PRESS BRIEFING ON CHILDREN AND ARMED CONFLICT

Press Briefing

PRESS BRIEFING ON CHILDREN AND ARMED CONFLICT

The deliberate targeting of civilians, most of them women and children, was on the rise, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict, Olara Otunnu, said at a Headquarters press briefing today. The recruitment and use of children in combat was also on the rise, he added.

Anna Cataldi, a newly appointed United Nations Messenger for Peace, who will focus on the plight of children in armed conflict, was also at the press conference.

Mr. Otunnu gave examples of the targeting of civilians in several conflicts around the world. In Afghanistan, the worst example of the killing of civilians in the country's 28 year civil war had taken place in Mazar-i-Sharif on 8 August, he said. An estimated 2,000 civilians had been killed in reprisal attacks against the Hazara ethnic group by Taliban troops when they had taken over the city. Survivors had described it as a "killing frenzy".

In northern Sierra Leone, at the end of October, in the village of Alikalia, he said, rebel forces of the Revolutionary United Front had herded 48 civilians, including women and children, into a room and had blown it up. Mr. Otunnu described the incident as an example of a new gruesome strategy: instead of maiming and mutilating villagers by hacking off limbs, the rebels were now rounding up non-cooperative civilians and carrying out mass executions.

He said another example of the deliberate targeting of civilians had taken place in northeastern Kenya on the weekend of 24 to 25 October during new raids against ethnic Degodia settlements by neighbouring Borana. According to officials and witnesses, 142 civilians, including pregnant women, infants and children, were brutally killed, dozens injured and 70 abducted.

Mr. Otunnu then went on to cite recent examples of the recruitment of children to serve in armed conflict in Colombia, Sri Lanka, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sierra Leone.

In Colombia, he said, independent sources had indicated that all parties to the conflict there were recruiting and using children under 18 as fighters. Although most of Colombia's child soldiers were over 15 years old, up to 30 per cent of some guerrilla units were made up of children, with the number in some militia units as high as 85 per cent. Thousands of children in Colombia were known as "little bees" and "little bells" and were working for the army, guerrilla and paramilitary forces. Stopping the recruitment of children and the demobilization of those already in the armed forces should be an important part of the peace process.

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In Sri Lanka, there was evidence that children continued to be recruited and used by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Child rebels who had recently surrendered during the capture of Mankulam, a key northern town, had indicated that there were child soldiers within the fighting groups. During his May visit, the Liberation Tigers leadership had made a commitment not to recruit children below the age of 17 and not to deploy them below 18. Against the backdrop of that commitment, the reports were all the more disturbing. He appealed to the Liberation Tigers to take immediate, concrete steps to stop the recruitment of children.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, he said, there was repeated, widespread evidence that both sides to the conflict continued to recruit children. That was in addition to the children know as the "Kadogos", who were recruited during the fighting in 1996. He appealed to all parties to immediately end the recruitment and use of child soldiers.

There was clear evidence that in Sierra Leone the Revolutionary United Front relied heavily on children, he said. Despite the commitment in June by the civil defence forces not to recruit and initiate children into their ranks, there was credible evidence that they continued to do so.

He said the above examples of the deliberate targeting of civilians and the use of children in armed conflict violated a number of key humanitarian and human rights instruments, including the Geneva Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Statute recently adopted in Rome on the International Criminal Court made it a war crime to recruit children and to commit sexual abuse and rape against women. The above examples also went against the spirit and letter of the ground-breaking statement in June by the President of the Security Council calling on parties to stop the use of children and the targeting of civilians.

Equally important, he said, those acts also went against the local traditions and norms. He cited a comment by an elder in a northern Kenya town who had said, "this is against all our traditions, where men fight men." They did not target children, women and vulnerable populations.

Mr. Otunnu said it was important to translate norms and standards, in international instruments and in local value systems, into practices on the ground and arrangements that could make a difference to the lives of women and children. He called on all governments to incorporate the protection of children in conflict as a major aspect of their domestic and international policies and programmes. He also appealed to nongovernmental organizations, particularly the recently formed Coalition to Stop Child Soldiers and the Leadership Council on Children in Armed Conflict, to mobilize a major international campaign to stop the massive recruitment and use of children.

The Special Representative said he needed the support of governments to reinforce the message he had been taking to the parties in conflict and to reinforce initiatives already undertaken. One of the most important things

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that could come out of the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights would be an agreement to make the protection of women and children in conflict an absolute priority.

Ms. Cataldi said she lived in Italy, which had one of the world's lowest birth rates, and where children were a minority. It was difficult to convey the message about the terrible impact of conflicts in countries where children were often 50 per cent or more of the population. As a writer and journalist, she was trying to cover the issue. More child soldiers were being used because of lighter weapons which children could dismantle and reload in five minutes. Children were not officially classified as soldiers and could not therefore take part in demilitarization programmes. The use of child soldiers was an enormous war crime, and she intended to go into the field to highlight the problem.

Mr. Otunnu said there had been an upsurge in the numbers of children recruited into armed forces. A little more than two years ago, an estimated 250,000 children had been involved. Now, the number was 300,000.

A correspondent asked what Ms. Cataldi intended to do in the field. She said that she wanted to go to the Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea, to refugee camps in Palestine and to Kosovo, Sierra Leone and southern Sudan. The use of child soldiers was only one aspect of the problem. Children were also casualties of war: they were targeted and were also affected by sanctions. She said a photographer had described the eyes of child soldiers in Lebanon as empty, as if they were already dead. What was the use of fighting for one's race if the struggle destroyed the future of children by using them as soldiers? she asked. A society could not build its future with children who had been obliged to kill. They could not be psychologically rehabilitated.

Mr. Otunnu said, in nearly 50 countries children were suffering because of conflicts or post-conflict situations. Close to 30 countries were in the middle of ongoing conflicts, mostly internal. He was deeply concerned about the impact of sanctions on children. In his recent report to the Security Council, he had asked it to review the impact on children of the sanctions against Iraq. He had also asked for a review of the impact of the sanctions against Burundi and against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

A correspondent asked if there was any news about the Ugandan children kidnapped and taken to southern Sudan. Mr. Otunnu said he had raised the issue with the Sudanese Foreign Minister and had asked the Government to cooperate with him in finding the children and securing their release.

The correspondent asked what hope there was of getting the Sudanese Government to cooperate. Mr. Otunnu said, in fairness to the Sudanese Government, that it had cooperated. Two batches of children had been released and returned to Uganda.

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The correspondent said the children had escaped. They had not been picked up with the help of the Sudanese Government, which had just allowed the children to be returned to their homes, rather than being sent back to their kidnappers. Mr. Otunnu said without the cooperation of the Government, it would have been very difficult to link up with the children, to repatriate them from Juba to Khartoum, to provide security for them and then to return them to Uganda. He hoped that the cooperation would continue. The children had not been orphaned, but had been kidnapped on the way to school, he added.

Ms. Cataldi noted that sometimes people tried to make a distinction between voluntary and forced recruitment. However, when a starving, frightened child who was alone in the world, accepted an offer to join an armed force, it could not really be defined as "voluntary recruitment".

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