Secretary-General's 11th Annual Report on Children and Armed Conflict

New York - April 26, 2012

Every year the Secretary-General lists those parties to conflict who recruit and use, kill and maim or commit rape and other forms of sexual violence against children in conflict. The Annual Report of the Secretary-General to the Security Council on Children and Armed Conflict, issued today, gives an overview of the situation of children affected by conflict and action taken for their protection over the reporting period.

  Press Release and Complete report

UN: Children and Justice During and in the
Aftermath of Armed Conflict

September, 2011

In situations of armed conflict, children are increasingly brought before the justice system, both on an international and national level, either as victims and witnesses or to stand trial as defendants. This has exposed the grey areas in legal and judicial systems where children’s participation in armed conflict has been rarely anticipated.

This working paper of the office of the UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict attempts to bring more conceptual clarity to this issue. It attempts to articulate how children who have suffered grave violations during armed conflict can access justice and how the current system deals with child victims and witnesses. It also explores the issues surrounding responsibility of children who may have committed international crimes during conflict.

Complete report
Press release

Alert Net

Large numbers of Malians who live in the north have fled the violence to lodge with relatives further south. Some 174,000 Malians are displaced inside the country, while nearly 269,000 Malians have fled to Algeria, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Niger.

Many Malian villages are struggling to cope with health problems made worse by a chronic lack of rain and spreading conflict, with a rising number of children suffering from malnutrition, aid workers say.

IRIN News

Five decades of war and upheaval in South Sudan has had an inevitable impact on education - almost three-quarters of adults in the world's newest country are unable to read or write.

A 2005 peace deal paved the way for South Sudan to secede from the north in July 2011. The country has since struggled to build an education system for its young and to educate the millions of adults who missed out on school during the war. IRIN News analysed the situation.