30 April 2008 - CRIN Children and Armed Conflict 118
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**NEWS IN BRIEF**
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MYANMAR/ BURMA: Growing Up Under Militarisation - Abuse and agency of children in Karen State [report]
[30 April 2008] - As the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), the military junta currently ruling Burma, works to extend and consolidate its control over all areas of Karen State, local children, their families and communities confront regular, often violent, abuses at the hands of the regime's officers, soldiers and civilian officials.
While the increasing international media attention on the human rights situation in Burma has occasionally addressed the plight of children, such reporting has been almost entirely incident-based, and focused on specific, particularly emotive issues, such as child soldiers. Although incident-based reporting is relevant, it misses the far greater problems of structural violence, caused by the oppressive social, economic and political systems commensurate with militarisation, and the combined effects of a variety of abuses, which negatively affect a far larger number of children in Karen State.
Furthermore, focusing on specific, emotive issues sensationalises the abuses committed against children and masks the complexities of the situation. In reports on children and armed conflict in Karen State and elsewhere, individual children's agency, efforts to resist abuse and capacity to deal with the situations they live in, as well as the efforts made by their families and communities to provide for and protect them, tend to be marginalised and ignored. Drawing on over 160 interviews with local children, their families and communities, this report seeks to provide a forum for these people to explain in their own words the wider context of abuse and their own responses to attempts at denying children their rights.
With additional background provided by official SPDC press statements and order documents, international media sources, reports by international aid agencies, as well as academic studies, this report argues that only by listening to local voices regarding the situation of abuse in which they live and taking as a starting point for advocacy and action local conceptions of rights and violations can external actors avoid the further marginalisation of children living in these areas and begin to build on villagers' own strategies for resisting abuse and claiming their rights.
For more information, contact:
Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG)
Tel: +66 (0)852 685519
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.khrg.org
Further information
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infodetail.asp?id=17079
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PHILIPPINES: Report of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict [publication]
[29 April 2008] – Both rebel and Government forces have killed and maimed children during ongoing conflicts in the Philippines, according to a report released on Tuesday by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
The report states that 19 children were killed in conflict situations between July 2005 and November 2007, while 42 were maimed. Just over half of these cases were perpetrated by government security forces, a fifth were attributed to the Abu Sayyaf Group/Jemaah Islamiya rebels, and eight per cent to the communist insurgents, the New People’s Army (NPA).
The report also says there is evidence that Government paramilitary forces and rebel groups, including the NPA and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, recruited children during the same period.
Overall, the Secretary-General’s report finds that around half of verified grave violations against children were carried out by Government security forces, a third by the NPA, and 15 per cent by the Abu Sayyaf Group/Jemaah Islamiya. But the report adds that the lower number of cases reported for the rebels is most likely due to a lack of access to these groups.
The Secretary-General recommends that State and non-State actors enter into dialogue with the UN to end the recruitment of children as well as other grave violations of children’s rights.
See also: the Report of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict in Nepal issued this month.
[Source UN]
Further information
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=17173&flag=report
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DR CONGO: Suspected war criminal wanted [news]
[BRUSSELs, 29 April 2008] – Congolese officials and UN peacekeepers should take swift action to enforce the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrant against a rebel leader accused of forcibly conscripting child soldiers and of other abuses, Human Rights Watch said today.
The ICC on April 29 revealed the unsealing of the arrest warrant against Bosco Ntaganda, charging him with the enlistment, conscription, and active use of children in 2002-2003 during the conflict in the northeastern district of Ituri when he was chief of military operations for the ethnic Hema militia group, the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC). Ntaganda is now the military chief of staff of the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) in the Congo, a position he took after leaving the UPC following internal conflicts in 2006.
Led by Laurent Nkunda, the CNDP is considered responsible for serious abuses against civilians in the North Kivu province of eastern Congo. But on January 23, 2008, the Congolese government signed a peace agreement in Goma, North Kivu, with 22 armed groups, including the CNDP. Under its terms all parties agreed to an immediate ceasefire and committed to respecting international human rights law.
“If Laurent Nkunda is truly committed to the Goma peace agreement, then he should immediately deliver Ntaganda to the international court,” said Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch’s Africa division. “Now is the time for Nkunda to put his professed commitment to human rights into action.”
Ntaganda is the fourth Congolese rebel leader sought by the ICC for war crimes. Three other Congolese defendants – Thomas Lubanga, Germain Katanga, and Mathieu Ngudjolo – are already in ICC custody.
Special envoys from the African Union, the European Union, the United States, the United Nations, and the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region played a vital role in brokering the Goma peace agreement. A number of these diplomats meet regularly with CNDP representatives as part of the peace process. Human Rights Watch urged them to use their influence to pressure CNDP officials to swiftly hand over Ntaganda to the ICC.
The ICC issued the arrest warrant against Ntaganda on August 22, 2006, but only made it public on April 28, 2008. Congolese authorities and officials in the United Nations Mission in the Congo (MONUC) have known of its existence and contents since it was first issued, but since Ntaganda remains active in a rebel group, have found it difficult to take action to arrest him.
“An alleged war criminal wanted by the world’s top court should not be allowed to walk free in the Congo,” said Van Woudenberg. “If Nkunda does not hand him over to the ICC, UN peacekeepers should take action to arrest Ntaganda as soon as possible.”
The crimes which Ntaganda is alleged to have committed occurred when he was the chief of military operations of the UPC. He was a close associate of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, the former head of the UPC, whom the ICC has also charged with the enlistment, conscription, and active use of children during the same period. Lubanga’s trial is due to begin in The Hague later this year.
Human Rights Watch has collected hundreds of testimonies from survivors documenting serious crimes allegedly committed by the UPC during Lubanga and Ntaganda’s leadership. These crimes include massacres against particular ethnic groups – especially those from the Lendu ethnic group - murder, torture, and rape. More recently, Human Rights Watch has documented crimes allegedly committed by CNDP forces during the time when Ntaganda was military chief of staff.
“Ntaganda has a track record of inflicting unbearable suffering on civilians in Eastern Congo,” said Van Woudenberg. “The ICC should charge him with the full range of the crimes for which he is responsible, allowing his victims the justice they desperately seek.”
Human Rights Watch research also indicates that there was support from senior political and military officials in Kinshasa as well as in Uganda and Rwanda to the UPC and other militias operating in Ituri. Human Right Watch also has consistently urged the prosecutor to investigate these senior officials for their role in the crimes committed in Ituri.
“Ending the culture of impunity requires the ICC’s prosecutor to go after those senior individuals in Kinshasa, Kigali, and Kampala who armed and supported the armed groups in Ituri,” said Van Woudenberg. “Only then will justice be done.”
[Source: Human Rights Watch]
Further information
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=17180&flag=news
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SRI LANKA: No Safety No Escape - Children and the escalating armed conflict [publication]
There is virtually no safety for children in Sri Lanka as the brutal armed conflict there escalates. Every day the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE), the Government armed forces, and paramilitary groups, such as the military wing of the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP), commit heinous crimes against children.
This report details a spectrum of violations against Sri Lankan children in the context of armed conflict and provides practical recommendations to the Government of Sri Lanka, the LTTE, the TMVP, the UN Security Council, and others.
For more information, contact:
Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict
c/o Womens' Commission for Refugee Women and Children, 122 E. 42nd Street, 12th floor, New York, NY 10168, USA
Tel: + 1 212 551 3111; Fax: + 1 212 551 3180
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.watchlist.org
Further information
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=16956
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UGANDA: Returning Home - Children’s perspectives on reintegration [publication]
The report "Returning Home - Children’s perspectives on reintegration" follows a study initiated by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child soldiers in which 116 children and youth reflect upon their experiences following abduction by the Lords Resistance Army (LRA).
They reveal the hardships and abuse they endured in the bush, the complexity of their emotional outcomes, and their physical, social, emotional and economic needs. They express articulately their ideas on how communities might better be prepared to welcome future returning children, and how reintegration services can foster the children’s own adjustment to life outside of an armed group prior to them returning to their communities.
The authors hope that their report will facilitate these children’s views being heard as forthcoming reintegration initiatives for LRA returnees are prepared in the context of ongoing peace negotiations in Uganda.
For more information, contact:
Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers
2th Floor, 9 Marshalsea Road, London, SE1 1EP, UK
Tel: + 44 20 7367 4110; Fax: + 44 20 7367 4129
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.child-soldiers.org
Further information
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=17000
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**NEWS IN BRIEF**
Armed Conflict: Coercion and Intimidation of Child Soldiers to Participate in Violence (April 2008)
http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=17174&flag=report
UN: Ban Ki-moon condemns Israeli killing of Palestinian civilians (29 April 2008)
http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=17164&flag=news
Iraq: An 'intolerable place for children' (Office of the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, 25 April 2008)
http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=17102&flag=news
Nepal: Report of the Secretary-General on children and armed conflict (April 2008)
http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=17084&flag=report
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