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Summary: This paper presents and analyses decisions from international judicial bodies that address children in situations of armed conflict.
The adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1989, combined with the development of international criminal justice through the 90’s had a great impact on the protection of children’s rights in armed conflicts situation. At the same time, the international community paid an increased attention on this specific issue. In 1992, the CRC Committee decided to devote its first General day of discussion to the topic of children in armed conflicts. Then the Machel Report was launched in 1993 in order to examine the realities and consequences of armed conflicts on children. It is a landmark report which also had an important impact. For the first time, Machel provided a complete picture of the situation and concluded that millions of children are affected. Indeed, she established that children are among the most important victims of wartime causalities and urged the international community to take concrete action. As a result, the UN took important measures. A series of resolutions have been adopted by the UN Security Council since 1999, an optional protocol to the CRC on the involvement of children in armed conflict was approved in 2000 and a Special Representative for the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflicts was appointed in 1997.
International judicial bodies, in charge of the application of international humanitarian law and international human rights law, also have paid increased attention to the violations of children’s rights in armed conflicts and started to develop an interesting body of case law on this issue. The main international jurisdictions that addressed children’s rights violations are the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR), the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) and the regional Courts of Human Rights (European and Inter-American Courts).
Despite all the progress made in this field, the situation of children affected by armed conflicts remains particularly critical. It was recently highlighted by the Human Rights Council when it opened the 15th Session agenda in September 2010 with the review of the Special Representative for Children in armed conflicts. As stressed by Siegrist, children’s rights violations in armed conflicts are still massive because committed with total impunity. Indeed, justice still remains very exceptional.
However, there are still reasons for optimism. Even if the number of cases is still limited, international jurisdictions developed an interesting case law in this area which deserves more attention. As stated by Feria Tinta when speaking about the Inter-American Court case law, such developments are the proof that “justice can bring to places where it appears that lawlessness reigns”. To this day, international jurisdictions addressed several types of violations that we can divide into seven categories...
Owner: Laurene Grazianipdf: http://www.crin.org/docs/Review of the international case law concerning children affected by armed conflicts.doc