16 February 2006
Children and Armed Conflict CRINMAIL 94
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- OFFICE OF THE SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE ON CHILDREN AND ARMED CONFLICT: New Appointment [news]
- OPTIONAL PROTOCOL: Reports Submitted to the Committee on the Rights of the Child [news]
- SUDAN: Impact of the Violence in Darfur on Education [news]
- UGANDA: Olara Otunnu Says Children are Real Victims of War [news]
- CONFERENCE: Youth and Conflict [event and call for papers]
- IRAQ: Children's Hospital Struggling in Wake of Bombing [news]
- CANADA: Children and Armed Conflict Working Group [workshop and call for information]
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Your submissions are welcome if you are working in the area of children and conflict. To contribute, email us at info@crin.org. Adobe Acrobat is required for viewing some of the documents, and if required can be downloaded from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html
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OFFICE OF THE SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE ON CHILDREN AND ARMED CONFLICT: New Appointment [news]
[NEW YORK, 8 February 2006] - Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy was yesterday appointed Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict. She succeeds Olara Otunnu, who completed his term in July 2005.
Mr. Otunnu was the first person to serve as Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, and was appointed one year after the groundbreaking 1996 report by Graça Machel focused global attention on the devastating impact of armed conflict on children.
"Ms. Coomaraswamy has a long record in defending the rights of women and children," said UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Rima Salah. "UNICEF looks forward to working closely with her to ensure that the pressing issue of children being abused and exploited in armed conflict remains high on the global agenda."
A native of Sri Lanka, Ms. Coomaraswamy is an internationally known human rights advocate. She is currently the Chairperson of the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission and served most recently as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women.
The chaos of conflict, including the breakdown of social services and population displacement, leaves children extremely vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. Girls are routinely targeted in campaigns of sexual violence and exploitation. Hundreds of thousands of children are recruited and used by armed forces and groups as combatants, messengers, spies, porters and cooks and for sexual services.
The appointment comes at a critical juncture in the history of advocating for the protection of these children. In 2005 the Security Council unanimously adopted a landmark resolution that obligates the United Nations system to establish a mechanism to monitor and report on grave violations of children’s rights during war by both governments and armed groups.
Ensuring the resolution is enforced is critical to ending the impunity that surrounds these egregious violations, which include the killing or maiming of children; the recruitment and use of children by armed forces and groups; attacks against schools or hospitals; rape and other forms of sexual violence; the abduction of children; and denial of humanitarian access.
Read the press release
Visit the website of the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict
More information on the Security Council Resolution
Read the Graça Machel report
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OPTIONAL PROTOCOL: Reports Submitted to the Committee on the Rights of the Child [news]
The 41st session of the Committee on the Rights of the Child took place last month in Geneva. During the session, the Committee examined reports from Andorra, Bangladesh and Switzerland on efforts to comply with the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict (OPAC).
Andorra ratified the Protocol in 2001. The Committee noted that the fact that Andorra did not have armed forces did not exclude the possibility of groups undertaking efforts to recruit children for foreign armed forces and the Committee was concerned that the recruitment of children was not explicitly mentioned as a crime in the State party’s criminal code. The Committee requested that the State party provide information in its next report on refugee and migrant children within its jurisdiction who could have been involved in hostilities in their home country and on the assistance provided for their physical and psychological recovery and their social reintegration.
Bangladesh ratified the Optional Protocol in 2000. The Committee regretted the lack of information on the degree to which the Protocol was part of the National Plan of Action against sexual abuse and exploitation of children, including trafficking. It recommended that the State party set in law the minimum age for recruitment; and ensured that its laws guarantee the prosecution of persons responsible for the use of children under the legally permitted age in military activities. The Committee recommended that the State party ensure that all relevant professional groups, in particular military personnel, be trained on the provisions of the Convention and its Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict.
Switzerland ratified the Optional Protocol in 2002. The Committee noted with appreciation that the conscription of persons under the age of 18 was clearly prohibited in the Swiss federal laws. But it noted that the State party was a country of destination of asylum-seeking and migrant children coming from war-torn countries, and noted with concern that authorities who interviewed children applying for asylum received no special training for dealing appropriately with children affected by military activities and armed conflicts. Furthermore, it was also concerned about the lack of specific integration programmes or activities for former child soldiers.
The NGO Group for the Convention on the Rights of the Child produced summaries of the discussions between the Committee and the government delegations of Andorra, Bangladesh and Switzerland.
The Committee on the Rights of the Child issued Concluding Observations (recommendations) to the governments of Andorra, Bangladesh and Switzerland on how to improve the situation of children affected by armed conflict in their countries.
At the 42nd session (15 May - 2 June 2006 ), the Committee will examine reports from Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, El Salvador and Iceland on their efforts to comply with the Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict.
[Source: UN, NGO Group and CRIN]
For more information, contact:
Committee on the Rights of the Child
Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
8-14 Avenue de la Paix, CH 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Tel: + 41 22 917 9000; Fax: + 41 22 917 9022
Website: http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/crc
More about the 41st session
Daily news and summaries of CRC sessions
More information on OPAC
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SUDAN: Impact of the Violence in Darfur on Education [news]
An estimated 300,000 people have lost their lives in Darfur. Over two million have been forced from their homes or fled in fear. The United States has called it a genocide. And still the violence in Darfur, Sudan, continues to destroy entire communities.
In this crisis alert, NetAid and the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children explain the background of the violence and show the devastating effect it has on children's education. The page also provides a first-person account from the camps of displaced people and an interview with a young activist. Finally, it shows what young people can do to stop the genocide through two simple, effective actions.
Go to the Darfur Crisis Alert
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UGANDA: Olara Otunnu Says Children are Real Victims of War [news]
[LONDON, 18 January 2006] - The worst place in the world to be a child today is northern Uganda, the former UN representative for children in war said, blaming rebels and government forces for trapping an entire population in a nightmare of terror, disease and death.
Rebels have kidnapped more than 20,000 children for use as soldiers, sex slaves and porters while the government is keeping hundreds of thousands of others in squalid camps where disease and violence are rampant. “When adults wage war children pay the highest price,” Olara Otunnu said in a speech in London. “Children are the primary victims of armed conflict.”
Almost 2 million people have been “herded like animals” into the camps in northern Uganda where 1,000 people are dying a week due to disease and violence, Otunnu said. He added that rape by government troops, many of them HIV positive, was common.
The government says the camps were set up a decade ago to protect local people from attacks and abductions by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), whose 19-year insurgency has taken a horrific toll on northern Uganda’s Acholi population. Otunnu, who comes from northern Uganda, accused President Yoweri Museveni, a southerner, of forcing the Acholi people into the camps in a deliberate campaign to wipe them out. The government strongly denied this.
“An entire society is being destroyed in full view of the international community,” Otunnu said, calling on Western leaders to demand the Ugandan government dismantle the camps and send in international monitors. Otunnu said there were 200 camps. The government said there were 100.
Ugandan Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Oryem Henry Okello dismissed Otunnu’s claims, saying people had gone to the camps to escape LRA atrocities. “It’s absolutely true that the situation in northern Uganda is appalling,” said Okello, himself an Acholi and a lawmaker for the northern Kitgum district. “What is not true is that there’s (a) genocidal project to destroy the Acholi people.”
Otunnu, who was UN Under Secretary-General and Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict from 1997 to 2005, said the situation in northern Uganda was far worse than in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region.
In Darfur, tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than 2 million forced from their homes since 2003. “The UN said recently that the death rate in northern Uganda is twice that of Darfur,” he said. “Northern Uganda has the worst infant mortality in the world today.
[Source: Reuters]
Read the full article
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CONFERENCE: Youth and Conflict [event and call for papers]
Date: 14-15 April 2006
Location: Washington, DC, United States
This call for papers will provide a platform to expand the dialogue to include old and new approaches to youth issues in conflict zones. It will also provide opportunities for the next generation of scholars and practitioners to think critically about this field. The subsequent conference, which is organised by the Peacebuilding and Development Institute at American Universtiy, Washington, DC, will be a unique opportunity to present recent work and to discuss current ideas and research on youth and conflict, especially by students and young people.
In conflict and disaster areas, youth are burdened with increasing responsibility in their community while receiving little support or recognition from adults. In such situations, young people are faced with difficult choices in their struggle to survive and often mobilise themselves in a variety of ways. And therefore, these dynamic situations reflect the strengths and abilities that young people possess and are faced with on a daily basis. Their actions are being recognised, increasingly, by practitioners today, but are not thoroughly incorporated into the mainstream discussions.
Topics of interest for submission include:
Youth and violence:
- How and why are young people pulled into conflict?
- Why do most young people choose not to get involved in armed conflict or engage in violence?
Youth Contributions to Peacebuilding:
- In what ways have young people responded constructively to conflict?
- What have youth groups or dynamic young individuals done to promote peace in
- Conflict zones and what could be done in the future? (at geopolitical, intra-community, family, and inter-personal levels)
Relationship between Conflict and Youth:
- How do the following factors force young people into conflict and how are these factors exacerbated by conflict?
1. Youth livelihood
2. Separation from Family and Loss of Parents
3. Disruption or Lack of Education
4. Poor Health
5. Displacement
6. Gender-based violence
Relationship between Policy and Practice:
- International norms and practice relating to youth as they contribute to or influence conflict:
1. Domestic abuse
2. Trafficking of youth and vulnerable populations
3. Labor Exploitation
4. Political Violence
5. Legal Protection of Young People in Conflict Zones
Submission deadline: 3 March 2006
For more information, contact:
Saji Prelis, Programme Coordinator
Peacebuilding and Development Institute
American University, School of Int'l Service
4400 Massachusetts Ave
NW, Washington, DC 20016-8071 USA
Tel: +1 202 885 2014; Fax: +1 202 885 1661
Email: saji@american.edu
Website: http://www.american.edu/sis/peacebuilding
More information here
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IRAQ: Children's Hospital Struggling in Wake of Bombing [news]
[BAGHDAD, 24 January 2006] - The country's main children's hospital is operating at less than one third of its full capacity after a bomb attack just over a month ago, say doctors. The Children's Central Teaching Hospital in the capital, Baghdad, was hit by a suicide bomb targeting a police official on 19 December. Two security guards and ten staff members were injured in the attack.
"The explosion hit the emergency clinic causing major damage in the surgical departments, laboratories and patients' rooms, and destroyed much of the medical equipment," said hospital director Shehab Ahmed al-Azawi. The teaching hospital, which avoided being hit in past conflicts, is Iraq's only hospital specialised in children's medicine. Al-Azawi added that all surgical procedures had been cancelled since the attack, requiring urgent operations to be carried out in other hospitals not specialised in children's health care.
Following the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in March 2003, the hospital was refurbished and supplied with equipment and medicines by several international organisations, such as the Italian Red Cross, the UN Children's Fund, the World Health Organisation and the United Arab Emirates' Red Crescent Society.
"Even with all the repairs, the hospital was still suffering from shortages of equipment, oxygen bottles and medicine," said Dr Maha Bashi, a technical manager at the hospital. "After the attack, though, the hospital found itself in a critical condition." Bashi went on to note that the number of available beds has fallen from 365 to only 100.
According to al-Azawi, equipment salvaged from the bombing is now lying on the ground or on tables that have been temporarily set up in the corridors of the hospital. Meanwhile, a sign hanging at the entrance apologising for unavoidable delays is providing little solace for desperate parents. "My child is only one year old and has suffered a lot because we had to travel 15 km to get here," said Salem Hameed. "The long queue is making him worse, but I have no another choice because it's the only place specialised in asthma cases."
Ahmed Abdul Kader, an official from the Ministry of Health, said that rebuilding the hospital would require about US $10 million dollars, adding that the Spanish government had offered some funding.
[Source: IRIN News]
Read the full article
More on the human rights situation in Iraq
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CANADA: Children and Armed Conflict Working Group [workshop and call for information]
Date: 8 March 2006
Location: Ottawa, Canada
The Children and Armed Conflict Working Group will host a workshop that will focus on ways to contribute to the effective implementation of Resolution 1612, which provides for new mechanisms to protect the rights of children and youth in conflict situations. It will also be an opportunity for networking and plan future activities.
Guest speakers will include UN officials, international NGO leaders, and youth/youth leaders from conflict countries. Morning sessions will focus on Resolution 1612 and afternoon sessions will focus on youth in peace processes, demobilisation, and monitoring and reporting for action. Suggestions to discuss additional issues are welcome.
The Children and Armed Conflict Working Group is seeking participation from youth groups from affected countries. They would like to have representation from Africa and Asia as well as Colombia.
For more information, contact:
Kathy Vandergrift
Children and Armed Conflict Working Group
c/o Canadian Peacebuilding Coordinating Committee
1 Nicholas Street, #1216, Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 7B7, Canada
Telephone: +1 613 820 0272
Email: kathyvandergrift@rogers.com
Website: http://www.peacebuild.ca/working/?load=children
More information here
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