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Open Debate of the Security Council on Children and armed conflict
Statement by H.E. Mr. Jean Asselborn, Minister of Foreign and European Affairs:
"Madam President,
Allow me first of all to thank you very warmly for having organized this open debate on children and armed conflict under your Presidency of the Council.
I would also like to thank the Special Representative, Ms Zerrougui, the Deputy Executive Director General of UNICEF, Ms Brandt, as well as Mr Ladsous, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations for their enlightening presentations. I would also like to seize this occasion to thank the Special Envoy for Peace and Reconciliation of UNESCO, Mr Forest Whitaker, for his commitment to the cause of children affected by armed conflict. Finally, I would like to thank Ms Sandra Uwiringiyimana for her testimony: Madam, I was deeply moved by your story.
Madam President,
Six month ago, almost to the day, we adopted unanimously a tenth resolution on children and armed conflict on the occasion of an open debate I had the honour to preside over. But despite the successive resolutions adopted by the Council and the progress they represent for their protection, children continue to pay a very heavy price during conflicts.
From Syria to the Central African Republic, from South Sudan to Afghanistan, from Gaza to Iraq: children are killed and maimed and, depending on the situation, abducted, sexually abused, and recruited, both by government forces and by non-state actors. Schools and pupils continue to be the targets of deliberate attacks; school infrastructures are regularly ransacked or alienated from their primary purpose by being used for military purposes. These acts deprive children, and the communities whose future and hope they represent, of a fundamental right: the right to education. The ignorance stemming from a deficit of education fosters intolerance and perpetuates the cycle of poverty, thus contributing to feeding the violence. I hope the Security Council will continue to give this issue the attention it requires in the spirit of resolutions 1998 and 2143.
The persistence of violations and abuses committed against children in conflict situations is a stark reminder that the progress we make should be measured not only against the yardstick of the improvements we bring to our normative framework – however important that may be – but also by how this Council implements its decisions in specific contexts. Whether through country-specific resolutions, peacekeeping operations mandates, sanctions regimes or through the conclusions which are adopted by the Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict, the Council must be coherent and must concretely apply what it has committed to in its thematic resolutions. The Council’s credibility is at stake here.
This is true also for the fight against impunity: those who perpetrate atrocities against children must be held accountable. In this regard, the Council must act in accordance with its prerogatives, including the power of referral to the International Criminal Court.
Madam President,
As I have just said, wherever conflicts rage, children are particularly affected. For three and a half years, a conflict of untold violence is decimating Syria. Far from diminishing, the fighting continues unabated. The month of July 2014 has been the most deadly for the civilian population since the beginning of the conflict. Among the victims, there are now well over 10,000 children who have been killed; thousands more have been maimed and will remain scarred for life, physically and psychologically. Countless innocent children have lost their lives due to indiscriminate attacks on populated areas, indiscriminate bombardments by barrel bombs, with the only objective of terrorising and devastating the civilian population. Others have fallen victim to deliberate attacks against their schools: 240 children have been killed or wounded in such attacks between April and June 2014 alone. I could also mention the children who are denied access to humanitarian aid, the children who are detained and tortured by government forces or even forced to fight in pro-government armed groups, armed opposition groups and terrorist groups and entities, first among which the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
Reports of abuses committed against children by ISIL in territories under its control, be it in Syria or in Iraq, are increasing: recruitment, murder, rape, abductions and attacks against schools are rampant. As the Special Representative has just recalled in her statement, more than 500 children have been killed in Iraq since the beginning of the year.
Close to 500 dead, this is also the number of children who have been killed during the latest cycle of violence in the Gaza strip during the summer. Leaving political considerations aside, one can only be outraged when the number of children killed during a military operation is as high as the number of combatants killed. This is simply beyond comprehension.
Madam President,
I could go on and name many more conflict situations, give many more examples of grave violations against children, such as the abuses committed by Boko Haram, which has rightfully been added to the list of shame. But I would like to conclude on a more optimistic note. Indeed, in spite of the many reasons to be concerned, the commitment of the international community as a whole has generated areas of progress, which are true glimmers of hope.
Thanks to the tireless awareness raising efforts of the Special Representative, governments continue to take commitments, notably to end the recruitment and use of children. In Yemen, an action plan has been signed by the government on 14 May 2014, bringing to seven the number of governments committed to end recruitment of children. This is an additional encouraging sign for the success of the “Children, not soldiers” campaign launched by the Special Representative and UNICEF, after the delisting of Chad from the annexes of the report of the Secretary-General, following the implementation of the action plan signed by the government. Allow me to commend here the determined efforts of the Chadian authorities to this end. In Myanmar – visited by the Security Council Working Group last year – the armed forces have continued the demobilisation of children from their ranks, in line with their commitments. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the President has appointed his first Special Advisor for the fight against sexual violence and the recruitment of children. The regional organisations are also active and are mobilising to improve the protection of children, as is illustrated by the creation of a post of Special Envoy of the African Union for children in Africa.
Madam President,
In the introduction to her study on the impact of armed conflict on children, Graça Machel underlined that children are, I quote “both our reason to struggle to eliminate the worst aspects of warfare, and our best hope for succeeding at it”. This blend of idealism and pragmatism characterizes in the most adequate way the children and armed conflict agenda. I hope that the Council will be able to pursue in the future its noble task of eliminating the worst aspects of conflicts, and that it will be able to find practical solutions to end the violations and abuses committed against children.
I thank you for your attention."