Submitted by crinadmin on
Summary: UNITED NATIONS (AP), 7 May, 2002 --
Wilmot Wungko was 5 when he and
his mother fled Liberia as war
erupted around them. He saw a man
get killed before his eyes. He
watched as schools were burned to
the ground.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:49 p.m. ET
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Wilmot Wungko was 5 when he and his
mother fled Liberia as war erupted around them. He saw a man
get killed before his eyes. He watched as schools were burned to
the ground.
``I was too young at the time to really understand what was
happening. I heard the sounds of guns. I saw people running. I
saw people shooting,'' Wungko, now 16, told the U.N. Security
Council on Tuesday. ``I was later told that a war was going on.''
Wungko was one of three children from conflict zones who
addressed the powerful council a day before the start of the U.N.
children's summit. The summit will bring together leaders and
ministers from over 180 countries to set new goals to improve
the health, education and security of the world's 2 billion children.
Some 300,000 boys and girls under the age of 18 -- many as
young as 7 or 8 -- are fighting in conflicts in some 30 countries,
said Olara A. Otunnu, the U.N. special envoy on children and
armed conflict.
Eliza Kantardzic, a 17-year-old from Bosnia and Herzegovina, said
war destroyed her childhood.
``Everything that you know falls apart,'' she said. ``The only
thing you can see is fear and death.''
Kantardzic delivered a message to the council from the 400-
strong Children's Forum, a gathering of young people being held
ahead of the U.N. summit: The only way to protect children is to
stop conflicts before they start.
``War and politics have always been an adults game,'' said
Kantardzic, a delegate to the forum. ``But children have always
been the losers.''
Children are often abducted from their homes and forced to fight,
and many girls are forced into sexual slavery.
``We must put an end to this abomination,'' Otunnu said.
``For far too long, the use of child soldiers has been seen as
merely regrettable,'' U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told a
panel discussion after the council meeting. ``We are here to
ensure it is recognized as intolerable.''
He said the rights of children should be a central concern of
peace negotiations and peace building.
``Children are our future. To accept the use of child soldiers in
conflict is to accept the destruction of our future, one child at a
time,'' Annan told the panel on the problem of child soldiers.
The Security Council adopted a statement condemning ``the
continued targeting and use of children in armed conflicts,
including their abduction, compulsory recruitment, mutilation,
forced displacement, sexual exploitation and abuse.''
It also called for member states to ratify a protocol which bans
children under the age of 18 from participating in armed conflicts.
The panel discussion heard comments from a demobilized child
soldier named China who spent 11 years fighting in Uganda, and
another child named Ishmael who became a soldier in Sierra
Leone after his parents were killed.
``Today, I smile because I am afraid to cry. What was done to
me could have turned me into a monster,'' said China, who now
lives in Denmark.
She appealed to the world community to protect children from
conflict. If not, she said, ``there will be so many monsters
tomorrow that you'll ask yourselves where they all came from.''
Association: The New York Times