The world is failing children with the futures of millions affected by conflicts across the globe at risk and perpetrators of “grave violations” against children not held accountable, according to UNICEF.
As the new year begins, the UN children’s agency highlighted numerous countries where children are suffering including Afghanistan – where some 5,000 were killed or maimed during the first three quarters of 2018, Cameroon – where schools, students and teachers are often coming under attack in the country’s North-West and South-West regions, Somalia – where more than 1,800 children were recruited by armed groups in the first nine months of 2018, and Syria where the UN has verified the killing of 870 children between January and September last year – the highest number over that period since the conflict began in 2011.
Children in Douma, East Ghouta, in Syria in December. PICTURE: © UNICEF/UN0264239/Sanadiki
Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF’s director of emergency programmes, said the world has continued to fail children.
“For too long, parties to conflict have been committing atrocities with near-total impunity, and it is only getting worse. Much more can and must be done to protect and assist children.”
Noting that 2019 marks the 30th anniversary of the landmark Convention on the Rights of the Child and the 70th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions, Fontaine said despite this children living in conflict zones are still among the least to be guaranteed their rights.
“Attacks on children must end,” he said. “Much more needs to be done to prevent wars, and to end the many disastrous armed conflicts devastating children’s lives. Yet even as wars continue, we must never accept attacks against children. We must hold warring parties to their obligation to protect children. Otherwise, it is children, their families and their communities who will continue to suffer the devastating consequences, for now, and for years to come.”
Other countries involved in conflicts singled out for mention by UNICEF include the Central African Republic, where two out of three children need humanitarian assistance as well as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Myanmar, Nigeria, Palestine, South Sudan, eastern Ukraine and Yemen, where the UN has verified that 1,427 children have been killed or maimed in attacks during the country’s civil war.
