International Child Day - 20 November

Protecting Children during Armed Conflict
Armed conflicts have left populations vulnerable to appalling forms of violence, including systematic rape, abduction, amputation, mutilation, forced displacement, sexual exploitation and genocide.

The wide availability of light, inexpensive small arms has contributed to the use of children as soldiers, as well as to high levels of violence once conflicts have ended. The breakdown of social protection leaves girls vulnerable to unwanted pregnancy and threatens all children with separation from their families, orphaning, increased risk of sexually transmitted infections, disability and serious, long-term psychosocial consequences.

Facts and figures
• An estimated 90 per cent of global conflict-related deaths since 1990 have been civilians, and 80 per cent of these have been women and children.

• I n the Democratic Republic of the Congo, almost 38,000 deaths occur every month above what is considered a ‘normal level’ for the country, translating into 1,270 excess deaths every day. Most deaths are due to preventable causes like malnutrition and infectious diseases. Young children are disproportionately affected by these illnesses.

• In Darfur (Sudan), around 2 million people have been forced from their land and live in displacement camps. More than 1 million of them are children under 18, with 320,000 aged five and under.

HUMAN RIGHTS
The principles and provisions to protect children in armed conflict are laid out in the Geneva Conventions (1949) and their Additional Protocols (1977), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) and its Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict (2000), and the Rome Statute (1998) of the International Criminal Court.

Arabic Forum