Public Statement by Chair of Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict

The Security Council Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict, in connection with the examination of the seventh report of the Secretary-General on children and armed conflict in Sudan (document S/2022/627), agreed to convey the following messages through a public statement by the Chair of the Working Group:

To all parties to the armed conflict in the Sudan:

• Strongly condemning all violations and abuses that continue to be committed against children by all parties to conflict in the Sudan, urging all parties to immediately end and prevent all violations and abuses against children, including those involving the recruitment and use of children, abduction, killing and maiming, rape and other forms of sexual violence, attacks on schools and hospitals, and the denial of humanitarian access and urging all parties to comply with their obligations under international law;
• Calling upon all parties to further implement the previous conclusions of the Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict in Sudan;
• Stressing the importance of accountability for all violations and abuses against children in armed conflict and stressing that all perpetrators must be brought to justice and held accountable without undue delay, including through timely and systematic investigations, and as appropriate, prosecution and conviction, and to ensure that all victims have access to justice and to medical, protection and support services that they need, including through strengthening judicial and law enforcement capacities;
• Stressing that the best interests of the child should be a primary consideration, and that the specific needs and vulnerabilities of boys and girls, as well as children with disabilities and displaced children, should be duly considered, when planning and carrying out actions concerning children in situations of armed conflict;
• Strongly condemning the increase and continued high level of recruitment and use of children by armed groups, and strongly urging all parties to immediately release, without preconditions, all children from their ranks, hand them over to relevant civilian child protection actors, and end and prevent further recruitment and use of children, including the re-recruitment of children who have been released, in line with international humanitarian law and, as applicable, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict;
• Expressing concern about the deprivation of liberty of children for their association or alleged association with armed groups and welcoming in this regard the release of the detained children by the Government of Sudan, and emphasizing the importance of treating children associated with armed groups, including those who may have committed crimes, primarily as victims of recruitment and use, to work to ensure their full reintegration through family- and community-based gender-sensitive reintegration programmes, access to health care, including mental health and psychosocial support, and education programmes, guided by the Principles and Guidelines on Children Associated with Armed Forces or Armed Groups (the Paris Principles), as well as the National strategic plan for disarmament, demobilization and reintegration for children who have previously been involved in armed movements, as well as raising awareness and working with communities to avoid stigmatization of those children and facilitate their return, and to ensure that, where children face prosecution for allegedly committing crimes, those prosecutions are carried out with respect for the rights of the child;
• Expressing deep concern at the high number of children killed or maimed, including as a result of the use of small arms and light weapons, explosive remnants of war, mortar and rocket attacks, the use of improvised explosive devices; calling upon all parties to respect their obligations under international law, to cease the killing and maiming of children, and to end immediately and definitively the indiscriminate use of explosive devices, and calling upon the Government to fully implement its obligations under the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction;
• Expressing grave concern at the high number of cases of rape and other forms of sexual violence perpetrated against children, recognizing the underreporting of sexual violence against children in Darfur, among other places, due to impunity, stigma and discrimination; urging all parties to take immediate and specific measures to put an end to and prevent the perpetration of rape and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence against children by members of their respective forces, stressing the importance of accountability for those responsible for sexual and gender-based violence against children, and of providing non-discriminatory and comprehensive specialized services, health including mental health and psychosocial support, including sexual and reproductive health services, legal and livelihood support and services, to survivors of sexual violence;
• Strongly condemning attacks on schools and hospitals in violation of international law and calling upon all parties to comply with applicable international law and to respect the civilian character of schools and hospitals, including their personnel, as such, and to end and prevent attacks or threats of attacks against those institutions and their personnel, as well as the military use of schools and in that regard recalling the Safe Schools Declaration, endorsed by the Sudan in December 2015; noting further the effect that attacks on schools and their use can have on the enjoyment of the right to education, also noting that attacks and looting of schools and school materials affected a great number of children’s access to education during the reporting period;
• Strongly condemning the abduction of children, including for ransom, recruitment and use, and for the purpose of sexual and gender-based violence, for trafficking including for forced labour; urging all parties to cease the abduction of children and all violations and abuses committed against abducted children and to immediately release without precondition all abducted children and hand them over to relevant civilian child protection actors;
• Strongly condemning all incidents of denial of humanitarian access, including attacks on humanitarian personnel and looting of humanitarian goods; expressing serious concern that access by the United Nations and other humanitarian actors to vulnerable populations, including children, was restricted during the reporting period, and that children living in conflict-affected areas were deprived of basic humanitarian assistance, and calling upon all parties to allow and facilitate, in accordance with international law, safe, timely and unhindered humanitarian access, and recalling also the UN Guiding Principles adopted in the General Assembly resolution 46/482, as well as the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence, to respect the exclusively humanitarian nature and impartiality of humanitarian aid and respect the work of all United Nations agencies and their humanitarian partners, without adverse distinction, and emphasizing the need to ensure the safety of and access for mine action operations;
• Calling upon the armed groups listed in the annexes to the report of the Secretary-General on children and armed conflict (document S/2022/493)  who have existing action plans and road maps with the United Nations on the protection of children, namely the Justice and Equality Movement, the Sudan Liberation Army-Minni Minawi and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North Abdelaziz al-Hilu and Malik Agar factions, to cooperate with the country task force on the swift and full implementation of these, urging SLA-AW, including all its factions, to engage with the United Nations on the development of an action plan;
• Noting with concern that access to conflict-affected areas in Darfur, Blue Nile and South Kordofan, was constrained during the reporting period due to insecurity, which presented challenges to the verification and attribution of the six grave violations against children, and that the information contained in the report of the Secretary-General on children and armed conflict in the Sudan (document S/2022/627) may not reflect the full impact of armed conflict on children in the Sudan, emphasizing the importance of ensuring dedicated child protection and monitoring capacities following the withdrawal of UNAMID from Darfur; 

To the Government of the Sudan:

• Welcoming the efforts made by the Government of the Sudan to ensure continued compliance with and to consolidate the gains of the action plan to end and prevent the recruitment and use of children signed in 2016, while expressing grave concern about the continuing violations and abuses against children in the Sudan, noting the context of efforts towards the forming of a civilian-led government, and stressing the need to continue efforts to protect children, in particular the importance of long-term protection measures, including the strengthening of social services and the building of strong institutions with the capacity to ensure the rights and respond to the needs of children, including through continuation of efforts to identify and screen children in all of their forces, the endorsement of handover protocols, the implementation of complaint procedures and awareness-raising activities, and to engage with the United Nations on a longer-term national plan to prevent all violations and abuses;
• Welcoming the collaboration between the Government of the Sudan and the United Nations to strengthen the protection of children, and the adoption by the national authorities and armed group signatories to the Juba Peace Agreement of a road map based on the 2016 action plan on ending and preventing child recruitment and use, as well as the efforts of the government of Sudan in negotiating with the remaining armed groups that have yet to sign the Juba Peace agreement of October 2020 and urging the movements to join them; and calling for the timely implementation of the road map and urging the full operationalization and use of high-level and technical committees to ensure the coordination and implementation of all its provisions;
• Encouraging the Government to continue and to strengthen measures to end and prevent the killing and maiming of children and other instances of the six grave violations by all parties including in the context of armed conflict and military operations;
• Welcoming ongoing implementation of the National strategic plan for disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of children who have previously been involved in armed movements, involving social inclusion programmes, such as education and vocational training or apprenticeship and other programs aimed at preparing them to become active members of society.

To community and religious leaders:

• Emphasizing the important role of community and religious leaders in strengthening the protection of children affected by armed conflict;
• Urging them to strengthen community-level protection and to condemn publicly and continue to advocate ending and preventing violations and abuses against children, in particular those involving the recruitment and use of children, killing and maiming, rape and other forms of sexual violence against children, abductions, attacks and threats of attacks against schools and hospitals, and to engage with the Government of the Sudan, the United Nations and other relevant stakeholders to support the reintegration of children affected by armed conflict in their communities, including by raising awareness to avoid the stigmatization of such children.