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Extracts from the report the full report can be obtained via
Minority Rights Group
The workshop was organised by the Human Rights Peace Centre
, MRG and the Faculty of Law Makerere University
Workshop background and aims
The Horn and Great Lakes regions of Africa have in recent
decades been devastated by internal wars, and their civilian
populations have suffered enonnously.
The UN (Machel) Report on The Impact of Armed Conflict on
Children (1996) recognizes that the human cost of war is paid
disproportionately by children. With most of tod&y's wars taking
place within, rather than between states, involving different
communities and ethnic groups, minority and indigenous children
are especially likely to experience the adverse consequences,
including separation from family, breakdown of health and
education services, destruction of communities, displacement and
exile as refugees, forced recruitment and experience of torture,
gender-based violence and extrajudicial killings. Exclusion from
humanitarian relief and during post-conflict reconstruction also
particularly affects such children.
Through the UN Declaration on Minorities and other international
instruments, the international community has emphasised the
need to protect vulnerable communities, and through the UN
(Machel) Report it has expressed grave concern about the impact
of armed conflict on children. Recognizing that the welfare of
minority and indigenous children is doubly jeopardized in armed
conflict~ the Human Rights and Peace Centre (HURIPEC),
Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, and Minority Rights Group
International (MRG), London, UK, jointly organized the Workshop
on Armed Conflict and Minority and Indigenous Children in the
Horn and Great Lakes Regions ofAfrica, held in Kampala on 23-24
April 1998.
HURIPEC has a special interest in early warning and conflict
resolution, refugees and displacement, post-conflict development,
Africa's minorities and human rights education. MRG researched
into the impact of armed conflict on minority and indigenous
children as a contribution to the UN (Machel) Report, and in 1997
published its research.
Concluding session and recommendations
Aims and objectives
Concluding session and workshop recommendations
participants sought in the final session to consolidate the 1 wide
range of issues and concerns discussed into practical proposals
for positive change. Although the subject of the workshop had
emerged as beset with dilemmas , all agreed on the urgent need
for responses to tackle both more immediate questions of relief
and rehabilitation and the longer-term peace-building agenda. A
key challenge was to apply internationally agreed norms and
standards effectively in the regional and local context, a need
that cut across borders, since, in the words of one participant:
'We are all potential minorities, capable of being marginalized and
disenfranchised.'
To conclude, participants agreed on eight broad recommendations
Act ors at all levels should prioritize sensitization on minority and
indigenous rights and the rights of the minority or indigenous
child.
Locally appropriate forms of multicultural and intercultural
ducation and education for peace should be promoted, drawing
on the best existing models.
International standards should be effectively incorporated nto
domestic law, with state-level actors and others undertaking
monitoring and reporting, promoting best practice, and seeking
just punishment for perpetrators of abuses.
Traditional. approaches to conflict-prevention and peace-building
in Africa should be far more widely recognized and supported.
The marginalization of ethnic minorities should be addressed at
all levels, including their empowerment at state and local level
through political power-sharing and more inclusive politics.
The international community, states, opposition movements and
civil society should sharpen their concern for the rights and best
interests of the child, with special attention to the girl child.
Donors, relief organizations, state agencies and others should
urgently address the exclusion of ethnic-minority children and
their communities from aid programmes and humanitarian relief.
Links and cooperation between local, regional and ,international
bodies, especially NGOs, require strengthening to help build the
impetus for constructive change.
Justice Kanyeihamba closed the workshop. He commended its
proposals and said that he was delighted that Uganda was able
to host what was in his view a ground-breaking event.