PRESS BRIEFING ON CHILDREN AND ARMED CONFLICT

Press Briefing

PRESS BRIEFING ON CHILDREN AND ARMED CONFLICT

Olara Otunnu, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, said in a press briefing at Headquarters this afternoon that the Convention on the Rights of the Child spoke directly to the millions of children who were exposed to armed conflict. Recalling that this was the tenth anniversary of the Convention, he said its role was to serve as the advocate of children in armed conflict, promoting their rights and welfare.

As he described his mandate to correspondents, he said his office had embarked on a wide variety of initiatives and actions designed to enlarge the space for the protection of children exposed to armed conflict, eliciting commitments from parties in conflict on the protection of children. The challenge now was to ensure more effective monitoring of and adherence to those commitments.

He said he had worked to put children squarely at the centre of peace negotiations and to ensure that they were made a central concern in post- conflict negotiations. That concern must be reflected in priority setting, policy making and resource allocation. He had proposed the incorporation of child protection clauses into United Nations peace operations, including explicit inclusion in the mandate, child protection advocates and the training of peacekeepers. Those elements had been put into place in Sierra Leone and he was working to ensure that similar arrangements would be set up in Kosovo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and East Timor.

The victimization of children was often exacerbated by cross border activities, he said Working to end the military recruitment and use of children in armed conflict was a major part of his advocacy work. He had supported raising the age limit of recruitment from 15 to 18, and proposed other measures to end that abomination, he said.

He appealed to all States to conclude, by January 2000, the work on the draft optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. That would allow the international community to concentrate on curbing child soldiering on the ground. He had advocated the establishment of a “Voice of Children” project devoted mainly to the needs of children in situations of conflict. A particular priority was to work to make sure that the welfare of children affected by conflict became a major concern on the Security Council agenda. Council resolution 1261 was a major landmark for the cause of children affected by conflict. He called on all concerned with the protection of children to use that new advocacy tool.

He also called on the Council to apply the measures in that resolution to specific crisis situations and to the design of specific mandates for peace operations. He had appealed to the international business community to assume their social and corporate responsibility and not to fuel the war machines that caused atrocities against women and children. He had worked to ensure that regional organizations would adopt that agenda on their own.

Mr. Otunnu went on to say that there were still many countries in which conflict was unfolding. In Chechnya, children were suffering in many distressing ways -- being killed and wounded by artillery and missile attacks; displaced in large numbers; and dying of hunger and exposure. He had called on the parties in conflict in Chechnya to grant full humanitarian access to communities of internally displaced persons, end attacks on civilian sites where children were the most vulnerable, and end the use of weaponry that caused indiscriminate civilian casualties.

Otunnu Briefing - 2 - 18 November 1999

In Angola, he continued, humanitarian needs had become massive and children were the hardest hit. Again, he had appealed to the parties involved for unhindered access by humanitarian agencies. He had called on both the Government and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) to refrain from under-age recruiting and from targeting civilian sites. He called on them to respect guarantees of safety for United Nations staff and other humanitarian workers.

He said the conflict in the Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville) was a forgotten war, but children there were facing terrible suffering. There were an estimated 800,000 internally displaced persons, an extraordinary number for a country so small. One hundred per cent of those returning to Brazzaville were malnourished, and 70 per cent of them were severely wounded. There were reports this week of widespread atrocities, including the systematic rape of young girls. One report spoke of a whole generation of youths resorting to plunder and extortion. He urged the international community to give that humanitarian crisis the attention it deserved.

He paid tribute to the humanitarian agencies doing the front line work and translating the common concern into operational activities for the protection of the rights and welfare of children.

In response to a question, he said the availability of numbers varied from one country to another. Currently there were an estimated 20 million children displaced by war, or 60 per cent of all displaced persons. There were 300,000 children below the age of 13 serving as child soldiers. Close to 800 children were maimed by land mines every month.

How could he deal with children in Chechnya when the Security Council had not even put the item on its agenda? a correspondent asked. Mr. Otunnu replied that recently, in Istanbul, he had made a ten-point proposal regarding internally displaced persons in the region covered by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). There must be pragmatic ways to respond systematically to the protection, material and relief needs of internally displaced persons. The situation in Chechnya in the Russian Federation underscored that issue.

A correspondent asked if he had taken up the cause of children who were denied papers in the country of their birth because their parents were immigrants.

Mr. Otunnu reminded correspondents that his mandate was to protect children in armed conflict. His work involved every aspect of children affected by conflict. He undertook preventative measures as well as measures to protect children during and after conflict. To preserve its credibility, the international community must respond to every situation in which children suffered.

* *** *