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5 November 1998
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.
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 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.
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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