Status: 29.06.2021 3:37 p.m.
According to a United Nations report, there were almost 24,000 violations of children’s rights last year. Kidnapping and rape have therefore increased. UN Secretary General Guterres reacted with dismay.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has lamented “disregard for children’s rights in times of conflict and turmoil” that is “shocking and heartbreaking”. “I call on all parties to the conflict to give priority to the prevention of violations of children and to engage in dialogue, cease-fire and peace processes,” said Guterres in a video.
He presented a report to the UN Security Council for the year 2020, according to which almost 24,000 serious human rights violations such as forced recruitment and rape were committed against 19,300 children in 21 conflicts.
Attacks on schools and hospitals
According to the report, more than 8,400 children and young people were killed or injured in the wars in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Somalia, and almost 7,000 were forcibly recruited and forced to fight. Mostly this happened in Congo, Somalia, Syria and Myanmar. Rape and other forms of sexual violence rose by 70 percent, and kidnappings by 90 percent. Attacks on schools and hospitals persisted at “excessively” high levels, it said.
US Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said that in her 40 years in the diplomatic service she has met many victims of violence against children in conflict and the stories they tell are heartbreaking.
“Children will tell you stories that no child should be able to remember,” she said. Children are “conscripted, raped and forced to murder siblings or their parents at gunpoint.”
“Children killed children”
And violence against children will continue this year, said Thomas-Greenfield, referring to a massacre in Burkina Faso, West Africa, earlier this month in which more than 130 civilians were killed. The crime was committed by an armed group that “mostly consisted of 12 to 14 year olds”.
“Children killed children” in the terrible attack on the village of Solhan in the Sahel province of Yagha. Thomas-Greenfield also highlighted a recent attack on an Afghan school that killed at least 90 girls and the frequent attacks on schools in northern Nigeria that “kidnap children for ransom”. The United Nations had done too little in the past 25 years, she said.
Shocking UN report: Nearly 24,000 violations of children’s rights
Antje Passenheim, ARD New York, June 29, 2021 4:23 p.m.