WUNRN
ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF ARMED
CONFLICT ON CHILDREN
& CURRENT RESPONSE MECHANISMS
Submitted by Denise Scotto, Esq.&Teresa
Schiller,Esq.
Women's Bar Association of the State of NewYorkUSA
As part of the Women's Bar
Association of the State of New York Conference regarding The Impact of
Armed Conflict on Women and Children, a Workshop was entitled “Assessing
the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children and Current Response Mechanisms." Ms.Denise Scotto, Chair of the New York
Chapter’s Children’s Rights Committee organized and moderated the workshop,
which featured: Hazel De Wet, Project Officer, Humanitarian Policy &
Advocacy Office of Emergency Programmes, UNICEF; Ann Makome, Child Protection Focal Point,
Peacekeeping Best Practices Section, Policy, Evaluation & Training
Division, DPKO; Nancy Wallace, LMSW, Adjunct Lecturer, NYU School of Social
Work; and Letitia Anderson, Programme Associate Governance, Peace &
Security, UNIFEM.
Ms. Scotto explained how WBASNY
has been dedicated for over 10 years to issues relating to the impact of armed
conflict on women and children and the International Criminal Court (ICC). Back in the 1990’s as co-chair of WBASNY’s
International Women’s Rights Committee, she organized a series of programs
together with
Ms. Scotto described how
situations of armed conflict affect girls and boys and discussed the seminal
1996 Graca Machal UN Study on the Impact
of Armed Conflict on Children. She
related how the report brought the issue to the attention of the international
community and offered the statistics of how youngsters were affected as targets
and instruments of armed conflict, experiencing grave abuses of their human
rights and sustaining physical and mental trauma. In the UN Study, Ms. Machal noted Ten
Commandments to take action to move forward and to better protect children from
these kinds of violations. Ms. Scotto
explained that positive action had occurred since 1996, whereby some of the
Machal recommendations had been undertaken.
One such key positive recommendation included the creation of the post
of the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General on Children in Armed
Conflict.
As part of the 1996 UN Study ten
year review process, a publication was prepared as a result of consultation
with children in areas of armed conflict across the globe. Ms. Scotto read the
very words of these youngsters so that audience members could better appreciate
the kinds of violations that these youngsters endured and the feelings that
these boys and girls are living with.
She also linked the earlier plenary session ICC speakers’ comments with
the current outstanding indictments of Joseph Kony from
Ms. Scotto stressed another
important legal instrument particularly the Optional Protocol to the Convention
on the Rights of the Child which concerns the prohibition on the use of child
soldiers and the recruitment of those under 18 years. She highlighted that while the
Ms. De Wet described the work of
UNICEF to help child victims of armed conflict -- from child soldiers to
sexually-exploited girls. She discussed the
important basic humanitarian needs of youngsters such as food and medical care
and how in times of war and instability there are significant challenges in
delivering them to youth. She explained
how continuing the education of girls and boys is another area of focus for
UNICEF.
Ms. De Wet , stated how UNICEF
works to implement the protections afforded through the Convention on the
Rights of the Child, its Optional Protocols, and CEDAW. She explained, however, that international
human rights law is not currently sufficient to deal with the changing nature
of conflict. She said that UN responses
to human rights violations tend to be project-oriented, when more
holistic-oriented solutions are needed instead.
She discussed her work prior to
UNICEF where she was involved in writing the terms of the post of the UN SR of
the SG on Children in Armed Conflict.
She remarked how both mandate holders—Olaro Otunnu and Radhika
Coomaraswamy have helped bring attention to these youngsters and have helped to
bring political attention to their particular circumstances by their field
missions and reporting to the UN Security Council. She praised both mandate
holders for their dedication to the cause.
Ms. Makome talked about
developments in international law regarding child protection in peacekeeping
operations. She said that Security
Council Resolution 1261 called for peacekeepers to be trained about children in
armed conflict zones and remarked that there have been six resolutions since
1999 regarding children and armed conflict flowing from the 1996 Machal Study.
She discussed her personal experience working in the field in the DRC for close
to 2 years. Child protection advisors
are necessary in peacekeeping operations to train peacekeeping personnel about
the use of children in armed conflicts, to educate peacekeeping personnel about
grave violations of children’s rights, to monitor and to report these grave
violations and to protect youngsters and remove them from combat when possible.
As part of her duties in the DRC,
Ms. Makome, identified with which groups
youngsters were recruited to fight as soldiers and with much patience and
negotiation, she was able to get some of them released. She also discussed the
particular plight of girls in the DRC and the high numbers of rapes of girls,
some of them as young as 5 years old.
She explained in south eastern DRC there were over 20,000 young women
who had been brought to the
Ms. Wallace, who currently is
working with a large group of Liberian refugees living in
Ms. Anderson stated that girls
have rights under UN SC Resolution 1325 but that girls are still too often
marginalized. She described the plight
of girl soldiers, who may not only be aggressors in armed conflict, but victims
as well. She explained that girl
soldiers may have joined rebel groups in efforts to escape violence themselves
but that some may find themselves to be rape victims within the rebel
groups. She quoted one victim as saying,
“That man had the gun and the power. I
just wanted my life to be spared.” Ms.
Anderson characterized violence against women and girls as the most pervasive
-- but least punished -- of all crimes.
She said that the international laws protecting women and girls are “not
adequately respected, implemented, and enforced.” She also ended on a positive note indicating
that women are great agents of social change and have the capacity to
participate at the table during peace negotiations and to mobilize society
during the post conflict peace building stage.
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