Children
Security council debates issue of children in war

afrol.com, 26 July - UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy today called on the UN Security council to ensure that all those who violate children's rights in times of war - whether governments, rebel groups or corporations - are held accountable. 

"We have far too often said that we will not permit children to be raped, mutilated, recruited, hurt and forced to lose their childhood," Ms. Bellamy told the UN Security Council today. "Yet time and time again we have stood and watched helplessly - in Rwanda, in Sierra Leone, in Sudan, in Afghanistan, in Kosovo and East Timor - while cruelty and indifference prevailed." 

Ms. Bellamy spoke to a special Security Council session which is considering the issue of children and armed conflict following a report by the Secretary-General released last Friday. The Council is expected to pass a new resolution on the issue next week. 

Ms. Bellamy welcomed the Security Council's attention to this issue for the second time in one year, placing children high on the political agenda of the UN. However, she emphasized that a resolution would only make a difference to the lives of children if it was strictly monitored and enforced. She called on the Council to monitor the behaviour of states and others and ensure that child rights violators are shamed, disgraced and held accountable for their actions. 

"Where warring parties or others violate the provisions of any resolution, UNICEF urges Council Members to speak out, collectively
and individually, to make it clear that violators are overstepping the bounds of acceptable behaviour," she said. 

Ms. Bellamy asked that the resolution include a range of critical interventions to assist and protect children, such as the rapid restart of education programmes to help restore hope and a sense of normality for traumatized children, as well as to reduce the chance of recruitment of child soldiers. She also urged the Council to stress the need for special demobilization programmes for child soldiers, landmines awareness programmes, and the protection of hospitals, schools and other sites where children are likely to be found. 

UNICEF estimates that more than two million children have died as a result of war in the last decade and another 12 million have been left
homeless. Landmines kill or injure as many as 500 children each month. At least 300,000 children under 18 are involved in over 30 armed conflicts worldwide, as child soldiers, porters, messengers, cooks and sex slaves. All children in affected societies suffer from the direct and indirect consequences of war. 

Ms. Bellamy said she was encouraged by progress since the Security Council adopted its first resolution (Res. 1261) on children in conflict a year ago. She applauded the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), adopted by the General Assembly in May, which raises the minimum age for compulsory recruitment into the armed forces from 15 to 18 years. Ms. Bellamy urged governments to ratify the Optional Protocol as quickly as possible, and noted that the UN Millennium Summit in New York offered an opportunity to do so. 

Highlighting the international focus on children in conflict this year, Ms. Bellamy noted the International Conference on War-Affected Children to be held in Winnipeg, Canada, in September. She also noted roundbreaking commitments to protect children in war made at recent OSCE and ECOWAS meetings. 

Ms. Bellamy told the Security Council: "We cannot ask war-affected children to wait any longer for their rights to be respected. Developing minds and bodies require attention now. Childhood is finite and, once lost, irreplaceable." 

UNICEF is helping in over 25 war-affected countries to restart schools, supply drugs and vaccines, reunite children with their families, operate clinics and hospitals, support traumatized children, dig wells, campaign against child recruitment, and promote demobilization and disarmament. 

Source: UNICEF

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