World leaders failed to protect children in conflict in 2018 – UNICEF

The future of millions of children living in countries affected by armed conflict are at risk, as warring parties continued to commit grave violations against children, and world leaders failed to hold perpetrators accountable, the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) has said.

UNICEF Director of Emergency Programmes, Manuel Fontaine stated that children living in conflict zones around the world have continued to suffer through extreme levels of violence over the past 12 months, and the world had continued to fail them.

“For too long, parties to conflict have been committing atrocities with near-total impunity, and it is only getting worse. Much more can and must be done to protect and assist children.”

He said, children living in countries at war have come under direct attack, have been used as human shields, killed, maimed or recruited to fight, adding that rape, forced marriage and abduction had became standard tactics in conflicts from Syria to Yemen, and from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to Nigeria, South Sudan and Myanmar.

Analysis from UNICEF revealed that in northeast Nigeria, armed groups, including Boko Haram factions, continued to target girls, who were raped, forced to become wives of fighters or used as ‘human bombs’.

“In February, the group abducted 110 girls and one boy from a technical college in Dapchi, Yobe State. While most of the children have since been released, five girls died and one is still being held captive as a slave.”

Fontain said, 2019 marked the 30th anniversary of the landmark Convention on the Rights of the Child and the 70th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions, yet today, more countries were embroiled in internal or international conflict than at any other time in the past three decades. “Children living through conflict are among the least likely to be guaranteed their rights. Attacks on children must end.”

UNICEF called on all warring parties to abide by their obligations under international law to immediately end violations against children and the targeting of civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals and water infrastructure while also calling on states with influence over parties to conflict to use that influence to protect children.