- UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Children are increasingly the innocent victims of war:
Two million have been killed since 1987, six million have been seriously
injured or permanently disabled, and 300,000 are currently fighting in
government or rebel armies, according to new a U.N. report.
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- "Not only are millions of children
still the victims of war, far too often they are its principal targets
and even its instruments," the U.N. envoy for children and armed conflict,
Olara Otunnu, said in his first annual report released Wednesday.
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- Children are suffering from the effects
of armed conflict in approximately 50 countries, and fighting is still
continuing in about 30 of these countries, he said in a news conference.
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- "From Sierra Leone to Tajikistan,
from Liberia to Cambodia, from the Sudan to Kosovo, from Sri Lanka to Afghanistan,
millions of children are being robbed of their childhood and left with
mangled lives," Otunnu said.
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- An alarming trend, he said, is the growing
use of child soldiers.
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- The number of children under the age
of 18 serving as combatants in government armed forces or armed opposition
groups in ongoing conflicts is estimated to have increased from 250,000
some 2 years ago to 300,000 today, Otunnu said.
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- "Many more are being used in indirect
ways that are more difficult to measure, such as cooks, messengers and
porters. Children have also been used for mine clearance, spying and suicide
bombing," he said.
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- The development and proliferation of
lightweight automatic weapons has made it possible for very young children
to bear and use arms, he noted.
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- Otunnu said he is working to mobilize
public opinion and political pressure "against this terrible trend."
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- He is backing efforts to raise the legal
age for military recruitment and participation in hostilities to 18 years
- and to make the recruitment of children under the age of 15 and their
participation in armed conflicts a war crime.
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- The U.N. envoy accused governments of
ignoring international treaties such as the Convention on the Rights of
the Child, which calls for the protection of children's right to life,
education, health and other fundamental needs.
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- "Words on paper cannot save children
in peril," he said.
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- Otunnu noted that children are being
affected by armed conflict in many other ways.
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- Children constitute well over 50% of
the 24 million people who are either refugees or internally displaced in
their own countries, he said.
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- Millions of children have lost their
homes and parents and suffered permanent trauma from events they witnessed
or experienced, he said. Many girls have been sexually abused.
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- Otunnu said children have also suffered
under economic sanctions.
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- He called on the U.N. Security Council
to reveal "the negative impact" of sanctions on Iraqi children.
He called for similar reviews on the effects of sanctions on the health,
nutrition and education of children in former Yugoslavia and Burundi.
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