SECRETARY-GENERAL URGES INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY TO CREATE ZONE OF PEACE FOR CHILDREN
Press Release
SG/SM/6105
HR/4308
SECRETARY-GENERAL URGES INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY TO CREATE ZONE OF PEACE FOR CHILDREN
19961108 Says 'Study on Impact of Armed Conflict on Children' Shines Light into Darkness of Human Hatred and InjusticeThis is the text of the statement by Secretary-General Boutros Boutros- Ghali to the General Assembly's Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) on the study of his Expert on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children:
This is an historic occasion. The Study on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children, prepared under the outstanding leadership of Graça Machel, has been two years in the making. The international community now has before it -- for the first time in history -- a comprehensive appraisal of the plight of children caught in armed conflict. As such, it is a vital contribution to humanity's long quest for peace.
We owe Ms. Machel -- whose own family and nation have suffered the tragic consequences of war -- a debt of immense gratitude. We must also thank the United Nations Centre for Human Rights, the United Nations Children's Fund and its National Committees, which provided essential support to this endeavour.
This study demonstrates the centrality of children and their human rights to the peace and security agenda, and to political, military and humanitarian affairs.
It is an important contribution to the set of principles of international cooperation that have evolved over three centuries and which aim to prevent conflicts, limit the brutality of war and provide succour to its victims.
And it poses a fundamental challenge to the way the entire United Nations system -- and especially the humanitarian community -- responds to violations of children's rights in situations of armed conflict.
Ms. Machel and her team undertook this study pursuant to General Assembly resolution 48/157. The result is the fruit of extensive and wide- ranging consultations -- a truly global dialogue -- including: workshops in every region of the world; field visits to conflict zones; thematic studies by experts in a variety of disciplines; discussions among eminent personalities; and consultations with governments, non-governmental organizations, armed opposition movements and children themselves.
The study documents how civilians, and children most of all, bear the brunt of the civil conflicts that have torn apart nations and communities in recent years. It brings together the latest understanding of the many ways that war assaults society's most vulnerable members.
Between the lines of this detailed and serious document, we can hear the cries of the 2 million children killed and the 15 million disabled or traumatized in conflicts over the past decade, calling out to us for urgent redress.
This alone would have been a much-needed achievement. But the study provides more than just facts and analysis. It also proposes a comprehensive agenda for action to improve the protection and care of children in conflict situations, and to prevent conflicts from breaking out in the first place.
Just last month, I reported to the General Assembly on the significant and widespread progress made for children since the 1990 World Summit for Children. In presenting that report, I noted that investing in children is the path to sustainable development.
Children can also be our path to enduring peace. We must draw on that most basic of human instincts -- to protect and nurture our children -- and join it to our efforts to end war and violence in the human family. The faces of children must be the emblems on the banners of the new peace movements that we need to stop the proliferation of war and hatred.
We must refuse to inflict upon new generations the unspeakable atrocities and cruel deprivations that this century has so tragically inflicted on the young and which, to our collective shame, continue in parts of the world even as we meet today.
In this regard, we are compelled to the deepest concern over the situation in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa, where armed clashes are once again exacting a tragic toll among civilians, the vast majority of whom are refugees, most of them women and young children. An estimated 1 million people are on the move, amidst total insecurity and acute deprivation.
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The international community must do everything in its power to prevent a re-enactment of the 1994 genocide and refugee crisis that destabilized and devastated this part of the world. Immediate application of the wide-ranging recommendations of the Machel study would go a long way towards alleviating the suffering of the children involved. Adoption of these recommendations would also help accelerate longer-term solutions to the complex problems of the subregion.
The Study on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children shines an intense light into the darkness of human hatred and injustice, and proposes practical ways for governments, civil society and the United Nations to enlighten the lives of the world's children.
I appeal to Member States to carefully consider every one of its recommendations, and to ensure their effective implementation. I urge Member States, the United Nations system and civil society to join together, on the threshold of a new millennium, to seek ways to create for children a zone of peace in a world moving decisively away from war.
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