Children in conflict zones faced over 27,000 'grave violations' in 2022

Children in conflict zones faced over 27,000 'grave violations' in 2022 according to UNICEF. (Photo/AFP)

Children experienced the highest number of "grave violations" in conflicts verified by the United Nations in 2022, with the conflicts between Israel and Palestinians and in Democratic Republic of Congo [DRC] and Somalia putting the most youngsters in peril, the UN children’s agency has said.

UNICEF also expressed particular concern on Wednesday about their plight in Haiti, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Ukraine, where Russia has been put on the UN blacklist.

"Grave violations" include the recruitment and use of children by combatants, killings and injuries, sexual violence, abductions, and attacks on schools and hospitals.

Omar Abdi, UNICEF’s deputy executive director, told the UN Security Council more than 27,000 grave violations, up from 24,000 the previous year, is the highest number verified by the UN since its monitoring reports began in 2005.

The number of conflict situations "of concern" was also the highest — at 26.

Since the report, Abdi said, a serious conflict has erupted in Sudan, where over one million children have been displaced by violent conflict, and the UN has received reports that hundreds have been killed and injured.

He also said UNICEF expects an increase in Palestinian children affected due to recent escalations in violence by Israel.

Government and parties to conflicts are not fulfilling their commitments to protect children, and "meaningful and unambiguous action" is needed, the UNICEF official said.

Russia blacklisted, Israel not

In his yearly report to the council late last month, Secretary General Antonio Guterres put Russian forces on the UN's annual blacklist of countries that violate children's rights in conflict for killing boys and girls and attacking schools and hospitals in Ukraine.

But the UN chief did not put Israel on the blacklist for grave violations against 1,139 Palestinian children, including 54 killings last year — as supporters had hoped — saying the UN welcomed its "identification of practical measures, including those proposed by the UN" to protect children.

The UN special envoy for children in armed conflict, Virginia Gamba, told the council that the 27,180 grave violations in 2022 were carried out against 18,890 children and included 8,620 who were killed or injured, 7,622 who were recruited or used by governments or armed groups in conflicts, 3,985 who were abducted, 1,165, almost all of them girls, who were raped, forced into marriage or sexual slavery or sexually assaulted.

The United Nations also verified attacks on 1,163 schools and 647 hospitals, a 112 percent increase from 2021, she said.

While armed groups were responsible for 50 percent of grave violations, Gamba underscored that governments were the main perpetrators of the killing and maiming of children and of attacks on schools and hospitals.

Gamba said, for example, last year three girls were gang raped in South Sudan "during five days of terror," many boys were killed by an explosive device at a school in Afghanistan, a 14-year-old girl in Myanmar was abducted and burned alive, and an air strike in Ukraine left a girl with amputated limbs.

"We must do more to prevent and protect our children from the ravages of armed conflict," she said.

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Source: TRT