Dreams: Violence against Women exposed was released in 2005 and through 15 chapters of text and more than 170 photos tracks different aspects of violence that women and girls face in their lives. The issue of sexual violence in war is one chapter of this book that has been reproduced and expanded in the new publication.
Further information
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COTE D'IVOIRE: Targeting Women and Girls – the forgotten victims of conflict [publication]
[15 March 2007] - Amnesty International revealed in a report launched in March the horrifying extent of sexual violence against women and girls taking place in the context of the current conflict in Cote d'Ivoire, saying that the scale and brutal nature of the attacks are vastly underestimated.
"Hundreds - if not thousands - of women and girls have been and continue to be the victims of widespread and, at times, systematic rape and sexual assault committed by a range of fighting forces," said Véronique Aubert, Deputy Director of Amnesty International's Africa Programme.
In its report, Côte d'Ivoire: Targeting Women and Girls – the forgotten victims of conflict, Amnesty International said that many women and girls are the victims of gang rape or are abducted and forced into sexual slavery by fighters. Rape is often accompanied by beatings and torture - often committed in public and in front of family members. Some women have even been raped next to the corpses of family members.
"Women and girls - some as young as ten years old - are targeted mostly on ethnic or political grounds," said Véronique Aubert. "As symbols of the 'honour' of their communities, they are raped to humiliate the women, the men in their families, and their entire community. To our knowledge, none of the perpetrators of these crimes has ever been brought to justice."
"Rape and other forms of sexual violence have been used so extensively and with such impunity that we can only conclude that government security forces and armed opposition groups have been using these crimes as part of a deliberate strategy to instil terror in the civilian population," said Véronique Aubert.
Some of the worst abuses against women and girls are committed by mercenaries, notably from Liberia, who are attached to Côte d'Iviorian armed opposition groups in the west of the country. Several women interviewed by Amnesty International said that the fighters who attacked, abducted and raped them "spoke English".
Survivors are often stigmatized and abandoned by partners or families - condemned to extreme poverty, often with dependent children.
Although no accurate statistics are available, it is widely believed that rape and sexual violence committed in the context of the conflict have worsened the HIV and AIDS crisis in Côte d'Ivoire substantially.
Victims of sexual violence are often unable to access what health care facilities do exist. Those living in areas controlled by the Forces Nouvelles are cut off from virtually all national public health services. Others are reluctant to travel due to the costs such travel entails and the serious risk they may be victimized again. In order to reach facilities, most women would have to pass through a series of roadblocks - the location of many survivors' original rapes.
In its report, Amnesty International outlined several recommendations aimed at eliminating sexual violence against women and girls in Côte d'Ivoire. The recommendations relate to both the investigation of such crimes and ensuring effective judicial remedies, including compensation and rehabilitation.
"Rape and other forms of sexual violence committed by combatants or fighters during an armed conflict - whether international or non-international - are crimes against humanity and war crimes under international criminal law and should be treated as such," said Véronique Aubert. "Eliminating sexual violence must be a priority for any plan aimed at finding a peaceful solution to the current crisis in Côte d'Ivoire."
For more information, contact:
Amnesty International - International Secretariat
1 Easton Street, London WC1X 0DW, UK
Tel: +44 20 7413 5500; Fax: +44 20 7413 5823
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.amnesty.org
Further information
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SRI LANKA: Armed groups continue abducting and recruiting children [news]
[NEW YORK, 29 March 2007] – Despite promises to investigate abductions of children by the pro-government Karuna group, Sri Lankan authorities have taken no effective action and abductions continue, Human Rights Watch said today. The armed opposition Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) also continue to recruit children in Sri Lanka and use them as soldiers.
In Sri Lanka’s eastern Batticaloa district, Human Rights Watch in February witnessed children clearly under the age of 17, some armed with assault rifles, performing guard duty at various offices of the Karuna group’s political party, the Thamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP). Sri Lankan soldiers and police routinely walked and drove by the children without taking any visible action.
Human Rights Watch saw a child with an assault rifle guarding the TMVP office in Kiran, home town of the group’s leader, V. Muralitharan, also known as Colonel Karuna. Other children, some of them armed, were seen in and around TMVP offices in the district, including in Valaichchenai and Morakkottanchenai, where the office is across the road from a Sri Lankan army base.
“When government troops at a military base look across the street at children standing guard at a Karuna office and do nothing, it’s hard to believe the government is taking any meaningful steps to end this abuse,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The Karuna group’s use of child soldiers with state complicity is more blatant today than ever before.”
President Mahinda Rajapakse and other Sri Lankan officials have repeatedly said that the government would investigate the allegations of state complicity in Karuna abductions and hold accountable any member of the security forces found to have violated the law. To date, however, the government has taken no effective steps.
According to UNICEF, there were 45 reported cases of Karuna child abductions in three months – 10 in December, 24 in January, and 11 in February. Among these were three children abducted by Karuna cadre from camps for internally displaced persons in Batticaloa district. The actual number is likely to be higher because many parents are afraid to report cases, and these numbers do not reflect the forced recruitment by the Karuna group of young men over 17.
The Karuna group has released at least a dozen children since December. According to UNICEF, however, at least three of the released children were subsequently re-recruited.
In February, parents of one abducted child and two abducted young men told Human Rights Watch how Karuna cadre had abducted their sons in recent weeks. In the first case, Karuna group members first abducted the child in July, allowed him home for a family visit, and about one week later came and took him back. In the second, Karuna cadre abducted two young men on the A11 road between Welikanda and Valaichchenai. When relatives of the two complained at the nearby Karuna camp in Karapola, Karuna cadre told them not to report the case – or to say the LTTE took their sons.
At the same time, the LTTE has continued to abduct and forcibly recruit children and young adults, including women and girls, Human Rights Watch said. UNICEF documented 19 cases of LTTE child recruitment in January and nine in February. The LTTE has also abducted at least four people from camps for the internally displaced.
Access to LTTE-controlled areas remains difficult, but credible reports indicate that the group is increasingly recruiting and deploying girls as frontline soldiers in the East. In the recent fighting in the Thoppigala region of Batticaloa district, at least three girls fighting with the LTTE were reportedly killed.
Human Rights Watch has repeatedly documented and condemned the use of child soldiers by the LTTE, and it has called on the United Nations to impose targeted sanctions on the LTTE because of its long history of recruiting children in violation of international law.
“The LTTE is a notorious repeat offender of child recruitment,” Adams said. “It’s a shame that government forces complicit with the Karuna group are now involved in the same ugly practice.”
There is strong evidence that government forces are now openly cooperating with the Karuna group despite its illegal activities, Human Rights Watch said. Armed Karuna members regularly walk or ride throughout Batticaloa district in plain view of government forces.
In February, Human Rights Watch saw a Karuna commander named Jeyam riding atop a Sri Lankan armored personnel vehicle outside Valaichchenai. In Batticaloa town, residents have seen Karuna cadre patrolling jointly with the police.
The Karuna group maintains at least five camps in the jungle about 10 kilometres northwest of Welikanda town in the Polonnaruwa district, about 50 kilometres northwest of Batticaloa town. Welikanda is where the Sri Lankan Army’s 23rd division has its base. The area is firmly under government control, as is the main A11 road from the eastern districts to the Welikanda area. The Karuna camp at Mutugalla village is near a Sri Lankan army post.
Independent sources have provided detailed information on abductions and recruitment of children by the Karuna group and the LTTE. In February the UN special adviser on children and armed conflict, Allan Rock, reported to the Security Council on Karuna abductions of children with state complicity and on child recruitment by the LTTE, based on his visit to Sri Lanka in November. Human Rights Watch has provided the government with its 100-page report on Karuna abductions, Complicit in Crime: State Collusion in Abductions and Child Recruitment by the Karuna Group, published in January. With case studies, maps and photographs, the report shows how Karuna cadres operate with impunity in government-controlled areas, abducting boys and young men, training them in camps, and deploying them for combat.
“The government says it needs evidence to start an investigation, but it already has ample information,” Adams said. “In addition to UN documentation and testimonies in our report, many families have made formal complaints to the police.”
Last year President Rajapakse created a one-man commission to look at abductions and enforced disappearances across the country. The commissioner came to Batticaloa in January, two months after canceling his first scheduled visit without warning. Families with abducted children were informed in a haphazard manner and then could not find the meeting place, which was changed at the last minute. Some of them did meet the commissioner, but his staff prevented others from providing information.
In December the military summoned the mothers of some children abducted by the Karuna group to an army base and asked them to provide information about their cases. The military pressured the mothers to say that their children were taken by “an unidentified group.”
Karuna has denied allegations that his forces are abducting or recruiting children. He told Human Rights Watch in a telephone communication on February 9 that his forces had no members under age 18, and that they would discipline any commander who tried to recruit a person under that age.
In January the TMVP released regulations for its military wing, stating that 18 was the minimum age for recruitment, and specifying penalties for members who conscript children. Karuna said he was willing to discuss ways that the regulations could be improved, but said that unscheduled visits to his camps were not possible due to security concerns.
On March 19, Human Rights Watch wrote to the TMVP, requesting a response to the recent allegations of continued child abductions in Batticaloa district. As of March 28, the TMVP had not replied.
“The Karuna group is doing the government’s dirty work,” Adams said. “It’s time for authorities in Colombo to stop this group from using children in its forces.”
Further information:
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NEPAL: Girls suffer horrific abuses in Terai [news]
[RAUTAHAT, 29 March 2007] - In the remote Pathaya village of Rautahat district, some 200km southeast of the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, local women are coming to terms with seeing three young girls killed in recent clashes between supporters of the ethnic Madhesi party and former Maoist rebels.
“There have been sleepless nights for every witness and yet they could do nothing to save these girls from their perpetrators,” said women’s rights activist Shobha Gautam, who had travelled to the area to report on the incident. “This was a crime against humanity. I’m still too shocked to recount the details.”
Rights groups say Saraswati Upreti, Pratima Pariyar and Usha Thapa - all aged between 16 and 18 years old and Maoist sympathisers - were killed by supporters of the Madhesi People’s Rights Forum (MPRF) on 21 March.
The girls were dragged to a local Hindu temple in Rautahat where they were raped, tortured, had their breasts cut off and their heads crushed with rocks in front of hundreds of people in broad daylight.
“Why is there so much hatred? Why is it always helpless women who have to suffer the most?” cried a local female villager who declined to reveal her name for fear that she would be killed for sharing any information about the incident. No villager in Pathaya was willing to say anything about the incident as they too feared for their lives.
Hundreds of villagers have reportedly left their homes in Pathaya and neighbouring villages fearing recurring violence.
The MPRF has been organising protests for the past three months, demanding autonomy for the Madhesi people in the southern Terai region. During the protests, some MPRF protesters have targeted Pahadis, Nepalese hill people who make up the majority of Maoist supporters in the region.
NGOs have expressed concern that the deteriorating security in the Terai is affecting the most vulnerable and that the recent killing of three girls will lead to more violence against women. The fact that most local Terai men live and work in India, trying to provide for their families, makes the many women living alone with their children feel more insecure.
“The Terai violence has so much impact on women. This incident has stirred so much fear of insecurity among women across the nation, mostly in the Terai region, where there is no sign of violence stopping now,” said Devkumari Mahara, an activist with the Women’s Rehabilitation Centre (WOREC), a national NGO focussing on the protection of women.
Mahara added that women’s rights activists were also at risk. “We often get attacked and abused, even as women’s rights defenders. You can imagine the vulnerability of ordinary women,” she said.
Kamala Rai, an activist who works in Dhanusa, one of the most volatile districts of the Terai, said that incidents of rape and abuse could be on the rise amid escalating violence. But most of them would go unreported as the victims would not be willing to report the cases to the police, whom they do not trust, she said.
“Can you believe that a 72-year-old woman was recently raped many times? But the rapists managed to get away as the security system of the country has totally failed,” Rai said.
Further information
[Source: IRIN]
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=12946
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**QUIZ**
The International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action was held yesterday, 4 April 2007. Test your knowledge with this week's CRIN quiz!
http://www.crin.org/quiz/index.asp?quizID=1029
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