Grave Violations against Children in Conflicts on the Rise: UNICEF

New York: This year has brought a spate of grave violations against children in both protracted and new conflicts, UNICEF warned today.
 
From Afghanistan to Yemen, and Syria to northern Ethiopia, thousands of children paid a devastating price as armed conflict, inter-communal violence, and insecurity continued. 
 
Just last week, at least four children were reportedly among the victims as at least 35 people were killed – including two Save the Children staff members - in Kayah State in Eastern Myanmar. 

This was just the latest high-profile example of the devastating toll conflict takes on children and the ongoing threats to humanitarian workers.
 
"Year after year, parties to conflict continue to demonstrate a dreadful disregard for the rights and wellbeing of children," said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore in a press release on Friday.
 
"Children are suffering, and children are dying because of this callousness. Every effort should be made to keep these children safe from harm," she added.
 
Whilst data for 2021 is not yet available, in 2020, 26,425 grave violations against children were verified by the UN. 
 
The first three months of 2021 saw a slight decrease in the overall number of verified grave violations, however, verified cases of abduction and sexual violence continued to rise at alarming rates - by more than 50 and 10 per cent, respectively - compared with the first quarter of the previous year.
 
Verified abductions were highest in Somalia, followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the countries of the Lake Chad Basin (Chad, Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger.) 
 
Verified instances of sexual violence were highest in the DRC, Somalia and the Central African Republic.
 
This year marked 25 years since the publication of the seminal Graça Machel report ‘The impact of war on children’, which urged the international community to take concrete action to protect children from the scourge of war and called on the United Nations and the global community to act to protect children.
 
The United Nations has verified 266,000 cases of grave violations against children in more than 30 conflict situations across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America over the past 16 years. 
 
These are only the cases verified through the UN-led Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism, established in 2005 to systematically document the most egregious violations against children in conflict zones. 
 
The true figures will be far higher.
 
Afghanistan, for example, has the highest number of verified child casualties since 2005, at more than 28,500 – accounting for 27 per cent of all verified child casualties globally. 
 
Meanwhile, the Middle East and North Africa region has the highest number of verified attacks on schools and hospitals since 2005, with 22 such attacks verified in the first six months of this year.
 
In October, UNICEF highlighted that 10,000 children had been killed or maimed in Yemen since fighting escalated in March 2015, the equivalent of four children every day.
 
Away from the headlines, the UN has verified violations in countries like Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Colombia, Libya, Mozambique, and the Philippines.

 
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