CRIN Children and Armed Conflict 156

CRINMAIL 156:

In this issue:

UN SRSG submits annual report to General Assembly

News and updates:
- Children "inadvertently" sent to the frontline: United Kingdom
- Military aid to countries that recruit child soldiers: United States
- State Violence: Syria, Yemen.
- Deadly suicide attack: Somalia
- The end of the conflict in Libya
- Armed group in Darfur commits to stop using child soldiers

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SRSG submits annual report to General Assembly

The Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) for Children and Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, submitted her 2011 annual report to the Third Committee of the General Assembly on October 12, 2011. The report covers the period August 2010 to August 2011 and highlights:

• The agreement on two new Action Plans between the UN with the Governments of Afghanistan and Chad to halt the recruitment and use of children by armed forces.

• The adoption by the UN Security Council (UNSC) of Resolution 1998 (July 12, 2011), expanding the criteria for listing parties to conflict in the Secretary-General’s annual report to now include parties who attack schools and hospitals. Read more on UNSC resolution 1998.

• Children and justice in armed conflict: there is an increasing concern with the detention and prosecution of children formerly associated with armed groups. Read CRIN's editorial on Children and International Justice.

Read the full statement of the SRSG to the General Assembly.

British children under Age 18 "inadvertently" sent to Iraq and Afghanistan

According to recent reports, the British government confirmed that four British children were sent to the frontline in Iraq and Afghanistan between April 2008 and March 2010.

Junior Defence Minister, Andrew Robathan, has noted that the responsibility for the “mistake” falls on military commanders, who “inadvertently” deployed the children to areas where their lives could have been at risk from enemy fire and homemade explosives devices.

In the United Kingdom (UK), it is legal for the armed forces to recruit children aged 16 and 17, as long as they are not deployed to the frontlines. Two of the four soldiers deployed were just shy of their 18th birthdays.

The UK ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in December 1991. Under the Convention, State parties must refrain from recruiting children under the age of 15 and ensure they do not take a direct part in hostilities.

Under the Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict, State parties are called on to prevent children under the age of 18 from taking a direct part in the hostilities.

The UK ratified the Optional Protocol in 2003, but issued the following declaration: the UK “will take all feasible measures to ensure that members of its armed forces who have not attained the age of 18 years do not take a direct part in hostilities.” But, in the event of a “genuine military need” and by “the nature and urgency of the situation,” the deployment of recruits under the age of 18 would not be excluded. Read more.

Also in the UK, military police have investigated almost 100 incidents in which UK forces have been accused of killing or wounding civilians in Afghanistan. The dossier shows that at least 30 Afghan civilians, including women and children, were reported to have been killed and up to 42 injured in the incidents.

The documents from the British military, which has had thousands of personnel in the country in the past decade, cast a rare light on the pattern and spread of alleged attacks on civilians that have gone largely unnoticed and unreported. Read more.

US waives aid curbs on militaries using child soldiers

For the second year in a row, United States (U.S.) President Barack Obama has waived a Congressionally-mandated ban on military aid for four countries that use child soldiers, according to a memo released by the White House.

The Obama administration will continue to provide military aid to Yemen, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and recently declared South Sudan despite their respective militaries' use of child soldiers. The provision of military aid to countries which use child soldiers is banned under the US Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008.

All four, which are slated to receive a total of more than 200 million dollars in military aid in 2012, were given waivers by the administration last year, as well.

The latest decision was denounced by Human Rights Watch which said it showed "a lack of leadership and a disregard for US law". Read more.

State violence

In Syria, the violent repression against anti-government demonstrators continues. Three children were among 25 people reported killed last Thursday, taking the overall death toll since widespread public protests began seven months ago to well over 3,000. Read more.

On Saturday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke out against the reported killing of dozens of protesters in Syria, urging Government authorities to immediately end their military operations against civilians and answer the people's call for reforms. Read more.

In Yemen, four people, including three children, were killed on Sunday 30 October, 2011 when troops loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh shelled a petrol station in a region north of the capital.

Months of anti-government protests have divided impoverished Yemen, pushing the country to the verge of civil war and a humanitarian crisis.

The UN Security Council issued a resolution a week ago deploring the fighting and calling on Saleh to leave office in line with a Gulf-brokered power transition plan. Saleh has dug his heels in, surviving an assassination attempt and three times agreeing to sign the Gulf plan only to back out at the last minute. Read more.

Earlier this month, the head of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) called for the urgent protection of children in Yemen who are being caught in the crossfire of the civil unrest that began earlier this year.

According to the agency, at least 94 children have been killed and 240 wounded by gunshots or shelling since the clashes between security forces and protesters seeking to oust President Ali Abdullah Saleh began earlier this year.

Malnutrition rates were “alarmingly high” in the country even before the current violence broke out, UNICEF’s Executive Director Anthony Lake noted, and its impact on the poorest people has only been compounded by rising food prices and collapsing basic health services.

Of 3.6 million children under five years of age in Yemen, at least 43 per cent are underweight and 58 per cent are stunted. Read more.

Deadly attack on Mogadishu

A bomb explosion in Mogadishu, Somalia, on 4 October, 2011, left at least five women and nine children dead. The bomb exploded close to a government building in the central part of the city.

The attack, which apparently targeted the Ministry of Education and other ministries, was the most deadly attack in the country since 2007, according to media reports.

Condemning the attack in the strongest terms, the UN Security Council reaffirmed that terrorism in all its forms and manifestations is “criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of its motivation, wherever, whenever and by whomsoever committed.”

Also condemning the attack was Radhika Coomaraswamy, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, who called the killing of children an “unspeakable crime.”

“Children in Somalia suffer daily through war and famine. Those killed and wounded were bravely attempting to further their education despite the situation in Mogadishu,” she said in a statement.

The Islamist militant group known as Al-Shabaab, whose fighters withdrew from Mogadishu in August, has reportedly claimed responsibility for the attack. Read full article.

Children return home

NATO's mission in Libya officially ended this week after the death of Muammar Gaddafi on 20 October, 2011.

Displaced persons are now returning to Sirte where anti-Gaddafi forces and Gaddafi's loyalists have been fighting for weeks. There have been reports that children returning to the city have been hurt by grenades and other weapons left over from the bitter struggle for the city. Read article.

The end of the conflict also brought to light evidence of violations committed by anti-Gaddafi forces. The new authorities in Libya must stamp out arbitrary detention and widespread abuse of detainees, Amnesty International said in a new briefing paper: Detention Abuses Staining the New Libya.

The paper reveals a pattern of beatings and ill-treatment of captured al-Gaddafi soldiers, suspected loyalists and alleged mercenaries in western Libya. In some cases there is clear evidence of torture in order to extract confessions or as a punishment. The organisation also found that children have been held together with adults and that women detainees have been supervised by male guards. Download the briefing paper.

Armed group in Darfur commits to stopping use of child soldiers

A faction of one of the armed groups in Darfur has agreed to prohibit the use of child soldiers in its ranks after discussions with the joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Sudanese region (UNAMID).

Sudan Liberation Army’s Historical Leadership, a breakaway group of the Sudan Liberation Army/Abdel Wahid (SLA/Abdel Wahid), submitted an action plan to the UN committing to end recruitment and use of child soldiers in compliance with Security Council resolutions on children and armed conflict.

The UN has received similar action plans from other armed movements in Darfur, including SLA/Free Will, SLA/Abu Gasim (Mother), and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM Peace Wing).

Fifteen armed groups or armed forces in Darfur are listed in the Secretary-General’s latest annual report on children and armed conflict as recruiters or users of children. Download the report.

Between 2009 and February this year, the North Sudan Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Commission, with the support of the UN, registered 1,041 former child soldiers in Darfur. Read full story.

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